July 5, 2009
The scooters take Manhattan
The most important part of Ehron Sidel's job as a mortgage banker for HSBC is face time with the client. And since he ditched mass transit for a scooter, clients and friends have been seeing his face a lot more.
Before Sidel, 24, bought a Vespa in early November, he spent hours each day waiting for subway trains or sitting in taxi traffic during his daily trips to meet with business associates.
Not anymore.
"The scooter has literally increased my productivity," he said. "I used to do maybe two appointments a day and now I do at least four."
And last week's transit strike? No sweat.
Sidel, who lives on the Lower East Side, hopped his scooter and headed to work in the financial district as usual -- except that he had a few passengers.
"My manager asked me to pick up some colleagues and bring them to work," he said.
Nicholas Mendizabal, 31, owner of the scooter shop Brooklynbretta, said the strike shone a spotlight on the city's growing scooter community.
"We got a lot of calls from people wanting to rent scooters," he said. "People were standing around or walking and the scooters were getting around like nothing ever happened," he said.
Scooter popularity was on the rise in the city before the transit strike a trend Mendizabal attributes to a variety of factors. New Yorkers, especially younger denizens, are moving to neighborhoods farther from Manhattan that have fewer transit options; MTA fares and gas prices are spiraling. The scooters offer commuters control and they're fun.
"You're in control of your own destiny on a Vespa," said Zach Shieffelin, owner of the Vespa SoHo store. "When you want to go, you just go."
Shieffelin, 34, commutes to SoHo from Brooklyn a trip that takes about eight minutes on the scooter and 40 minutes driving or using mass transit.
Scooting quickly became a lifestyle for Shieffelin.
"The ownership experience is very much like getting a word processor," he said. "Once you've used it for your daily business in New York, it's really hard to fathom how you did it beforehand."
New Jersey resident Neil Barton, 32, cut his commute from an hour and a half to 20 minutes when he traded in his '89 Jeep Grand Wagoneer for a Vespa in 2003.
"The time and flexibility I've got now is immeasurable," he said. "And I feel a lot more empowered in terms of getting in and out."
Barton, a technology consultant, is such a fan, he started a blog devoted to city scooting, UrbanNerd.com, and also writes for the Vespa-sponsored blog Vespaway.com.
Carol Anastasio, who has worked for the city parks department for 17 years, got a Vespa for her 41st birthday. She was leery of city driving, but had wanted a scooter since she saw The Who's "Quadrophenia" at age 14.
Though the obstacles of urban scooting are many among them SUVs, potholes, veering cabs and pedestrians on cell phones -- driving "turned out to be not as hard," she said. "You just have to wear the right gear and be incredibly alert when you ride."
It's unclear how many scooters have been involved in road accidents in New York, as the DMV and NYPD group them generally with motorcycles.
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