CALIFORNIA CRUISING: SCOOTERING GOES TO WEST COAST USA
The queues for immigration of LA-X airport were all long, and incredibly slow moving. Stuart had picked the slowest one. It was manned by a polite, but painfully slow middle aged man. Stuart explained that we were in America to check out a scooter rally, and hunt for feature scooters on the Californian coast. This explanation proved sufficient, but I couldn’t leave it at that.
“Besides,” I added, “I’m quite into baseball, and I understand that America is home to some of the world’s biggest tossers.”
“Exactly,” replied the immigration official; obviously impressed at my not referring to the baseball pitcher as a bowler, or something stupid like that. Britain and America are indeed two nations separated by the same language. One nil. We were in America at the suggestion of Robert Wise, a 26-year-old scooterist from just south of Los Angeles who visited the office as part of his 13,000 mile odyssey round Europe last year on a P200 he bought in London. Anyway, you’ll no doubt read about that in future editions.
Robert picked us up from the airport in his small car, and we drove out of the city with the convertible roof down, enjoying the light January rain. It had been snowing about 16 hours earlier when I rode my T5 up to Heathrow.
That night we were being put up at the small home of another scooter collector – Mark Ulves – before Waid ‘Scooter Daddy’ Parker arrived the following morning in a van towing a brace of Vespa P200s for Stuart and I to ride up to the Scooter Rage rally in San Francisco. The van also contained a 17-year-old scooter girl of Samoan descent, called Jeska, from San Diego. It wasn’t hard to guess where her heritage lay, because she had a similar build to the Western Samoan rugby player – Jonah Lomu – and she punched like him when we took the piss out of her, and called her Big Bird. Still, all respect to Waid. If I get to hang around with 17-year-old girls when I’m in my 60s, then I will be a happy man.
Stu, Robert and I jumped in the van, to take the scooters on through the worst of the traffic until we hit the coast.
The plan was to take the scooters out at San Luis Obispo on the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) where we could unload them and enjoy the 230 mile ride up to San Francisco. To begin with, everything seemed rosy enough. The clouds cleared and we were able to watch the surfers bobbing up and down in the Pacific, as the sea battered them into the coastline.
It wasn’t long before things went awry. Before we arrived, much of Western USA had been hit by storms severe enough for President Clinton to declare some regions disaster areas. These storms had killed several people, but more importantly, had also caused landslides across the coast road we hoped to ride up. After only about 20 minutes riding, we ended up on a 30 mile detour to the inland route; Highway 101.
The detour, which wound across the Santa Lucia mountain range, was actually more spectacular than the coast road, with the road becoming twisty enough to have some fun on the aged Vespas.
Emissions laws introduced to California in the early Eighties effectively banned the sale of new two-strokes, so most of the scooterists own pre-83 machines. Both of the P200s we were riding were 1981 vintage, but equipped with oil injection. Stuart won the coin toss for Waid’s grey one, which also came with brakes, while I had the white one with the loose juddering headstock bearings loaned by Alex from San Diego.
By the speedo both scooters only showed a top speed of 55mph, which made us think that we had been landed with a right couple of slugs, but it turned out that it is very common for US market P-ranges to have speedos that read at least 10mph slow. According to Waid’s A-Team van we were actually touching 70mph downhill, and furthermore, Robert could overtake us on Jeska’s PX125. Eh?
Robert rode with us up the highway, whereupon the 125 had to be put back in the van because – like in Italy – sub-150cc machines are illegal for motorway riding. What then followed was a typical motorway journey into the winter evening, interspersed only by some lunatic slipstreaming and quick fill-ups from the jerry cans stowed in the van.
Were it not for the enormity of the vehicles overtaking us, we could have been anywhere in Europe. Over there a BMW 3-series would be considered a small car, and it never ceased to amuse me that the engine in Waid’s van – a 4.3 litre straight six – was the smallest of the range, and considered a bit wimpy compared to the more preferred V8.
SCOOTER RAGE
After a brief stop to drop off a table in San Jose (really!) we made it to the first meeting place of the rally – The Orbit Room on Market Street – prior to their 9pm ride to the next venue. There were already over 50 scooters present, with an eclectic mix of Mods, scooterists, skins and rude boys more than double that number hanging around outside the small bar.
The thought of a coffee and a beer occupied my mind far more than the strange concept (to those more used to British rallies) of people riding their scooters around to the dos at a rally. Most of those on scooters either lived in the locality, borrowed scooters from locals, or bought their scooters to the rally by truck. What must be remembered is that America is absolutely huge. The State of California alone is the same length as the British Isles, and there are another 49 more States of various sizes added to it. People from the East Coast or Canada may have travelled for more than a day by truck to attend.
Apart from the riding to, and between venues, the other thing that hadn’t occurred to me was where all the other rally goers (from outside San Francisco) were staying. There was no campsite, so for the most part it was either with other SF scooterists, or in various hotels around town. Brian Holm sorted accommodation for our merry band with Tirso and Erin from the Vespa Club of San Francisco, but there was no time to go back to clean up.
The 9pm deadline for the ‘brisk evening ride’ to the main venue for the night had already passed, and everybody was revving up to get going.
HELLO SAILOR
San Francisco is famous for many things, but it’s infamy centres mainly on the now-closed Alcatraz prison, and the fact that it is one of the gay capitals of the world. It wasn’t long before we were reminded of this, by a young black guy stood in the middle of the road as all the scooters pulled away for the ride to the next venue. He was gay in every sense of the word, and made a great point of waving (his arse around), shouting ‘cooee’ and ‘hi’, and blowing kisses to everyone. This was obviously pretty normal behaviour in SF, because nobody else seemed to find it funny. In England, Julian Clary makes his living not being nearly as camp on TV.
The ride itself was great fun. For the most part the Americans ride fairly conservatively, but ‘Wanky Yankee’ Chris – who terrorised Europe this summer – spiced things up by riding his red Lammy like a total nutter. Either that, or he has yet to go back to riding on the right after his stay in England.
The main venue that night was an Italian pub called Kate O’Brien’s. Now was it Italian, or was it
Irish. Whatever it was, they were serving Irish Pizza on the food menu, which I’m not sure is a delicacy of either country.
The atmosphere was really nicely buzzing, as all the scooters lined up facing away from the path – sorry, sidewalk – and everyone wandered towards the pub. Sadly the younger people weren’t going to get in thanks to the ridiculous minimum drinking age of 21, and the fact that the bouncers were ‘carding’ (checking ID) at the door. It must be a tough choice, deciding what to give kids first: guns or beer, and you can bet that drug dealers aren’t bothered about ‘carding’.
Thankfully someone led all the under-age people on another ride, taking in a house party on the way, so nobody was left out completely.
Downstairs the bar did good business, while upstairs the DJs were pumping out quality 60s soul and Mod favourites to a very appreciative audience. Someone must have dropped their washing kit because there was talcum powder all over the busy dance floor.
It seems – and this came from independent sources – that Scooter Rage is probably the best rally in the States. For Secret Society SC, it was their 11th one, with there usually being two a year. This year we were far from the only foreigners to make it, with clubs coming from Canada, Germany (Hamburg VC), and even a lone Welshman (Martin from Newport) to worry the girls, since there were no sheep available.
When things finally wound down at 2am, I was thankful for another thing that the US is notorious for; its weak beer. They joke that we British like our beer warm, and our women cold, but that is a lot of front from people whose beer has all the effect of cheap shandy. More like the Yanks prefer their beer full of chemicals and their women full of silicone.
I’m a long way from a professional drinker, but four pints over the course of the night felt like less than two of ours, and I had no qualms about riding back with Erin, Robert and Big Bird at the end of the night. RIDE OF A LUNCHTIME
Saturday began with a strange sweet and sour American breakfast in a Chinese-run cafe, before meeting up in a car park by the Whale Building. The sun was making a reluctant appearance and by now there were quite a few more scooters than the previous night.
For the most part, it seems that the ‘scooter rides’ are the central event on an American rally. It was quite hard getting the point across that most British scooterists think they’ve done enough riding when they get to the UK rally, and typically the central event is getting bolloxed at night.
With the falling number of people riding to UK rallies in groups, its fun to get out as a pack and abuse the laws of the highway with the full knowledge that you have safety in numbers, while simultaneously causing quite a stir among the general populous.
There was quite a bit more interesting machinery gathering on Saturday, though the Secret Society were conspicuous by their absence. It seems that their local American Football team were playing, and they weren’t expected to be prised from the TV until the game was finished. At least that gave us some time to look over the scooters.
The first thing to catch my eye was a cutdown Vespa with a ‘Project Bastard’-style reed value inlet and a neatly modified motocross exhaust that went up and down the chassis where the spare wheel would normally go. I don’t know what it is with these motorcross pipes, but a couple of the TS1 Lambrettas present came similarly equipped. It would be interesting to find out if any of them actually worked any better then a proper scooter exhaust, but they looked good and sounded sweet, which is enough for most people. The next best represented group was of classic 60s and 70s scooters, with there being quite a few beautifully restored Rally 200s and Lambrettas. Someone seems to have decided that these were best accompanied by the nastiest open face crash helmets available. This is okay if you are a particularly stunning girl, or chisel-jawed guy, but not if you are going to combine that lid with a pair of sunglasses that makes you look like an early phase of a metamorphosis into The Fly.
The only scooter classes not represented were choppers and the full blown muralled, chromed and engraved custom scooter. Not because the Americans aren’t capable of it – they are – but just because these styles haven’t caught on.
Our sabbatical in the car park gave me time to try and tighten the headstock bearings on my loaned steed. They were very loose, but repairable having finally elicited the use of some tools from a very cautious bunch of Mods.
As the ride began to pull away I hoped the trusty Vespa would now handle a little less like a crashdamaged shopping trolley, and allow me to keep up with the mayhem that an already drinking Wanky Yankee was no doubt to create; much to the horror of his pillion dwarf Gina.
The streets of San Francisco are very hilly, as you will have seen if you ever watched… er… The Streets of San Francisco on TV. With around 130 scooters of all colours, shapes and sizes climbing the hills ahead, it looked a most impressive sight.
On each street that went up a hill, would be a couple more that crossed it, thereby giving brief flat sections in your climb. At each of these intersections, everyone, no matter which direction they are coming from, is expected to stop. Then, it’s whoever wants to that goes first.
This system of course, can be overlooked if you find yourself in a small convoy, and thus each hill that suddenly flattens out at a junction provides the ideal ramp for pulling quite reasonable wheelies, even on an old P200. Provided the last person to fiddle with the steering pinch bolt had done it up tightly enough that is. I hadn’t. The first time the front of the scooter landed with the wheel facing 12 o’clock, and the headset facing 10 o’clock, I knew that wheelies, no matter how feeble, were not a good idea. This was one ride that would have to be taken cautiously, so after trying my best to borrow and use tools while on the move, I decided it was best to just calm down and take in the scenery.
What spectacular scenery San Francisco has too. We passed through Haight Ashbury, spiritual home of the hippy movement, by now a cynical Carnaby Street lesson is cashing in. As if to emphasise the point, one of the Freak Brothers stumbled into the middle of the pack of scooters and defiantly puffed on a joint. At least in the Sixties he would have offered if round.
The ride continued for half an hour, visiting landmarks and constantly climbing what appeared to be never ending layers of escarpments to our mid-way destination; a double topped hill called Twin Peaks. This is circled at the top by a figure-of-eight road that ended up a complete loop of scooters. Deeply joyful.
The ride back down the hill ended at Cat’s Grill and Alley Bar, where there was a small dealer’s fair and a very basic custom show. Inside the hall – which you had to be 21 to enter – were two bikes the closest to British style customising; a tidy Vespa chop with many anodised parts and a heavy, ornate, gold-plated J125 Starstream Quaint.
The most interesting scooter outside was a home-made version of a Rossa, with a Yamaha RZ (RD) 350 engine neatly slotted into a GP Lambretta. The guy said he had only got it running the day before, and a short blagged ride proved that the carburation was so bad that it wouldn’t run with anything more than tick over. All the hard stuff has been down, and it will be okay when he gets it set up.
That evening it was back to the Orbit room by scooter. Tirso checked the weather report on the internet with his laptop before we left, and it said light rain. It rained lightly. The second venue of the evening was the Transmission Theatre with a smaller than usual scooter attendance, but a big turnout of over 300 to see the three bands perform. The queue was pitifully slow thanks to an obnoxious crusty doorman who checked everybody’s ID, apart from Stu, who would have taken an age check as a compliment.
The venue quickly became very crowded, but there was nowhere to hide from a dreadful first band – The Sport Model – whose only good move was letting the guitarist smash up his instrument. Thankfully that ruled out an encore, and gave time for our ears to heal.
Second band of the night were the Inciters who were absolutely brilliant. They are the only band I’ve ever heard who could actually do good covers of Northern Soul classics like Come On Train. With a bigger horn section than the rhino enclosure at the zoo, and three vocalists (good male singer, fantastic larger female singer, very attractive smaller blonde female singer) they would have got a great reception even out of a traditionally docile British scooterist audience. Sadly the American scooterists are even more stony-faced and immobile than the Brits, and the lead singer was forced to request that if they wouldn’t dance, then could the crowd at least have the decency to get pissed. We tried, but American beer was against us.
The third and final band were a moddy outfit – The Supernaturals. They certainly had their fans among the audience, because occasionally you’d see someone nodding their head, but in general it was sad to see them try so hard against such an inanimate crowd; even if they weren’t really my cup of tea. Everywhere you go to a rally, Saturdays never seem as good as Fridays. I got the feeling that people were only prepared to let their hair down to records, rather than live music, which is a bit of a shame.
Somehow we ended the night in a group consisting only of Brits or British ex-pats, which is how it often gravitates on foreign rallies; going abroad, only to end up meeting people you’ve seen for years, but never talked to. It’s a small, funny world. SUNDAY SUNDAY The traditional rainy Sunday of hangover recovery prior to the ride home is given a new twist by the Secret Society, who schedule one last ride before everyone heads home. This time we all meet at San Francisco scooter shop First Kick Scooters whose rally-going proprietors know the score and lay on free coffee, and plug in the shop’s pinball machine for the throng to use. It’s pretty much an open house. Parts are purchased, scooters repaired, and the mutually important relationship between a healthy local scene and a decent shop to support it is plain to see.
There are some sore heads about, but the cool sunny weather is just perfect for another spin to blow away the cobwebs. Wanky Yankee tries the hair of the dog method to sort his head, but somehow his riding never manages to reach the idiocy of earlier rides despite a few irritating exchanges of turning off one another’s ignitions.
The ride follows through the city’s streets to yet another peak, served by a splendidly winding road. The view at the top is breathtaking, though for the most part either everyone is still a bit fragile to appreciate it, or they have seen it before.
The ride back down was equally good fun, and finally wound up at a kind of truckstop diner called The Cargo, where a spaghetti lunch had been laid on.
Dave Dubinner, from Secret Society told me a sobering tale about the time he tried turning off his girlfriend’s ignition while the club were out riding on a main road at 60 mph. As she saw his hand come across towards the key, she tried to knock it away. The wobble that this caused threw her off the scooter which was then hit by further rides from behind. Dave meanwhile, careered off the road, and would up bent and buckled in hospital on a morphine drip; which was the only good bit of the tale.
When Dave finally recovered, none of his club would ride within 50 feet of him when they were all out together. It was only much later, when a new club member joined – who didn’t know his reputation for causing mayhem and destruction – that his lonely excommunication ended. That appears to have been a lesson to him, and I suspect, a warning to others. I’m not sure who?
Sadly there was no time for spaghetti munching, since we had to get down to San Jose to feature the Hayley Topper elsewhere in this issue and already the light was fading.
If you are considering a trip to the States, then try and coincide it with Scooter Rage. It’s a very different kind of event, and you’ll really need to get on a scooter to enjoy it to its full, but it is fun.
LA-ZING ABOUT
It was some time around 2am when we finally got back to Robert’s house in Orange County, and Waid and Jeska still had over a hundred miles left to get back to San Diego, down near the Mexican border.
The agenda for Monday was to ride round the Los Angeles area, see the sights, and visit the scooter shops. Robert led us round on his Lambretta TV200, and thanks to the miracle of the modern wireless, we were able to get a guided tour courtesy of some cheap (£40 a pair) bike to bike intercoms that he picked up the previous day. Sadly, we had missed the delights of Go Fast Scooters, who were closed when we called in on Thursday. They seem to cater for the performance and customising market in the LA area, and we understand they have just got more financial backing to move to bigger premises.
Our next stop was open. Scooter Shop (where did they get that original name?) in Orange County is probably one of the biggest and best laid out shops I’ve yet to see. It is run by Scott Chain as a business that specialises mainly in restoration and mail order, not only for Vespa and Lambretta, but also various American brands such as Cushman, Doodlebug and Mustang. Scooter Shop was established from the ashes of Scooterville; a business that Scott’s parents founded, and Scott took over, until it ran into difficulty a couple of years ago. Now with the new shop, solid financial backing, and a slow revival of interest in vintage machines, Scooter Shop looks set to carry on as a success. Scott is even going to try a toe in the water of new machine sales, with the four-stroke Vespa ET4; the first Vespa it has been legal to sell new for over a decade. The shop contained a couple of novelty American scooters which we photographed for your delight in future editions, including what appeared to be Flash Gordon’s golf trolley. You’ll have to wait for that one.
From a specialist products point of view, the Scooter Shop works with a local exhaust fabricator to produce what looks like a very tasty right-hand blown exhaust pipe for the P-range Vespa. Scott said he’ll send one for us to dyno. If it works as well as he claims then it seems to be very good value.
RADIOACTIVE
The LA area is actually pretty massive; a huge urban sprawl about 50 miles across that encompasses lots of separately named areas. Our next destination is Atomic Scooters in North Hollywood which requires a 30 miles sprint up the ever busy freeway.
As far as their road systems are concerned, there are a lot of sensible ideas in place, as you would expect from one of the first cities in the world to be designed around the needs of the car driver. The freeway has a lot of lanes, but you are allowed to overtake in any of them, which is a sensible development on congested motorways.
Two further tricks also help ease congestion. Firstly they have traffic lights on the entry slip roads to the freeway which, during busy periods, only let one car on at a time, as someone else leaves another junction. The second trick is the adoption of a Car Pool Lane to encourage car sharing; i.e. you are only allowed to use it if there are two or more people in the vehicle, and heavy fines are imposed on those who use them illegally.
Thankfully, it seems bikes are also allowed to use the car pool lanes, as well as being able to filter between the lanes of busy traffic, though from the few bikes we saw on the motorway; it seems they have yet to grasp the fact that two wheelers make good transport in traffic, not just toys for posing on at weekends.
Atomic Scooters is an interesting shop, not so much for the work they do – which is mostly spares and
repairs – but for the proprietors themselves. The shop is run by a friendly couple; Gator and Naomi. Gator sports a multi coloured psychobilly quiff that changes hue whenever he gets bored, and he plays in a rockabilly band (The real Beverly Hillbillies perhaps?), but he still isn’t the oldest character in the shop. The prize in that category goes to Spanky; a very large Vietnamese pot bellied pig who has a rare talent for pissing as he walks, but has yet to learn how to use this talent to write his name.
Atomic Scooters is a strange but friendly place ideally suited to the weirdos from the Hollywood neighbourhood. If the scooter thing catches on as big in the States as it has in Europe, then this will be the place to go to see the stars having their Vespas repaired.
FRIENDLY FIRE
After another night in Mark’s jacuzzi (hard life this, eh?) it was a two hour ride down to San Diego on Tuesday to take in a couple more shops, and to give the Vespas back to their rightful owners. On the way, we used the intercoms to keep in touch with Robert who was following in a Mercedes.
First stop in San Diego was West Coast Lambretta Works, who have been at the centre of the Lambretta tuning and racing scene for more than 10 years now. They have built some really wacky racers in their time, as well as somehow fitting in tuning and restoration work for customers, and running a mail order parts business. As far as I can work out, they are the only US shop to start selling their own tuning goodies to Europe. They are also the US distributor for AF tuning products.
Sadly it seemed that most of their customers’ bikes were working perfectly at the time – so were out of the shop – and that most of their racing scooters were away, or in bits. How irritating.
There were still a few interesting goodies around though; like a Lunacy project of fitting a Yamaha 350 YPVS engine into a Japanese Fuji Rabbit scooter. And I thought the Capri was ugly.
The different rules and groups for scooter racing under the ASRA – which allow frame bracing between the seat and headstock in some classes – gave rise to one of the oddities sitting forlornly outside the workshop. Whoever heard of a racing J-range?
WCLW’s J-racer is so braced up that you could probably remove most of the original chassis and still have a stronger machine, but it was the porting on the barrel that impressed me. With a huge bridged exhaust port, and massive transfers, it’s no wonder it flew, or that it eats cranks.
The shop has several innovative products that it has pioneered, and which make up part of a really comprehensive catalogue. These include specially made needle roller bearing conversions for Li Series fork links, adjustable front fork dampers made from revolved Daytona steering damper so that they work correctly, and even a weld-in fork spring pre-load adjuster kit. Top stuff.
SUPERMARKET
Just down the road in San Diego is the shop – or shops – that deal with the area’s Vespa riders. Vespa Motorsport and Vespa Supershop were once two rival businesses in the same area run by Alex and Fabio, but the idiocy of the situation was talked out, and now they both inhabit the same large building and complement each other to give a complete service to the local Vespisti (and moped riders) from over the counter spares, secondhand sales and tuning, to mail order and servicing. Besides Fabio’s knowledgeable tuning of some of the racing small frames to rival WCLW’s jet-propelled J-range, Alex is now dabbling in the reproduction of various vintage Vespa parts for restorations; including laser-cut steel Vespa GS leg shield badges for the GS 160, and plastic speedo facias reprinted with mph graduations.
SCOOTER DADDY
Between both Vespa shops and WCLW, the scooterists of San Diego are very well catered for. The other major result is having a benevolent old man like Waid ‘Scooter Daddy’ Parker in the area, who provides a free pick-up service to get broken down scooters dropped back home, just because he’s the kind of bloke that likes helping people out.
You may remember the name from previous editions of Scootering some years ago, when he offered a holiday to a couple of British scooterists, and Nial McCart and Gina went and stayed with him, before sending us a write-up on their experiences in the US.
Waid came to meet us at the Supershop on a particularly lovely scooter, so we could all ride over the border to take a look at Mexico. Some of the old duffers in England with their stupid flyscreens and top boxes should have a look at Waid’s style: a 1961 Mk1 GS 160 in electric blue with a tastefully subtle flame job on the panels, but running a totally stinking P200 engine fitted with a Malossi 210 kit and a Taffspeed Goldline exhaust, tuned beautifully (by Conrad of San Jose) to run on a standard carb.
Waid was silly enough to let me have a go on it. With it’s re-profiled head by Fabio from the Supershop, and a PX flywheel, it accelerated splendidly. Not only did the GS pull fabulous wheelies off the throttle, but the brakes and suspension worked too. In short I didn’t want to give it back, but I felt if I didn’t, it would probably end up broken.
The last scooter shop on our tour was going to be over the border in the Mexican town of Tijuana. We crossed the border with the three Vespas carrying five people, and immediately entered the third world; like Brixton on Tacos. Tijuana has a main street set up with the simple intention of emptying travellers’ wallets in any way possible, and in that sense it reminded me of Blackpool seafront.
After checking out the sole new LML Vespa for sale in a small bike shop called Motocicletas Tapia, we ended up on the town’s main strip. Pulling up on scooters wearing waterproofs with Waid and Big Bird must have been tantamount to saying: “We aren’t from round here, please rob us,” and within seconds the locusts had descended, and were after ten dollars to look after the scooters, or simply dragging us into seedy bars or discos. It was about as relaxing as being frontally shaved with a rusty razor, by a barber with Parkinson’s disease, so after one beer in Robert’s regular (the worst bar known to man) we were only too glad to get back north of the border. America is culture shock enough, but from there to Mexico without time to acclimatise is a bit much.
The last evening before we returned to the UK was spent at Vince Mross’ (proprietor of WCLW) house watching American scooter racing crash videos, some of which were most spectacular.
In all the whole trip was a great surprise to me. I was never expecting to enjoy myself half as much as I did at Scooter Rage, or to be looked after with such hospitality. So does this mean that our attitude to Yanks has been changed forever, and no more will we ever take the piss?
Don’t be silly. How could you not take the rise out of a nation that makes every denomination of its banknotes the same size, shape and colour. Sticky
Thanks to all the following for all their help and kindness: Robert Wise, Waid ‘Scooter Daddy’ Parker, Alax Cohn, Mark Ulves, Jeska, Tirso, Erin, Secret Society, Vince Mross and all those from various other shops and organisations or individuals who bought us beers. Cheers.