Feature Scooter: Blind Vision
Who says you should have a particular favourite style of scooter? The scooter scene is vibrant and diverse, and stifling freedom of choice isn’t something that true scooterists are about.
You'd have to either be blind to chop up an Italian SX200, or a creative visionary… you decide which heading this chopper owner comes under!
Stephen King was inspired into the scene when the premiere of Quadrophenia was being shown and a dozen scooters turned up at a cafe he was sat in. Since then, over the years Stephen's owned all types of scooters and during that time he's developed several custom scooters and choppers. In 1986 he developed his first custom chopper, a Vespa P200E called Stage Fright; other custom scooters to his name are Too Cool to Drool and Deliverance, which was later sold on and became Captain America. With Stephen's history of developing custom scooters it's also clear to see that he's got a habit of developing interesting names for them.
Full bodied
While Stephen's got a passion for choppers, he's always liked full-bodied scooters. “My other scooter is an Italian GP200; I discovered it 20 years ago after I'd heard that there was a scooter lying in a fella's garden not far from where I live. After finding it under a carpet in his garden we did a deal and it's now been developed into my MB-TS1 225 street racer, Fast ‘n' Furious.” In September 2020 Stephen's appetite to develop another custom chopper started to get the better of him. “I put the word out on social media that I was looking for a project, and Stuart Davies from Scunthorpe got in touch. Stuart explained that he'd developed a chopper from a cut-down Lambretta and thought I might be interested.” Having liked the sound of the scooter, Stephen went over to check it out. “When I saw it, it looked great and when I had a closer look I saw that it had originally been an SX200. With the best of intentions and with no disrespect to the person responsible I said to Stuart, ‘Who in their right mind could have done this?' But ironically, this was the moment that inspired me to develop the name Blind Vision for the scooter.” Stephen did a deal with Stuart and went to collect the scooter. “I went over in a van but when I got there it was too big to fit in it!” Stephen laughed. After taking stock of the situation, and making a few phone calls, he managed to locate a bigger van and the scooter was eventually collected.
Allure ure
Having got the scooter home, Stephen decided that he was going to make some adjustments of his own. Among these adjustments he wanted to add a mural on top of the petrol tank. “I did some research on the internet and looked for images of sultry, sexy, moody-looking women. When I found the image that I was after I contacted Colin Fitzgerald at Garage Artwerks and commissioned him to complete the artwork.” Stephen explained that he wanted to create a particular look in the woman's eyes. “I wanted the look in her eyes to represent the origin and situation of the scooter; and with this in mind I asked Colin to paint the Innocenti ‘i' badge in the pupil of her right eye and a Maltese cross in her left eye. These two features would represent the origin of the scooter, its development into a chopper and her overall gaze would be delivered as a Blind Vision.”
On the town
The name is clever, and it also includes a connection to Stephen's past. “Of course back in the 80s me and my pals were scooter boys, but we were also New Romantics. When we used to go to scooter rallies we'd get to the venue, get our tents set up and then get ready to go out and enjoy the weekend.” However, Stephen and his pals didn't head off to the northern soul or reggae events. “We'd get changed into our New Romantic/Simon le Bon outfits
I wanted the look in her eyes to represent the origin and situation of the scooter; and with this in mind I asked Colin to paint the Innocenti ‘i’ badge in the pupil of her right eye and a Maltese cross in her left eye. These two features would represent the origin of the scooter, its development into a chopper and her overall gaze would be delivered as a Blind Vision.
and then head into town where among other tracks we'd often hear the song, Blind Vision by Blancmange.” There's no doubt that this scooter will be ‘ridden and not hidden'; as well as being a regular rally-goer in the UK, in 2019 Stephen also made a one-off 12-hour journey from Harrogate to Mersea Island just for a T-shirt! In addition to attending UK scooter rallies, Stephen is also a regular at European rallies too. “My favourite European rallies are the ones in Holland. They're usually a five-day trip with two days spent in Amsterdam on the way home.” On one of those trips in Amsterdam Stephen and his pals decided to call into a bar for a drink and parked their scooters outside. “We were all sat chatting and a fella with a camera came up to us; he'd been looking at our scooters and asked if they were ours. We said they were; he then explained that he was a photographer for a magazine and asked if he could take a few photos of us with the scooters. We agreed and when he'd finished we asked him which magazine the photos would be going in. He said, ‘L' Homme, it's a gay topshelf magazine. Do you know it?' I've had custom scooters in magazines before, but L' Homme was a first in that department!” Stephen laughed.
Stephen's attitude and approach to scootering is inspiring, and for me it's always a breath of fresh air to chat to people like him because they don't take themselves too seriously. It's traits like these that are engrained into the core values of the vast majority of people involved in our scene; and it's having people with these traits in our scene that leads to the development of custom scooters like Blind Vision, which ultimately keeps our scene dynamic, interesting and exciting.