Category: Sightings

Scooters pop up all over the place

Piaggio targets Continental Airlines

airportNo, Roberto Colannino isn’t looking to acquire another airline,* Piaggio USA is marketing directly to Continental employees in Newark, NJ as part of a Continental Airlines alternative-transportation program featuring designated scooter parking and giveaways. It’s actually a pretty neat idea, though it might be tough to implement on a wider scale.

*It’s easy to forget that the Vespa’s roots are in aviation. Piaggio Aero (an entirely separate company, but still bearing the Piaggio name) still makes airplanes. It’s odd that with all of the news about Colannino’s acquisition of Alitalia, that factoid never came up.

Tuka Tukanji

Three “Wacky Races”-style ads for Tucano Urbano scooter accessories featuring TU mascot Tuka Tukanji. They’re at least a couple years old, but we’d never seen ’em before. Too bad Tucano Urbano isn’t available in the U.S., they make some great stuff, but it’s expensive, and even moreso when you have to pay shipping from Italy. (Thanks for digging these up, Ryan!)

POC’s morning-show charm

POCphil and POCmerritt on Cleveland’s That’s Life with Robin Swoboda. Could two people be more charismatic ambassadors of scooterdom? Throw in POCrenee and you’ve got a hit reality show, one that I get to watch live, every time he’s around. People accuse me of being a Phil Waters groupie, but Phil’s met African-American preachers, racist skinheads, models, racing superstars, cops, soccer moms, hillbilly gun nuts, Tom Jones, and even my parents, and charmed the pants off of all of them, often literally. Who could blame me for loving the guy, his wife, and everything they stand for?

Note that even the best scooter dealers tend to bend the truth a little (Genuine Buddies start around $1999, but that’s a top-of-the-line Black Jack) but props to Phil for drilling home the safe-and-legal message right from the start.

Vespa Loves You, Man

Apparently there’s a Vespa in that new Paul Rudd movie. So VespaUSA, finger placed firmly on the pulse of their immature-frat-boy-comedy target market, is running a contest. I’m trying to fit in a Vampire Weekend joke, but it’s not coming.

UPDATE: Did I say “finger on the pulse?” They’ve got a contest on MySpace. too. You might remember MySpace, it’s an old website from back when Vampire Weekend was popular.

“Swimsuit Issue” is just a Sonic Youth song

Most of us stopped “reading” Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Issue in about 6th grade, when we finally tracked down some real porn. But there will always be 6th-graders, so SI keeps publishing it, and comically pretending it’s a guide for women shopping for swimwear. Their portfolio now includes athletes’ wives, tennis stars, cheerleaders, bodypainted nudes, Danica Patrick (you’re killing us, Danica) and the usual fashion models, but, strangely still no men (don’t men need swimsuit shopping advice?). It’s always beautifully-shot, and always edging just close enough to pornography to create a stir and sell magazines. To anyone with a connection to the Internet, the Swimsuit Issue (and even the Swimsuit Issue website) seems as anachronistic as the Sears catalog lingerie section, but as a public service, Michael dutifully searched through the sprawling site to find these photos of Daniella Sarahyba blocking our view of a vintage Vespa 50 Special in Naples, Italy. As fans of imperfection, charm, and natural beauty, we find the scooter much more appealing than the model. Is there something wrong with us if our eyes are immediately drawn to that aftermarket fenderlight, rather than Daniella’s headlights?

Melody Maker’s Mod revival revival revival.

melodymakermodAh, 1994. Back then I was going out to see bands three nights a week and spending $50 at the record store every night. I didn’t have a scooter yet, but I noticed the mod revival revival revival going on in Engerland and that (among other things) probably had some effect on my scanning the classifieds for old Vespas a year later. As a musicophile and anglophile since high school, I’ve certainly read my fair share of NMEs and Melody Makers, so when I came across Archived Music Press, it was heaven. Continue reading “Melody Maker’s Mod revival revival revival.”

How to destroy a scooter?

Oh, the fun we’ll have: A Discovery Science game show is looking for suggestions to destroy a scooter for a gameshow. Flyscooter clearly subscribes to the theory that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, ha.

(If you’re not a Modern Buddy member, post your suggestions here, I’ll repost them over there and credit you with the idea.)

“One of those little things that buzz by in traffic”

Just when you think you’ve seen every vintage Vespa film there is, YouTube digs up more gold. This 1961 Vespa commercial, presumably produced by ’60s East-coast distributor Vescony, makes a very clear argument for the Vespa as a commuter vehicle, then pushes their luck with exaggerated mileage promises (125mpg?) and oversimplification of the engine to “three moving parts.” (The party line has always been four, which already seems a bit oversimplified, unless you’re counting, for example, the entire transmission consisting of the gearshift linkage, gear cluster, shifting cross, and Christmas tree as “one part.”) A great find. (Thanks to Dave McCabe.)

UPDATE: VCOA historian John Gerber comments:

It’s definitely Vescony, but it’s 1964 NOT 1961. It’s a Carl Alley produced commercial. Several were produced, but Piaggio would not share in any of the costs for airing them. They were never shown nationally, but some of the larger dealers showed them locally during non-primetime. In general, they were way too expensive to be shown even at off times. I saw one only once for my local dealer during a Saturday afternoon movie re-run. If Piaggio had enough sense to underwrite serious advertising in the U.S. things might have gone a lot different for them.