I don't mean why-I-bought-a-scooter stuff, like "it uses less gas" or "it's fun to ride" or "I'm too lazy to pedal". I want to know where you originally got the idea that owning and riding a scooter was something you wanted to do, that a scooterist was someone you wanted to be. Who or what planted that seed?
Was it watching Roman Holiday when your parents took you downtown to The Bijou Cinema back in '53? Was it to emulate that guy from your Econ Prime class at community college who somehow aced the final? Did you have the hots for Erik Estrada on CHiPS, but wanted to be able wear a skirt when you rode the highways of LA with him? Did your college roommate play Quadrophenia (the movie and the double LP) over and over and over?
To be honest, I don't remember exactly. I did have that roommate in college, which was probably part of it. Before that there was the brief moped fad of the 1970s, when my mother said that there was no way anyone in the family was going to ride one of those.
My earliest memory of thinking "I want one of those" was in the early 90s, reading Lowlife, a self-published self-illustrated comic by Ed Brubaker (now a bigshot writing Captain America, Batman, etc.) in which he and an equally slacker friend steal a case of beer from a party store and escape two-up on an underpowered scooter, with the owner chasing them down the street. I was already pushing 30, but that was who I wanted to be when I didn't grow up.
). Heavy and prone to leaking all sorts of fluid, you couldn't kick it and it was powerful enough to get me into 'just' enough trouble without getting too out of hand considering it's weight and not-so-user friendly to a new rider nature.
