Scooters
The Luddite saw a kid going down the Street of the Damned on something that looked like a scooter today, only this wasn't the kind that you push with one foot like a skateboard. This thing puttered and buzzed and there was a lump of metal on the back that looked like a mini gasoline engine. Before, young kids were riding those annoying skateboards everywhere. The Luddite now wants to know are these kids are motorized now?
If they are, what are these kids doing driving them? The kid The Luddite saw didn't look much older than 12. He can get a license for one of these things? Why isn't he walking his ass home from school anyway? It's not that The Luddite is vindictive or anything but he knows this kid's mother and has heard her bitch about the obesity problem in children. A good place for her to start would be to have her offspring walk the 10 or so blocks home. This is a small farming town. The chances of her little darling getting into any trouble from strangers are pretty remote.
Scooters used to have the air of nerdiness around them. They reached their nadir with the advent of the moped, which was a combination bicycle and underpowered scooter. Mopeds wound out around 25-30 miles per hour. Fortunately they never really caught on. There was something funny about them. Kind of like watching someone speed walking. You were just begging for them to break into a jog. If you saw someone on a moped you were just begging for them to buy a car. If you see the movie, 'The Deep,' which was made when Jacqueline Bisset looked hot instead of like your mom, you can see a tense scene involving mopeds that actually did not make them look ridiculous.
Now scooters are making some kind of comeback and The Luddite is trying to figure out if this is a good thing. About five years ago, the Italian scooter maker, Vespa, was going under. Then they were saved by the fact that somehow a Vespa motorscooter became THE neat thing to have when you were buzzing back and forth from work, to home, to campus. They weren't THE thing to have as far as The Luddite is concerned, but that could be because he remembers going to class in a college in North Dakota. They sound like a 40 mph case of frostbite.
That's the college-age level and that was just before the turn of the century. The Luddite has no idea if people are riding scooters, walking, taking the bus, driving their own shitboxes or leaning heavily on mom and dad while blaming them for everythign that's gone wrong in their lives. The Luddite has no idea if the generation behind THEM is tootling around on motorized scooters or not and whether they like it. For all I know, this could be a fad who's time has already gone.
If they are, what are these kids doing driving them? The kid The Luddite saw didn't look much older than 12. He can get a license for one of these things? Why isn't he walking his ass home from school anyway? It's not that The Luddite is vindictive or anything but he knows this kid's mother and has heard her bitch about the obesity problem in children. A good place for her to start would be to have her offspring walk the 10 or so blocks home. This is a small farming town. The chances of her little darling getting into any trouble from strangers are pretty remote.
Scooters used to have the air of nerdiness around them. They reached their nadir with the advent of the moped, which was a combination bicycle and underpowered scooter. Mopeds wound out around 25-30 miles per hour. Fortunately they never really caught on. There was something funny about them. Kind of like watching someone speed walking. You were just begging for them to break into a jog. If you saw someone on a moped you were just begging for them to buy a car. If you see the movie, 'The Deep,' which was made when Jacqueline Bisset looked hot instead of like your mom, you can see a tense scene involving mopeds that actually did not make them look ridiculous.
Now scooters are making some kind of comeback and The Luddite is trying to figure out if this is a good thing. About five years ago, the Italian scooter maker, Vespa, was going under. Then they were saved by the fact that somehow a Vespa motorscooter became THE neat thing to have when you were buzzing back and forth from work, to home, to campus. They weren't THE thing to have as far as The Luddite is concerned, but that could be because he remembers going to class in a college in North Dakota. They sound like a 40 mph case of frostbite.
That's the college-age level and that was just before the turn of the century. The Luddite has no idea if people are riding scooters, walking, taking the bus, driving their own shitboxes or leaning heavily on mom and dad while blaming them for everythign that's gone wrong in their lives. The Luddite has no idea if the generation behind THEM is tootling around on motorized scooters or not and whether they like it. For all I know, this could be a fad who's time has already gone.
posted by S. Olson at 11:20 AM
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