Category: Scooter News

“La Lambretta Cinese”

Motoblog is calling this thing the “chinese Lambretta.” I can’t read italian, so I’m not sure if it was meant as a joke. Aside from there already being a (at-least-half-)chinese Lambretta, they can call it whatever they want, it’ll always be a Zhejiang Zhongneng Gas Scooter ZN151T-F to me. It’s not the most hideous-looking thing out there (once you strip off the corkboard paint job), and it might even look more like a Lambretta than the rebadged Adlys, but I’m not buying one.

Asian rip off scooter t-shirts

Some dude is knocking off those West Coast Scooters, AC/DC Vespa and Harley Vespa t-shirts. I’m not sure who printed them originally, a Google search for “West Coast Scooters” brings up ten Chinese-scooter-drop-shippers with that name and a CafePress shop that’s also knocking them off. Anyway, it looks like “RetroJungle” was selling them on eBay but there are no current auctions listed. A few months ago, someone was even selling knockoff Shepard Fairey Amerivespa 2005 T-shirts (redesigned to say “2007,” so I guess it’s a trend and we’ll be seeing poorly-made knockoff Merciless Tigers/2strokebuzz soccer jerseys any day now. While we’re on the subject, a guy in Kansas City is doing some “Skoot and Destroy” stuff, he didn’t know we’d already done it, or that Thrasher made us throw away most of the patches we made. I told him I didn’t care, as long as he made it clear it wasn’t coming from 2strokebuzz.

Suzuki Gemma 250 concept

The phallic Japanese concept maxiscooters just keep on coming, no pun intended. Suzuki’s Gemma 250 debuted at the Tokyo Motor Show this week. If I were the Scooter Scoop, I would probably further push my luck with some sort of Gemma Ward joke, but she’s not my type, and she was born the year I graduated from high school. (Update: Steve posted this story within seconds of 2sb, but didn’t make any supermodel jokes, heh.)

News chunks 10/23/07

  • A Korean student in England decided riding his scooter back to Korea would be less uncomfortable than a 13-hour flight.
  • The Times of London is digging the new Vespa S. Current rumor is 50cc and 150cc versions to the U.S. in the spring.
  • The Age of Melbourne, on the other hand, may be the first media outlet to see through the façade of Piaggio’s “green” marketing, after receiving a life-sized non-recyclable promotional piece featuring the MP3. Australia is hot for scooters this month. A University of Tasmania team has assembled the first Australian-made hybrid scooter, powered by Ethanol and batteries, and Sydney is apparently searching for its identity as a scooter city.
  • The Sun rides Aprilia’s new Mana 850cc automatic motorcycle.
  • Leonardo DiCaprio’s ex-girlfriend’s new boyfriend sideswiped a photographer’s scooter in Israel. Oh, sorry, that’s not even interesting to E! Online readers.
  • If you’ve always thought “Sure, Segways are great, but man, I hate standing up, and I wish they were uglier, lower-tech, and more expensive,” Toyota has a concept vehicle for you.
  • In London suburb Croydon, citizens are teaming up to document “antisocial” scootering and report it to police in the wake of the death of a local police officer.
  • D.C. police are on the other side of the fence, after a scooter cop was hit-and-run by a white van. (Fact: recklessly-driven white vans now outnumber all other vehicles on Chicago streets, 6-to-1.)
  • For some reason there were at least… let’s see… 1, 2, 3, 4, 5… five stories in the press last week about Piaggio’s new plant in Vietnam, without any new info beyond the announcement they made in February. Thanh Nien News had the decency to follow up their PR-wire story with a fairly interesting story on the vintage scooter scene in Vietnam.
  • A New Jersey yoga instructor and mother of six becomes the first woman in America to eat thousands of dollars of depreciation and trade in her SUV, replacing it with a $11,000 Vectrix electric scooter. The expense is totally justified by her reduced carbon footprint and the dozens of dollars she’ll save on gas between now and the first day it snows and she has to make six separate trips to drop her kids off at soccer practice, girl scouts, and karate. Yes, that’s pretty cynical. As Smarthouse points out, the Vectrix has many merits, and it’s a positive step for ecology, but as I’ve said many times, it seems that consumers aren’t considering all the factors when looking at the economic benefits of scooters, like this Wisconsin couple who seem to be ignoring the fact that riding a pair of 60mpg scooters isn’t really any better than driving one 30mpg car.
  • In that same story an Oshkosh, WI urgent-care clinic director estimates that scooter-related urgent-care visits will rise to 5,000 nationally this year, up from 1,300 in 2000. If the national urgent-care industry is actually keeping stats like that, we’d love to see them, but it seems a little unlikely that anyone would have been accurately tracking nationwide motorscooter injuries in 2000, or that any study of that sort would differentiate urgent-care visits from emergency-room visits.
  • A new SYM dealer has opened shop on the Incriminators’ turf. “You see them all over Hollywood,” store manager Tonya Stewart says, “[Scooters are] in movies and music videos, and stars are riding them as well.” Well, sure, Tonya, but those aren’t really SYMs now are they? God, I’m bitchy tonight. This is like 2strokeTMZ.

Header Artists

You’ve probably noticed our new random artwork behind our logo over there on the top left of the page. If not, you’re either reading RSS, your monitor is too dark, or you’re pretty flipping unobservant. Anyway, there’s finally a page where you can see all the art and find out more about the artists, and find out how you can submit art or photos for that space, we’d love to have more!

Chicagoland Mod girls needed for video shoot

We got an email the other day from Jessica Herreman, who’s looking for some local Mod Girls for a music video shoot in Evanston in early November. The video’s for a two-girl band collaborating between Mexico and Chicago. It’s a low-budget affair, but they’re offering Mexican earrings, coffee, and a French new wave film DVD as incentive. If you’ve got two X chromosomes, an A-line skirt, and a vintage Vespa (P-series or older, Stella, or Lambretta), email Jessica for more info.

Get bobbly on a scooter

Another reason I’m kicking myself for not checking ScooterSwag more often: Your own personalized bobblehead riding a scooter. It’s totally worth $130 to have your head sculpted in minature by an Asian child, and it’ll keep them busy so they don’t try to restore any scooters. Cassie describes it as “creepy,” but I really don’t think it holds a candle to a bobblehead of you sitting on the toilet clenching your fists with two giant poops on the floor next to you. Geez, when did Jeff Koons start making bobbleheads?

Mark Knopfler: Mod or not?

From Matt: “Who knew Mark Knopfler was a Mod?”

Well, pre-mod, maybe. From the ex-Dire-Straits guitarist’s bio:

The artwork for “Kill To Get Crimson” evokes one of the periods in Knopfler’s own palette for the album. “For the cover, I’ve chosen a picture painted in 1958, it has a West Indian girl who wants to buy a red scooter,â€? he continues. “This is pre-mod, and the L-plate hasn’t changed to this day. I’ve got a red scooter, and it’s amazing, it looks pretty much exactly the same. That time was very interesting from the point of view of a musician, a kid at that time.

I seem to remember seeing him lumped in with Rod Stewart, Marc Bolan, and David Bowie as an “ex-Mod” somewhere, but can’t find any reference now as to if he actually ran with the Mod crowd as a teenager, and if so, what his old friends have to say about the entire decade he spent wearing a terrycloth headband.

Gizmag rides the Vectrix Maxi

Starting up the Maxi is a disconcerting affair – switch the key on, hold the left brake lever in, touch the right brake to start the bike and… Well, nothing happens. It’s completely silent. Only a large “Go!� on the well-designed instrument display gives away the fact that the power’s on.

The Vectrix electric scooter has been on the market for a while now, but this is the most thorough review we’ve seen. It’s clearly leagues above other electric bikes on the market and it features some innovative technology beyond the electric motor, but it sounds like it just can’t quite compete with a gas-powered scooter on price and performance. Kudos to Vectrix for trying though, it’ll only get better and better.

ScootRSS

Say what you will about ScootRS (please don’t, actually, I’ve heard it all), Randall’s always been kind to me (though, to be honest, I wouldn’t buy a scooter from anyone without seeing it in person first). They’ve recently expanded their facility in Ho Chi Minh City (a funny story in that post, though “Where do some people get their hatred of Asia from?” is an easy question to answer). But the real point of this post is that ScootRS now has an “item of the day” RSS feed and whether you’re down with the eastern hemisphere or not, it’s a neat way to familiarize yourself with random vintage scooter parts, I look forward to playing “Identify that Part” every morning.

“Scooters In the City”


Here’s Natalie Martinez’ full report from NBC5 Chicago last Tuesday. (Thanks to Lalo at the 2sb IT helpdesk.) Here are the links referred to in the story, thanks to Natalie for including 2strokebuzz in that list, and for including some legal and safety advice in her story.