.| UrbanNerd |.

A two-wheel revolution suggests Australians may be embracing a new way of getting about town, writes TONY DAVIS.
All over the country you see more and more nipping in and out of traffic jams without a care.
Australia is in the middle of an unprecedented scooter boom. The Vespa has become the thing to be seen on in many parts of Sydney and urbanites across the country are embracing everything from sub-$2000 ultra-modern commuter models with 50cc engines, to $13,000 650cc grand touring scooters.
Next to the car market, the overall numbers are tiny. However, the rate of growth is something makers of four-wheelers can only dream of.
In 2003, just 4000 scooters were sold nationally, this year importers expect to sell 10,000. The motor scooter is now the best-selling category of road bike and many believe that it is not a blip but a change of culture.

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So some dude in Reston, VA knocked over a bank and used a scooters as his getaway vehicle. A red scooter. But of course news outlets have taken to calling anything and everything a scooter lately, so even when they add the term motorized I still dont trust them. Of course what helps this guy is that almost no one knows any scooter brand types (was it a Vespa, old or new, etc). Naples, Italy solved this problem by outlawing scooters. Lets hope we can avoid that here.
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I guess I can ease up a bit on my scouring the net for scooter news, as Rubber Magazine has decided to publish Scooter Press! “Scooter Press will be your top source and resource for scootering in the USA.” You can read the pre-release issue here:http://www.rubbermag.com/news/050526_08n.html
The main link for the mag is here: http://scooterpress.rubbermag.com/

This is just a great read about a scooter club thats been around for 20 years, and what it has been like for one man riding a scoot in a “harley world”.

It takes a big person to ride a small Vespa scooter — or is that actually the problem?
Long after the sleek Italian motor scooters and their ilk where all the rage during the British Mod movement of the 1960s, it seemed uncool for a full-size person to sputter around on a vehicle that, to the untrained ear, sounds like a lawnmower and, to the untrained eye, looks like a toy. Dave Medrano, 37, a Long Beach native and founding member of the Hard Pack Scooter Club, has been riding for more than 20 years. Most of that time, people have found his passion laughable.

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Buses allow tourists to witness the spectacular cliffs from double-decker comfort. To the other extreme, a commuter train, the Circumvesuviana, makes the run up and down the coast underground.
But for the adventurous spirit, there’s only one way to take on the twisting and winding road – the most Italian of transportation, the Vespa.
“This one she go … This one she stop. This one, beep beep! the horn. It is Eezze eezze. No problem,” says Adriana at the Vespa rental agency.
Thirty euro on my Visa card. Here we go.

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