thoughts on scooters from a boston boy, including scooter reviews, price thoughts about used scooters, and a lowdown on local scooter shops. helpful thoughts from others (related to scooters or other small motorbikes) welcome here, too.
scooter pic of the day: the poster for an upcoming moped rally in boston. fun!
scooter video of the day: here’s a 2011 film by carlos puga, chronicling the adventures of hell’s satans, an active moped club in richmond, va. pretty great. screened at sxsw and sundance in 2011. if you’re interested or disturbed by it, i’ll leave it to you do to a bit more internet research on it.
scooter pic of the day: peter and ari, proprietors of second stroke mopeds in bushwick (brooklyn). i like that they sell tomos mopeds with nice modifications: they take off the crappy fairings, stickers, and square headlights and put on a bullet headlight and a nicer looking speedo . photos from new york magazine and bushwickbk.com.
scooter pic of the day: from ugly2stroke’s blog, a shot of their trip to lafayette, ny to compete in the northeast moped racing league. looks pretty awesome.
Here’s an image from Scoothub’s tumblr of the Beta we restored for Clark’s to use in their midtown store’s window display. The SL-5 in the Clark’s fall video was one of the four NOS Beta’s we restored. All fully functional and polished up to look original. They all had ZERO miles on them and rode like a dream.
We have one yellow one left! If interested shoot us an email info@secondstrokemopeds.com
scooter pic of the day: a clark’s shoe store in manhattan used this vintage italian beta moped in their window display. i wonder what they’ll do with it when they change displays? it looks like its’ in mint condition, but in a clark’s youtube video, one of the shoe models is pedaling it (at the 0:17 mark), so perhaps it doesn’t really work.
hey, neat! i posted this photo of a beta moped back in october, and the shop that restored the moped found it! second stroke mopeds in brooklyn did this fine work, along with 3 other similar beta’s. all of them do, in fact, run. one of them is still for sale! also, check out the super positive yelp reviews for second stroke!
scooter pic of the day: moped owners are always trying to coax more out of their little bikes. some of them eventually upgrade to motorcycles, but there’s something appealing about ultra-small displacement rides and janus motorcycles is trying to tap into that. the janus halcyon 50 looks like a 1920’s throwback. the 50cc bike sports a 6-speed motorcycle-style transmission, a leather saddle and 18-inch wheels, and tops out at 55 mph in it’s stock form. the engine is 2-stroke, and is based on the derbi senda/minarelli am6 engine. each bike is built in goshen, indiana, and janus contracts local amish workers to bend and weld the company’s frames. msrp: $3900 (not including delivery). want. to. try.
scooter pic of the day: the scooter and moped scenes aren’t too active in boston (as far as i can tell), but it’s funny that in some places, they’re active enough to have a rivalry.
scooter pic of the day: from last week’s episode (s8,e4) of how i met your mother, a shot of robin’s boyfriend, nick, proudly showing off his eco-friendly biodiesel moped. robin is disappointed.
scooter pic of the day: a clark’s shoe store in manhattan used this vintage italian beta moped in their window display. i wonder what they’ll do with it when they change displays? it looks like its’ in mint condition, but in a clark’s youtube video, one of the shoe models is pedaling it (at the 0:17 mark), so perhaps it doesn’t really work.
scooter pic of the day: a vintage puch moped, modified with cafe racer bars and who knows what else. spotted outside peet’s coffee and otto pizzeria in coolidge corner in early august.
scooter pic of the day: on this lucky day (8/8), a 1979 sparta lucky.
scooter pic of the day: the 2012 peugeot vogue 50cc moped. i had no idea peugeot was still making mopeds. the 2-stroke throwback with pedals goes for 959 euros— sounds pretty comparable to the price of a tomos.
scooter pic of the day: a vintage peugeot scooter/moped ad.
scooter pic of the day: the iconic motobecane 88 from amelie.
scooter pic of the day: another bike at ezeebike, the motorino lazer. the pedals and the look of this bike push it into the moped category. the four-stroke engine and front disk brakes might make you think it’s an updated moped. however, even though it has two speeds (like most late model tomos mopeds), you have to manually shift gears. that might not be so bad (or fun even) except for the fact that the bike can’t shift gears while moving. wowser. i think the shop has put a 70cc head on it to help it out a bit, but the gearing thing is still pretty wacky.
