TheScooterScoop

Whoa! An article that tries to explain the cliquishness of classic riders. It’s cool to see the St.Paul Pioneer Press allowing Laura Yuen to get a little deeper than the standard “People love scooters” stories you normally see.

So, why DON’T plastic riders get the time-of-day at some meet-ups? Well, in some ways I suppose it makes sense, I mean you wouldn’t want a crotch-rocket to show up at your Hog show or a mini-cooper to show up at your mud-boggin’ meet-up; but that’s why I like citywide “generalist” scooter clubs AND separate scooter gangs. This way, the gangs have their own “requirements” and meet-ups but everyone can still show up at the monthly generalist meet-ups to make the scene.

So, if you ride a Jialing and you wonder why you’re getting the cold shoulder at the local meet-up, it might be time to start your own gang or organize your own general scooterist meet-up. Either that or start shopping for a restoration project on the side. There’s nothing wrong with owning one of each! Anyway, here’s a clip:

With new, easier-to-use models, scooters have had a blast of popularity in the Twin Cities. But veteran retro-geeks look askance at newbies and wonder: Whine, or welcome them?
BY LAURA YUEN
Pioneer Press

(I cut out a little bit here where it mentions Quadrophenia)
…Yet such pop-cultural references, as well as the so-called pain and frustrations of owning a vintage scooter, are often lost on the new generation of riders.

One vintage scooter club (steve: notice it says “vintage” scooter club), The Regulars, lost some of its, well, regulars after some new folks with modern vehicles appeared at the outings.

Jeremy Stomberg, 32, of Minneapolis has nothing against automatic “twist-and-go” machines, which, unlike the classics, don’t require shifting gears. He just prefers the company of fellow vintage buffs, who just as breathlessly discuss the latest hard-to-find parts they’ve unearthed.

Even when he started scootering five years ago with a contemporary Yamaha Vino, the vintage community accepted him because he was eager to learn more about the old bikes, he said. Today, he rides a powder blue 1963 Vespa.

“It’s just a thing where, if you become too welcoming, too diverse, you kind of lose the focus of why you got together in the first place,” said Stomberg. “Say you have a club for people with red cars. And then you have people say, ‘I don’t have a red car, but I like red cars.’ Well, OK. Then, ‘Well, I have a blue car.’ Then it becomes, ‘I have an orange semi-trailer.’ “

Click the title link to read the whole article.

(video of plastic haters)
(as long as we’re showing videos… It’s official! This guy is a F#@kin’ genius. I laughed so hard that I spit on my computer. OH $#!+ !!!)