Alix B. and her Genuine Buddy are a week and a half into their P.E.A.C.E. scooter tour, and blogging away with gusto rarely seen on epic scooter tours. We should probably interview her or something. In other scooter tour news, Josh and Peter the Scootstars have another dead 50cc Chinese scooter on their hands and are apparently stuck in Chicago weighing their options. We’ll hopefully hook up with them before they escape.
Category: Rallies and Rides
Stellaspeed ride, and a busy August for midwesterners.
Chicago Stellaspeed just announced a ride on Saturday (July 28, 2007), leaving from Kuma’s Corner (2900 W. Belmont) at noon. The ride will stay in the city and last a couple hours. All scooters and scooterists are invited, but expect some Stella tuning and maintenance talk.
Apologies for not posting Section 8’s Wisconsin Rally a couple weeks ago, I forgot to post it before I left for vacation. Both Motor City Shakedown and the Quad Cities rally are coming up next weekend, then Rockerbox in Milwaukee a week after that, followed by Rattle My Bones in Minneapolis, then the Hell’s Fairies ride to the Gay Rodeo, and then the mighty Slaughterhouse 13 rally in Chicago on Labor Day weekend. It’s been a busy summer for scooterists, and August seems to ramp it up yet another notch.
Amerivespa 2007 photos
Finally, all of my Amerivespa 2007 photos are in the 2SB Gallery. They’re mostly from Vashon Island (Sunday), with a few from Saturday (including the Adly Lambretta and the Seattle Kwik-E-Mart.) Jordan has hundreds more, we’ll post those soon, and there are a million more on Scoot.net. A lot has already been said about the rally all over the web, but I’ll have another writeup about the rally (and my first-hand observations on the Adly Lambretta) soon.
Chicago rides: Scooterworks and weiners
Isn’t today the first day of summer? That’s not stopping Scooterworks, whose Spring Ride starts at the shop at 9:30 on Saturday. Their new catalog is in the mail, and I’ve heard good and bad things, hopefully I’ll get it today.
Also on Saturday if you’re into cased meats, The Hell’s Fairies are hosting their June Weiner Ride. It starts at 4pm, not far from where the Scooterworks ride ends, so you could pretty easily do both. 2sb can’t make either ride, but if we had to choose one, I think we all know which we’d choose.
Mods vs. Rockers 2007 photos
As someone on scoot.net chat said the other day, “In the future, all rallies will be called ‘Mods vs. Rockers.'” Although there were six or eight similarly-named rallies in the last few weeks, we’re talking about the Chicago version, which is beginning to rival Milwaukee’s fantastic Rockerbox, in terms of quantity, variety, and quality. (Nary a Harley was to be seen!) Silent Ron’s 200-or-so photos (one is above) sum up the event much better than I could , and if those aren’t enough, here are a few dozen more from Jordan.
Mods vs. Rockers 2007
Saturday is Ton-Up Chicago’s annual Mods vs. Rockers rally/ride/showdown at Delilahs in Chicago. We can’t speak for the “bad guys,” but the Mods are meeting up at The Globe (1934 W. Irving Park at 11am to ride down en force. The rideout leaves the Globe no later than 11:45. (If you want breakfast, be there by 10:30.)
Midwest rallies abound
Chicago-area scooterists have no one but themselves to blame if they have a boring summer: (let me know if I’m forgetting any)
- June 16-18,2007 The Defilers (no site that we can find, though there are about six bands called the Defilers, and they’re all bitching about each other -ed.) present Beer Bong The Rally in Madison, Wisconsin. Friday night starts at Mickeys Tavern from 8 till 10. Saturday features lunch, then a ride then 7 bands and a BBQ, and Sunday there’s a breakfast if you haven’t been defiled enough. For info contact Andy at (608)446-4026
- July 13-15, 2007 Wisco’s Section 8 SC’s Barn Bash Scooter Rally in Van Dyne Wisconsin on . $15 preregistration (until July 4) covers camping, food, drinks, patch, seven bands (what’s with seven bands?), and more.
- August 3-5, 2007 Knuckledraggers SC is hosting “Barrel O’ Monkeys — Going Ape Shit.” in the Quad Cities (IL/IA border).
- August 16-19, 2007 In the Twin Cities, where No Direction Home has joined Scooter Du in the history books, M5 tells us a new crew “are taking over with a vengeance,” hosting Rattle My Bones 2007. I don’t think that’s a Dylan, ‘Mats, Prince, Huskers, Soul Asylum, or Trashmen reference, but it sounds good anyway.
- August 30-September 2 Labor Day Weekend is, of course, Slaughterhouse 13 in Chicago hosted by a thankfully-still-unnamed coalition of Chicago scooterists and clubs. The site still features last years’ info, but it’ll be updated soon. Can you believe it’s been 13 years? Well, twelve, technically, but 13 calendar years. Don’t make me explain that again.
Loopy
48 hours from now, my butt will hurt and I’ll hopefully have some good stories to tell. I was going to write more, but I better get some sleep.
Our Way of Thinking 6
6 already!? It sort of snuck up on us this year, but MODchicago’s sixth annual weekender is coming up in a couple days. If you’re not circling a great lake this weekend, check it out.
News bits, June 3, 2007
Some news from the last few weeks, See if you can spot the Bob Balaban reference!
- Despite a high-profile drunk-scootering case involving a local radio personality, Sydney, Australia’s Lord Mayor Clover Moore has vowed to turn the city into “the Rome of the Pacific.” Scooter and motorcycle-specific spaces have doubled to 700 in the last two years, with hundreds more slated to be added soon. (Aside from designated parking, similarities to Chicago abound, including meter confusion and strongly-established support for bicycles.) Perhaps part of Moore’s plan to Rome-ize Sydney will involve particulate cocaine in the atmosphere?
- Budapest, Hungary’s government has teamed up with local scooter dealers to promote scootering in the Józsefváros district. The area hopes to reduce overcrowding and pollution with discounts and free accessories for scooter buyers.
- The Observer reviews the Piaggio MP3: “That’s a big iPod! Where are your headphones mate?”
- In another UK review, Metro.co.uk calls the MP3 “the transsexual of scooters”. (Note: The MP3 prefers to be called the “executive transvestite” of scooters.)
- Davison, Michigan Rite-Aid manager Don Dunklee has covered more than 1,100 miles commuting on an EVT4000 electric scooter that he converted to solar power. Two wing-like solar panels fold out to charge the scooter when parked, and fold in when riding.
- Resort-area cable TV network Plum recommends a Vespa to get around Aspen, where gas prices are expected to reach $6 over the summer and scooter parking is free citywide.
- Scooters are neat-o, and growing in popularity, and save money on gas, and Audrey Hepburn and latte and so on. Boilerplate stories from South Bend, IN, Columbus OH, Austin TX, Salt Lake City, UT, Seattle, WA, and Des Moines, IA
- Vespa Milwaukee cites gas prices as the impetus for a recent 25-percent increase in sales, though their Chicago-area pickup and delivery service probably hasn’t hurt sales from Chicago riders fed up with the local dealers.
- Sales in Miami are also up, to a fault: Scooter backlash is underway, and the scooter market has gone downscale (”I had a woman in here last week; she wanted to finance a $600 used bike”), Lane-splitting, slow, helmet-less scooterists are frustrating Hummer and Escalade drivers on Biscayne Boulevard.
- Any High Rollers Rally-goer will tell you that a scooter is a great way to get around Las Vegas, but renting mobility scooters from hotels is pretty lazy.
The Underpants Thread
Modern Vespa got interesting today, though this is exactly the kind of information I need before next weekend.
Hell’s Fairies in Time Out
2sb pals Alex and Dawson’s Hell’s Fairies scooter club was featured in this week’s Time Out Chicago. The Fairies’ May Cicada Ride is Saturday at Noon.
Chicago Scooterist Roundtable TOMORROW
Here’s the final info for the Scooterist Roundtable tomorrow, sorry to post it so late. Please come if at all possible, we may not have as big a group as we hoped, but we have a good variety of quality people representing scooterdom, and we’re hoping this meeting will be the starting point for a great relationship with the city.
Pre-meeting
Meet at The Twisted Spoke (Ogden location) at noon to compare notes. If you plan to eat, come a bit earlier, we need to leave at 12:30 sharp to arrive at the meeting at ten to one (Dan Epstein is recording our arrival for his radio piece). This pre-meeting is optional, you’re welcome to proceed directly to the meeting, please for once, don’t run on “scooter time,” (he says, knowing he’ll be the late one).
The Roundtable
Meet a little before 1:00PM at the Chicago Center for Green Technology (45 North Sacramento). Dress respectfully, and try to bring a clean scooter, meeting participants will be welcomed to come out and have a look. There’s a parking lot, we’ll try to park together (orderly!) and lock up appropriately.
We’ll be meeting with our CDOT contact who arranged the meeting, Charles Roesner, and CDOT Deputy Commissioner of Project Development Luann Hamilton. Other CDOT representatives will also be present, as well as people from the Departments of the Environment (the “green” issue) and Revenue (who handle parking enforcement). The meeting will last about two hours. We’ll let the organizers direct the pace and content of the meeting, and there’s not a lot of time, but for reference, I’ve made a “wish list” of topics that we hope to discuss. See you tomorrow!
Spring Hazards
Crystal’s handy guide to spring riding hazards. Chicago-wise, the potholes, especially on Lake Street, are killing me. Luckily, they’ve already started fixing them. I’ve noticed that either the roads are a lot slicker than they were in the fall, or I’m getting more comfortable pushing the Blur closer to its limits. My least favorite thing about Spring and Fall is the sun always seems to be right on the horizon during commutes. I’m thinking about moving to a city with an east side.
DOT/Slaughterhouse Meeting
There’s a Slaughterhouse planning meeting tomorrow (Wednesday) night at The Globe Pub in Chicago at 8pm. All are welcome. If you’re coming to/interested in the Chicago Scooterist Roundtable, try to come to this meeting. I met with Charles Roesner from the Chicago DOT on Monday and got a lot of insight into what they’re hoping to accomplish, and I’d like to share the good news and talk about it in a group before the meeting on May 4. As I’ve said, this is the best opportunity we’ll ever get to have our voices heard by the city, they’ve asked us for our thoughts on ecology, traffic, parking, and other scooter-related issues, let’s make the most of it.
If you’re on the email list, sorry to not contact you directly, I seem to have misplaced the list. Please spread the word.)