UrbanNerd.com

My partner on Vespaway Jonathan Ogilvy has a new bouncing baby boy, congrats Jonathan, way to go! Check out the pictures here.

Check out the article BusinessWeek wrote about scooters making the perfect second car, I blog about it on Vespaway.

I know I haven’t written about it of late, but my work on urbanscoot.net does continue. I have hit a bit of a snag recently in trying to configure the CSS on the blog software. I took some flak for making the site framed, so I am redesigning it as unframed, which means retro fitting the blog into tables. On the bright side the code I was looking to have completed for the city directory is now done, you can see a demo of it on the New York page. There is so much more I need to do on this site, so it continues to be a work in progress.

Another post from me on Vespaway.com

Two articles I have posted on Vespaway today both from the AP:

Gasoline pushing $3 a gallon? Why worry?

Scooter Girl saves gas on paper route

Now THIS is moxy, guts, grit… you name it… my hats off to this guy:

TAMPA – Andres V. Hernandez was outnumbered by the four teenagers trying to steal his scooter, but police say that didn’t stop Hernandez from fighting to get his two-wheeler back – even after the teens whacked him with a board and punched him in the face.

Hernandez, 29, succeeded in retrieving his scooter and walked away from the Saturday afternoon attack with nothing more than a swollen face, Tampa Police spokesman Joe Durkin said.

Hernandez saw the teens stealing his scooter, and when he tried to stop them, one of them hit Hernandez with a board, according to a police report.

Another teen punched Hernandez in the face as the others took off with the scooter, police said. But Hernandez grabbed the board and hit the two teens with it, then chased after the others on the scooter.

He found the scooter a block away, abandoned, Durkin said.

Read the entire article here.

This is a REAL ad, placed in the NY Times and I just love it. Here is the begining of the ad:

Job Title: Lazy, uneducated, careless persons
Employer: wsw
Location: New York, NY
Date Posted: 08-11-2005
Job Type: Full Time Contract

Growing profitable respected tech company seeks people without any sort of completed college degree (and who misspell bachelors), to arrive in the office not at scheduled times but rather when they see fit and after arrival to proceed to do as little as humanly possible and never learn anything.

We’re not picky on the completion thing here so if we ask for a university graduate, and you once attended a class or might possibly plan to at some point in time, please go right ahead and apply. Our specific needs/wants and especially our time is worthless. Only you matter.

Further, we ask that you send a totally irrelevant generic cover letter (possibly including a title for a different job or often a different company’s name) that mentions you possess a very special talent and can speak the language of the country you were born and raised in before you came here and that utterly ignores the topic you were asked to address in the cover letter.

It is obviously worth the read

SCOOTER EXHIBIT LECTURE
Performance Space, 4th floor
Saturday, August 20, 2 – 4 p.m.
Local collector Steve Davis talks about this month’s exhibit of classic motorized scooters from around the world and beyond.

Press release mentions which vintage models are on display, how long the show runs, etc.

High gas prices are good. High gas prices are very good. Have you bought your scooter yet? No? You definately should. I was interviewed by USA Today yesterday about the high gas prices, that article should hit on Thursday. I am also still waiting for the NY Times article to come out (with picture), which is due by the 18th last I heard.

Read my VespaWay post about high gas prices here.

A DC ad agencey has started using Vespas to run ads around town.

Read my post on Vespaway here.

This is a very interesting article, and I can’t help but thinking I am missing a few pieces of information. The Chinese government in various urban cities has been banning scooters and using environmental issues as the reason. As fast as manufacturers can comply with new regulations the cities change them. I would like very much to know why. Below are some quotes, find the article here.

Stefano Pitti felt like he was king in the early 1990s, when he sold 150,000 units of his company’s mopeds at 10,000 yuan (US$1,233) apiece in his first two years after arriving in Shanghai. But the rules changed and so did the world of Pitti, China representative for Piaggio, the Italian scooter manufacturer of famous brands such as Vespa. “They (the Shanghai government) suddenly slapped a ban on motorcycles and our sales nose-dived to zero almost overnight,” recalls Pitti. “Needless to say, we were devastated.”
The Shanghai government’s move was followed in one way or another by the authorities in other major cities. Instead of a total ban, some cities raised road taxes to discourage the use of motorcycles, mopeds and other two-wheel vehicles. And they did it under environmental protection regulations, saying that motorcycles had failed to meet their new emission control standards.
But instead of throwing in the towel and pulling out of the market, Pitti convinced Piaggio headquarters to raise its stake by entering into a joint venture with a domestic manufacturer. The plan was to develop a new model that could push Piaggio into the rural market, where motorcycles are still in demand and pollution controls are less of an issue than in the concrete jungles of the cities.

This is just a wild article, I mean I have heard of some hard core scoot trips, but this takes the cake. This guy quit his job in Japan and shipped his 90cc Honda out to South America and spent 6 months scooting to Alaska!! Insane! It’s a great read, you catch my Vespaway post here with all the details.