G-MP, Nelly, and Biddle devo-lve at Amerivespa
I finally uploaded some photos: 2sb’s Amerivespa Gallery, Jordan’s Amerivespa Gallery, and 2sb’s Minneapolis gallery. Scoot.net, of course, has many more.
Category: Photo
Photos from the 2sb photo gallery, or other photo-related posts
Genuine Blur 150: a first look
Genuine unveiled their new Blur 150 at the Minneapolis rally this weekend. We had a good look at it, and a brief ride, and we were impressed. Here’s a photo to whet your appetite, we’ll post a review and more photos tomorrow. (Photo © 2006 2strokebuzz)
Philippines photos by Minggoy
Via Vespinoy: Filipino scooterist Minggoy’s fantastic flickr stream featuring lots of great scooter (and what I hope is paintball) photos.
135 ways to pose with a Vespa
You’ve probably seen most of these, but probably not all in one place: Vespa pin-up girls from the ’50s and ’60s (a culturesponge photoset on flickr.com).
Shouldn’t Morpheus ride a Morphous?
Shunning the scooter sorta named after his Matrix character, Larry Fishburne posed on a Vespa (or as Reuters will tell you, a Lambretta) at a Mission Impossible 2 premiere photo shoot in Rome. You know a movie’s gonna clean up at the box office when they premiere it in Rome. (via The Scooter Snoop)
Israeli scooter racing photos
From Brooke: The Israeli Scooter League got underway last week, here are some photos.
Scootermatik Customshow 2006
About a billion photos from a German custom twist ‘n’ go show. Neat! Thanks, Myk Brooke.
Punks in Parkas
Punks in Parkas, another site with a lot of great vintage photos of (mostly) british scooters and scooterists. The navigation and frames are wonky for me but it’s definitely worth checking out. Thanks for the link, Nitro.
Paris
We got back from Paris yesterday, here are our photos of Paris in general (or just check out the scooter-related photos)
Things I noticed:
- Scooters and motorcycles are everywhere, even as the temperature hovered around the freezing point. (Lap aprons are very common on motorcycles and scooters.) Basically, the whole town sounds like you’re at a scooter rally, all day and all night.
- Scooters easily outnumber motorcycles 3-1. Most motorcycles we saw were small-displacement and Asian, the few bigger ones we saw were usually Ducatis or BMWs.
- It’s impossible to walk a block on any street in Paris without seeing several scooters parked on the sidewalk. Nirvana for American scooterists, but probably no fun for most pedestrians.
- Piaggio definitely dominates the market, even over Peugeot. Modern Vespas (ETs and GTs) and Piaggios (X9s and Libertys) are everywhere, and P-series scooters were far more common than i expected, maybe 1 out of 20 scooters was a P or PK-series. There were a good number of Peugeots, but mostly older beaters, I saw only a couple Speedfights. In Ireland a couple years ago, Gilera Runners dominated the market, but we only saw one in Paris. Kymco and Aprilia also had a decent share of the market. Chinese and Taiwanese scooters were common, but I saw few Hondas or Yamahas, and no “retro” Asian scooters other than one Honda Joker (called the “Shadow” there?).
- Most scooters, even the relatively expensive Vespas, were healthily thrashed, parked against walls and each other with stickers and dents galore. They’re transportation there, not fetish objects.
- We did see several nicely-maintained vintage Vespas that were clearly owned by lifestyle scooterists, mostly smallframes like the one above.
- As far as 4-wheeled vehicles, I couldn’t believe the number of Smart Cars, they’re cleaning up there. Minis (both old and new) were common, and all manner of tiny Citröens, Peugeots, and Renaults were everywhere. VW and Audi were probably the biggest importers. All the cars were tiny: the streets are narrow, traffic and parking is a nightmare, and gas is expensive. One of the biggest popular cars was a 2-door version of the Toyota Rav-4. Like the scooters, the cars mostly looked like they’d had a hard life.
I’ll post more later about the two scooter shops we visited.
Scooter Ball!
This fine example of a scooterball was pointed out to us by POC Phil. It looks like great fun, until you wonder where the exhaust fumes go…
2sb’s Chicago Motorcycle Show photos
We finally set up our photo gallery, so here are all our photos from the Chicago Motorcycle Show. We’ll be changing the look of the gallery to match the rest of the site, but at least it works now.
More Indy dealer show photos
Alex of Motorsport Scooters in San Diego posted some good photos from the dealer show, including the new Kymco People and the new Genuine Black Cat and Buddy.
“The only web-based scooterist-only photo album”?
Scoot.net might have something to say about that claim, but this Irish dude’s photo site contains some fantastic, funny, and frightening scooter photos dating back nearly 25 years. I’ll leave it up to you to choose your favorites and post them in the comments. Also: prepare yourself for the shaking browser window trick. Thanks, Nitro!
Scooter Magazine covers
The Lambretta Club of America site has a great photo gallery, including this Gallery of vintage scooter magazine covers. Thanks for the link, Matty.
Snow ride
I actually rode around Galewood in the snow the other day. Goodtimes, for a few minutes. Check out The Baron in Winter for some cold-weather riding inspiration, and remember, the Cold Weather Challenge ends on the 28th.