Home > Learning Center > Sure, Scooters are Practical, but their Look is What Counts
Sure, Scooters are Practical, but their Look is What Counts
by Ricardo Baca
Denver Post Staff Writer
Katrina and Kenny Davis take son Jack, 4, with them as they tool around town on their Stellas. (Post / Glenn Asakawa)
Al Gore hardly looks cool in his quest to go green and save the world. But he might if he were riding a Stella scooter instead of being chauffeured around in those stretch Lincolns.There's something about scooter culture that is sexy, foreign, deliberate, perilous, exciting. Granted, jumping on a scooter hardly makes you Marlon Brando in "The Wild One" - in fact, catcalls are common, as some guys, 10 years removed from the frat house and cruising in their SUVs and Infiniti luxury sedans, don't "get" the svelte, diminutive machines.
But evoking the romance of Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn ain't bad.
Their "Roman Holiday" is a classic film and a bulletproof reminder of the scooter's allure. Yeah, they were buzzing around Rome, circa the 1950s - quite the backdrop. And the striking beauty of 24-year-old Hepburn was a plus. The film made her a star and led her to Academy Award gold, the only statuette of her career.
Still, is there any question who the real star of that movie was?
No.
It was the scooter that transported American journalist Joe Bradley (Peck) and incognito Princess Anne (Hepburn) around the Eternal City. More charismatic than any leading man, more intoxicating than any ingénue, the scooter told the story - and it also showed off its co-star, Rome, with better-than-a-convertible vantages that mystify even today.
As scooter culture gains more momentum stateside - the machines are now ubiquitous on the streets and sidewalks of all major American cities - more people are falling for the style and the lifestyle that comes with owning one of the machines.
Denver was set to be its most mod this weekend as the setting for Amerivespa and the Lambretta Jamboree, the largest scooter gatherings in the United States. They're scheduled to close today with breakfast in Cherry Creek North, an afternoon ride to Red Rocks and late-night karaoke at Sobo 151.
While hardcore scooterists know the difference between a P-series and a VBB, most people generically call the machines scooters, mopeds or Vespas, a brand name that has become the Coca-Cola of the two-stroke world.
As it should be. The first Vespa was made exactly 60 years ago by the Italian military aircraft manufacturer Piaggio, which was trying to develop a cheap means of transport in a brutalized postwar Italy.
When Enrico Piaggio first saw the designs for the machine, he screamed, "Sembra una vespa!" Translated: "It looks like a wasp!" And regardless of its blue-collar, everyday intentions, the waspy scooter soon became a national icon, a symbol of all things Italian: strength and romance, virility and indulgence.
It didn't take the Brits long to develop their own decidedly English love affair with scooters, and the machines helped define the country's notorious Mod movement. Together with the monkey jacket, the Chelsea boot and the Fred Perry polo, Mod culture was all about presentation - and the scooter was the only choice of transportation for those disaffected kids, as portrayed in The Who's legendary rock opera and film, "Quadrophenia."Without that film and its protagonist, Jimmy, there might have never been Ben Sherman - the throwback, skinny-fit clothing line most often associated with modern scooter style. The British company's clothes have slightly modernized the Mod, lowering waistlines and necklines and bringing up hemlines to reveal more skin.
But the spread of scooter culture hardly has been gradual since the Mods ruled the London streets. It grew for a while, abroad and in the U.S., where Vespas were sold from 1951 to the mid-1980s. But then it took a dive after California, at the time America's top Vespa market, changed its emissions standards and made the scooters' engines illegal.
People still rode and collected Vespas and attended scooter rallies, but it wasn't until late 2000 that new Vespas were re- introduced to the U.S. - that date marks a noticeable resurgence in Americans' interest in the niche two-wheeled set.
Suddenly scooters were around again, not just Sundays at the coffee shop, but also Monday through Friday at downtown bike racks. Twentysomethings and 40-somethings alike were riding restored, vintage bikes and new scooters designed to look like they were manufactured in the '60s.
They dressed the part or they didn't, but it mattered not. Like "Roman Holiday," the scooter was all the exposition they needed.
http://www.denverpost.com/entertainment/ci_4094353
Motor scooters | Electric | Learning Center | Site Map | Links | Contact | Home
Copyright © 2008