Hi there ScooterSwaggers. Happy New Year. Sorry for the lapse in swag-dom. After a busy Christmas, travels and a long bout with the flu, I’m back on the job.
Which brings us to this first post of 2013. Eric E. is a “Long time reader, and collector of all things Vespa” who’s based in Jiaxing, China right now. (That’s in the middle of the Northeast coast.) He found these shirts for sale on the street and like any swagger worth his mettle, couldn’t resist buying them.
I asked him what the scooter scene was like there and this was his reply:
“It’s interesting, in Hong Kong there is pride and style associated with scooters and motorcycles, I saw cafe racers ridden by “rockers” and Vespa/PGO/LML scooters that were washed and waxed. On the mainland they are just basic transportation and as long as they move forward they don’t do anything to fix them. People everywhere riding around at night with no lights, and everything is barely hacked together enough to keep going.”
Eric promises to take photos of anything else he comes across of interest.
Thanks for sharing!
As a long-distance commuting member of the Beijing and Shanghai scenes, I can assure you that there is another side to things, and one of the most dedicated “scooter scenes” on the globe, alive and well on the mainland! The second two are mine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWNZyhGx9AM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aqq8Zxh3NOM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNhyjIvmVNE
Also huge photo archive of the scene in my FaceBook, if anyone interested reply here!
Cheers from Yokohama,
-d.