Jonathan began riding Vespas in 1983. Since then a wide variety of stylish transportation has taken him in a big full circle all the way back to riding Vespas in the San Francisco Bay Area. This time it is a veteran software developer's means of getting out of the city, with the wife to the beach (in shortest time), to and from the office downtown (in shortest time).
Neil Barton grew up in the small town of Bayonne, NJ in the shadow of NYC. He is 32 and is married to his high school sweetheart Karyn. He is a seasoned technology professional working in Manhattan as the network manager of a publishing company. He attended New York University for a bachelors of science and has traveled far and wide. He has been riding his beloved Vespa ET4 for 2 years. His personal weblog can be found at UrbanNerd.com.
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A few photos of a thing by name Night Of The Vespastics, but was actually the whole weekend of October, may be found in the night gallery. Looking at a handful of snapshots will probably not turn you into a zombie. Rest assured, however, watching this video clip will most definitely mesmerize and enthrall you. Beware! Prepare to leave this life for another if you do... Bwaa ha ha ha haaaaa!
Happy Halloween, kids! Ride safely!
As I mentioned, last night as the very first New York Scooter Club meeting. We had over 60 people attend and 43 bikes were counted in front of the place! It was a great success that myself and all of the other club organizers are really happy about. If you are in NYC and you have not done so yet, please visit the Club Website and then come out to one of our events! (we have a lot of them!)
Check out the great pics from last night's party taken by fellow club organizer Jonathan.
Congratulations Chicago! My belated congratulations too to Clemens and Pettite, and to El Duque for getting the Astros and the White Sox together in the first place for what did prove a memorable World Series. Speaking of a memorable...
Take a moment on Thursday, all you Red Sox fans out there, and think back to what you were doing one year ago. [MLB.com]
Ciao Petsters, from the people who brought you the "no pets" warning on the helmet compartment...
The city of Rome is cracking down on careless pet owners by introducing fines for those who fail to take their dog out on regular walks. [Read the full story at BBC.co.uk]
The new laws also protect cats, birds, fish, and prevents any pets from being given away as prizes at fairs.
For many more scenes of Italy like the one seen here, visit Laurie Poon's photostream.
I was so excited about this story that I wrote about it on my personal blog and have posted it to the Gotham Forum as well. It seems that MAYBE, just maybe, the guiding forces of the City of Toronto have heard this plea. I received an email from Scott at GreenThinkers.org, who wrote in a blog entry today:
The city council of Toronto is meeting today to discuss and ultimately decide whether they should allow motorcycles and scooters to park for free.
One reason to allow free parking for these vehicles is to curb the problem of stolen parking receipts from motorcycles.
On the environment-friendly side, motorcycles and scooters create less pollution than their much bigger automobile friends. Therefore, the thinking is that if you allow free parking you will encourage people to use this type of vehicles rather than cars.
So why am I so excited about this even if it is happening in Canada? Because this may be one of the first major steps in the way that urban culture is changed in North America. From time to time I have spoken about my blogging as being part of a political movement. My political movement is to have scooters invade the American Urban landscape within 5 years. I think this can happen, but a number of forces need to come into play. This is one of them. All that is needed is for one major city on this continent to institute a policy that is friendly and inviting to scooters. This will encourage adoption by non scooterists and will add to the pressure on other cities (such as New York City) to adopt similar rules.
While the VOIP Security Alliance toils in the background to batten down hatches and patches, iSkoot keeps the motor running on its very friendly offer for forwarding Skype calls from your PC to your phone. Who are these guys and how did they get to be so smart?
Just now, flying through the night, I strained my neck from 21F to watch Bewitched and see today's top of My Free Pass List (a.k.a. the special list of celebrities you'd be allowed to sleep with w/o marital damage*), you guessed it, Will Ferrell. I'm kidding, of course, it's Kidman, kids. And here she is in a movie I have not yet seen due to a few tepid reviews even though it's directed by Sydney Pollack and is filled with my favorite players (Nicole, Sean Penn, UN Headquarters, Vespa), The Interpreter. 
*contemplating this list reveals its absurdity in my case because...well, I'm not going to go into who all make up the whole eleven because...my God, my wife is all of these amazing women rolled into one, plus she is not a celebrity, which is a big big plus. She looks good on a Vespa too.
I am very proud to say that I have been working hard behind the scenes with a number of other scooterists in the New York City area to put together the New York Scooter Club. This is the first club of its kind in NYC; one that is open membership to all who attend. The club has a weekly Wednesday Night Ride which meets at the Brass Monkey in the meat packing district of Manhattan. Because this Wednesday is the kick off for the club, the Brass Monkey has graciously providing free food for all who attend in addition to their discounted drink prices. The people who have helped organize this as well as the folks who have been meeting on Wednesday are a lot of fun. This is an event you cannot miss if you own a scooter and live in the NYC area!
For fluid motion through the heart of metropolis, I heart the LX150. My experiences with it so far in New York and San Francisco have cast out any lingering misgiving whatsoever as to classic vs. contemporary chassis design. To say nothing of great brakes and quality torque (I'll say something about those later), its sheer maneuverability has it standing alone at the top of its class. It's like there's some kind of gyroscope inside. I zip in and out of traffic like Quicksilver.
Next step of the LX analysis: canyon carving
...I've got my gloves to keep me warm... but I always manage to lose one, so I try to have a backup. Occasionally I buy two pair at a go (four of a kind) so I can replace one at a time. More often I spend days hunting around for the same old style in order to not have to throw away the one I didn't lose. This has been my default system since that time I did find the same style right away in the discount bin. Those are long odds to play because they wind up in the discount bin for the same reason they more commonly wind up nowhere I can find them -- the style is discontinued. I think it's a conspiracy among glove manufacturers that none of them settle on a single success and repeat it. That way, at every new purchase, I will have to buy a backup set. I challenge all glovemakers to put out a classic, no-frills all-weather motorcycle glove and keep it a classic by continuing to provide the same style from one season to another. Note: by "no-frills" I mean you can guarantee it won't go out of fashion by refraining from making it look like something Gene Simmons would wear; I do not mean leave off the little faceshield-wiper rubber strip on the thumb (why all moto gloves do not have that is beyond me). Here is a nice pair of basic examples to go by. Unfortunately these retail around $69.99 because I couln't find good examples for $35.
BusinessWeek must have scooters on their mind a lot. Perhaps one or more of their editors or writers own one? After all, it was only 2 short months ago that I wrote about them proclaiming scooters as the perfect second car. Now the bring us this lovely piece on baby boomers and how they have taken to scooters much more readily than folks in Piaggio expected.
When Vespa Motor Scooters came puttering back into the U.S. market in 2000 after a 15-year absence, managers at the Italian company figured their biggest customers would be twentysomethings looking for a cheap way to get around. But execs at parent company Piaggio noticed something odd as they scootered back and forth to their Manhattan offices: The most enthusiastic sidewalk gawkers were often aging baby boomers who remembered the candy-colored bikes from their youth. It turns out that boomers have lost none of their affection for Vespa. Better yet, now they can afford to buy top-of-the-line models with all the trimmings. Much to the company's surprise, consumers age 50 and older now buy a quarter of the scooters Vespa sells in the U.S. Managers figure that as they do a better job of marketing to the group, that portion could grow to as much as a third. Those aging consumers may in many ways be the perfect customer for an indulgence like a scooter. "The boomers are particularly attractive because they tend to have free time," says Paolo Timoni, CEO of Piaggio USA. "They're less likely to be raising young children, and their careers are established and stable.
Word on the street is that Google's proposal to blanket San Francisco with free wireless Internet access is making positive progress at City Hall. Think of what that could mean for Luca Barzelogna's Vesputer. 
Piaggio (the parent company of Vespa) is talking about going public. From their brief press release:
COLANINNO: PIAGGIO TO GO PUBLIC POSSIBLY BEFORE AUG 2006(AGI) - Venice, Oct.12 - Piaggio is working to go public, possibly by the end of 2006, said Piaggio president Roberto Colaninno today in Venice. "It's a complex process, which requires some time, at least 4-5 months. We hope to be ready by Aug 2006". Regarding the taking over of Ducati, a long-time rumour, Colaninno denies: "we are focusing on other strategies. We must solve our problems before expanding". (AGI) -
121837 OTT 05
Get a load of Steve Rider, whoever he is. You know how some of us like to accessorize with multiple mirror stems, well, he's got the whole Space Needle coming out of his headset. That's not what I wanted to tell you, though. If you flip through the flurry of fotos he posted to flickr yesterday, you'll see what sure look like the revels of a new GT owner. It reminded me of a note I got the other day from a guy in Washington wondering whether to get an LX150 or a PX150. I too am torn. So much so I have been tardy in my reply, so I thought for a second that he'd gone ahead and settled the decision with a GT200. This dude is in DC I see upon return to his note to me, and his name is Craig, not Steve. I don't know how deep he is in the DC metro area but, without getting into the differences between X150's yet, let us establish once and for all that the biggest difference between a 150cc and a 200cc scooter is the area you want to cover. Steve Rider seems to be ranging from Muckilteo to Tacoma. For simply zipping across town, as Neil says, getting to pole position from the back of a pack of stuck cars on a GT is more of a trick than it is on an ET4 (the precursor of the LX). Then he goes on to develop as deep an appreciation for the GT as I'm sure every GT rider, Steve Rider for example, is infected with. For now, however, my job is to respond to Graig's question of an LX150 or a PX150. As I mentioned parenthetically, the LX150 is the present evolution stage of Vespa's millenium generation. That new look is not just a look. I've been getting the feel for over a month now so, while I'm getting ready to do a dedicated review of the LX150 very soon, I will just say again, perhaps to the surprise of many of my friends on classic Vespas, that I am torn between the LX150 and the PX150. This is not a commercial. This is what this blog is supposed to be, third-party customer-to-customer points-of-view. My initial impulse was to tell Craig to get the P, not only out of envy from living in California (the only State in the Union where the new P is not available), but also out of speculation that the classic design is more likely to continue to accrue in value. Then I happened to swing over to San Francisco Scooter Centre, well esteemed for honest dealing, where I witnessed a two-year-old ET4 selling for more than what its brand new sticker price was. Its performance record stands up, as I am quite sure that of the LX will. I understand your dilemna, Craig. Luckily, you can't go wrong.
I have many unrelated passions but, for my birthday, my focus is one that relates to at least a couple of previous posts. Music always brings goodness. That's the name of no less than a couple of songs by Ornette Coleman but, for those who don't dig Ornette, it's not necessarily a true statement. The Music Genome Project has come up with a way to have the DJ play what you do want to hear and give the thumbs-down to what you don't. Anyone can now go to the College Music Journal online, select Radio CMJ from the menu, and click on Discovery Radio to create self-propagating playlist based on artists and songs typed in by the listener. Try it, it's fun! Pandora may become a favorite dj of yours too. Although there are many dedicated and friendly people behind Pandora, she herself is a fembot. My ten other favorite deejays are actual persons. Someone named Shawn on SOMAfm is responsible for a show called Beat Blender featuring the good ol' Brand New Heavies weaving in and out of old old and new new smooth grooves. What drew me to SOMAfm though was a show known to a few as Secret Agent masterminded by a guy codenamed Rusty Hodge. These online channels will fill holes in any weekly agenda. Set reminders and double alarms to hear Mr. Finewine every Saturday evening and Trouble every Thursday morning, both on WFMU. Early weekday mornings on WKCR, we have Phil Schaap dragging out crazy rare acetate recordings on his all-Charlie-Parker show Birdflight, before that Syd Gribbitz driving the blessed Daybreak Express.
Besides the weekly shows mentioned above, numerous special broadcasts occur throughout the year, pre-empting all regular programming for at least 24-hours. These include Birthday Broadcasts:
Clifford Brown
(b. October 30, 1930; d. June 26, 1956)
Coleman Hawkins
(b. Nov. 21, 1904; d. May 19, 1969)
Today being Tuesday, I turn my attention again to KPOO where Wanika runs the Uplift program: from Noon Pacific it's four hours of the music and wisdom of John Coltrane. That's where I heard that Carnegie Hall concert with Thelonious Monk months before its commercial release. First, at 8AM Pacific, comes JJ playing 'sixties soul and, before that, from Midnight Sunday-Monday comes four hours of Jazz music and poetry from The Night Fly who, like JJ, spins vinyl only. My favorite dj of all time anyway has to be my older brother David Ogilvy whose handle on WCFM during the punk explosion of '79 was "The Youngest DJ in The Berkshires" although at age thirteen he was probably the youngest in the country picking, announcing and, most importantly, jockeying discs for his own weekly show. Since then he's had shows on KZSC, KZSU, and KDVS. I think now he should go on over to KALX (and if they give him a show I will activate a link from portal site Vespaway).
Tune in tomorrow for a new thing -- stuff about scooters.
Dearest Gordy,
Can I call you Gor? I hope so. Because I think we need to have a heart to heart; A “coming to Jesus” if you will about your “article”. Perhaps it’s because I am used to reading actual news articles with real facts, real points and real conclusions that I am so dismayed. These basic elements seem to be missing from your piece entitled “Two-wheelers costly to insure and very dangerous to drive” which has so many errors and misleading statements I am not even sure where to begin. I am forced to wonder: was it your purposeful aim to mislead and scare the public?
But I digress! Let me proceed to deconstruct your work and refute its statements directly:
With its Italian flair and great gas mileage, that two-wheeled "wasp" of a motor scooter called the Vespa is enjoying a surge of popularity in the Northwest.
But insuring one, or any motorized two-wheeler, could cost you a bundle, and riding one could cost you an arm or a leg -- or worse.
According to statistics available from the Washington Traffic Safety Commission, death on a motorcycle is about 26 times more likely than sitting behind the wheel of a passenger car.
You start out innocently enough Gor, but for some reason switch from Vespas to motorcycles in one breath. This gives the impression that scooters are as dangerous all motorcycles, which is not exactly the case. Let me be clear: a scooter is a motorcycle (I openly concede this and endorse the idea). But if you were going to write an article about motorcycle safety then write one about motorcycles safety, don’t give us one line about a Vespa and then launch into all motorcycles. You see Gor, because of its size and engine displacement, scooters are not as dangerous as ALL motorcycles. How do I know this? Well I have actually read more than just the Washington State Traffic Safety commission’s basic statistics. I have taken the time to review the last major study commissioned specifically for motorcycle safety known as the “Hurt” Study (named for the researcher). This is an invaluable resource to those interested in motorized two wheeled safety in the United States. Had you an actual interest in the topic you would have realized that you would be remiss to write an article about 2 wheeled safety without it.
To quote the Hurt Study:
- Large displacement motorcycles are... associated with higher injury severity when involved in accidents.
- Injury severity increases with speed, alcohol involvement and motorcycle size.
So now you can easily see that you are just being silly by starting with Vespas but then speaking of ALL motorcycles. This is misleading at best, and misinformation at worst, causing un-needed alarm to the general public. But let’s read on…
Moreover, Washington does not require motorcycle drivers to carry liability insurance, as auto and truck drivers have been required to do since 1989.
Well shame on Washington State, perhaps you ought to be writing an article on THAT issue instead? Or has actual investigative journalism died?
But for those who want it anyway -- to protect themselves, their families and their homes -- rates vary widely, based on a driver's age, sex and driving and credit records, warns Karl Newman, president of the Washington Insurance Council, a trade association in Seattle. The cost also will depend on how much coverage is desired.
Doug Harwood, property and casualty manager for the brokerage firm R.L. Evans Co. Inc. in Seattle, said he recently quoted "a Vespa rate for a mid-20s guy at over $800 a year, and he said, "Forget it!' "
Well, if you are going to choose someone in his 20’s, of course it will cost $800 a year. Why? Well, let’s consult Dr. Hurt’s study again, shall we?:
- Motorcycle riders between the ages of 16 and 24 are significantly overrepresented in accidents; motorcycle riders between the ages of 30 and 50 are significantly underrepresented.
To go further with this, and to be MORE accurate in the interest of disclosing information to your faithful readers you might have mentioned what the young gentleman’s quote would be had he bought a 1000cc Ducati motorcycle. I am no insurance agent, but as I understand it he would pay in the neighborhood of $3000 or more. Why? Because bigger, faster bikes are more unsafe.
Of course, had he quoted me for my Vespa, a married male aged 32, I would have a rate half that $800. (which I do) While we are at it, what else would lower my risk? Bueller… Bueller? Riiight… a motorcycle safety training course. How odd of you not to have mentioned that. But again, why be complete when trying to disperse information to the general public? When I went to get my motorcycle license, I took the Motorcycle Safety Foundation course . This has made me a safer driver. Back to the article (we still quoting Doug Harwood):
"But here's how it penciled out," he said. "Just $120 was for liability, but $300 was for the uninsured motorist part, which means that the company I quoted was betting 3-1 that someone will take him out before he hit anyone -- and that most likely they would be writing their check to his family because, hit or get hit while riding one of these things, you'd be dead. At the very least, your brain would be scrambled."
What an idiotic and irresponsible statement by Mr. Harwood. What would this lead someone to believe who knows nothing of insurance? That uninsured motorist coverage only kicks in when you are dead or your “brain is scrambled”. And obviously, he must think that as soon as you are hit by a car only one thing or the other must occur? Well, Gor, I was hit by a car, my brain was not scrambled, I did not die, and my uninsured motorist coverage kicked in. The reason for uninsured coverage is so that, if someone hits you and THEY are uninsured you still get coverage. In my case, the person who hit me fled the scene and was never caught. But why, you ask, am I still alive and still thinking despite Mr. Harwood’s assurances otherwise? Because:
- I was driving slowly, which according to the Hurt study lowered my change of severe injury
- I was wearing a helmet, which according to the Hurt study at lower speeds mitigates the chance of head injury.
- I was wearing a proper safety jacket which eliminated any upper body injuries
In conclusion, I cannot school you on reporting; I am no newspaper man. But I think, if nothing else, both fact checking and depth should be required in an article such as this. If you have no interest in such things, then I implore you, do not write about it. You do just as much harm as those who would say (or make it seem) as if there are NO risks to scooters.
Yours Truly,
Neil Barton
Are gas prices high? Sure!
Are newspapers writing about that? Yep!
Have they noticed scooters (even if they get some of those nitpicky facts wrong?) Heck yeah!
Instead of blogging about each one of these articles separately every time a new one pops up, I will dole them out in batches for your consumption pleasure. If nothing else, this shows me that scooters are on the radar of the American Press (to some degree) and therefore will grow and slowly pop up on the radar of the American People.
Scooter Sales Rise with high Gas Prices (Jackson Hole Star Tribube)
Scooter Sales on the Rise (Fox affiliate)
Consumer Watch: Scooters save gas (WHAS Louisville, Kentucky)
Gasoline prices send motorcycle sales up (Morning News,
What goes 90 miles for under 5 bucks? A scooter (TownOnline
Finding a new way to get around (
Gas prices fuel cycle sales (Muskogee Phoenix, Oklahoma)
60mpg scooters (WCPO news,
He says a woman in a big SUV couldn't believe how little he paid for gas!
"I watched her put 60 dollars into her Navigator...I said I'll be riding all week for 6 dollars."
Perhaps I will make this a running series, as I am always swearing to people that you can carry a lot more stuff on a Vespa than you think you can. I have been framing out a room in my basement so I took off 2 days from work. My wife uses our Nissan Sentra for her daily commute so I am left with my Vespa for any supplies that I might need. Well, sure enough I made 3 runs to the Hardware store already yesterday & today. I picked up a tube of Liquid Nails, a 2 foot Level, and the biggest item, a 40lb bag of Top 'N Bond. The nice guy at Resnick's Hardware who carried the bag of cement out asked "where's your car?" and justI pointed at my ET4 and pulled down the spring loaded luggage rack. I bugee'd the bag in place and zoom zoom off I went!
As if I needed another reason to ride a Vespa... (which I don't), I have been following the subway warnings in NYC. I can remember thinking during 9/11 that there must be a better way to get around as I was stuck in the city for hours with so many other scared commuters, our destiny's taken out of our own hands as we sat stranded on an island that had now become a target, waiting to get on a boat out. Two years later (2003) when a blackout happened in NYC I remember having the same helpless feeling. I think everyone standing on the long lines waiting for a ferry shared them with me, but by then the thought was solidifying in my head. In a few short month's time after that I was on my scooter. I rode it straight through the winter. Days like today just reinforce the confidence in my decision to use my scooter as my commute vehicle.
We know about the spare time a Vespa gives you in the parking part of your life. To those who've been taking that time and squandering it over a picturesque parking spot, I apologize for having been lax in capturing the visual products of your labor. Here's one I saw in Soho, New York (the photo fails to show the metal sculpture perfectly placed in the background). 
Have you been to flickr lately though? Here's one I found there from Soho, London (a much better photo than mine).
If you go to flickr and do a tag search for Vespa you get more than thirty-five hundred images. Now here's the catch. They're not all Vespas. Many are definitely Vespa-related because they were taken from a Vespa (parked and moving). Many are merely mistakenly identified imitations. The most common culprits are Hondas and Yamahas. To those who've been noticing these errors, I challenge you to a little game of "non è un Vespa." I don't know how we'll keep score or how to determine the winner but for an example of how to play, visit this list of pictures tagged 'Vespa.'
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