To Sophia Loren

The writer in conversation with the owners of a restaurant.

“Just as our conversation – and the spumante – was in danger of drying up, the manager’s wife looked me in the eye and asked me if I had given my Vespa a name.

The thought havd never crossed my mind. I’ve never been one for naming vehicles. My mum is. She names her cars before the registration papers have been transferred. She had Buttercup, the yellow Toyota Corona, stationwagon, and Morrie the Magna, and her current car is Connie the Cresida. But I have never been motivated to give any of my vehicles a name. It was always the Datsun or the Suzuki, mostly with an expletive-riddled prefix added. I had never dignified a vehicle that I owned with a name.

‘You should call her Sophia,’ the manager’s wife said. ‘When I was a gril I called my Vespa Sophia after Sophia Loren. She was my high-spirited friend, making me do things I was otherwise too timid to do’.

I thought about it, and although I was opening myself up to ribbing from mum after all the grief I gave her about naming her vehicles, I agreed. After all, it was the old black and white movies of Sophia Loren that had inspired me to do this trip in the first place.

‘For luck, with your journey,’ the manager’s wife said raising her glass.

We all clinked glasses, and I hesitated befor taking a sip. ‘To Sophia,’ I said.

‘To Sophia’, they replied with gusto. (p.76-77)

Scoot Links

Scoot.net links: Lins naar clubs, shops, photo's etc.

Scoot.net links

Vespa Verhuur Gent

Vespa verhuur La Bella Vespa




Geniet van het mooie en gezellige Gent met zijn historische gebouwen, musea, winkels en gezellige terrassen. De schilderachtige Leiestreek  met o.a. het kunstenaarsdorp Sint- Martens- Latem, het pittoreske Deurle, één van de mooiste dorpen van Vlaanderen en de omgeving van het Kasteel van Ooidonk, of de wondermooie heuvelachtige Vlaamse Ardennen, het Toscane van Vlaanderen

Vespa Peace

Vespa 150 TAP - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 

Vespa: vervoermiddel of vervoering

Snaps of a Legend

Il Blog del Vespista | Una passione lunga una vita

Vespa Site

Vespa

Scootnet

Scoot.net

Scooter Rage

Scooter Rage

Vespa: Bollywood

How the Vespa Can Save the World - Innovation Insights

This summer, Vespa worked with Bollywood heartthrob Siddharth Malhotra to unveil a new scooter model, the VX, made especially for the Indian market and available for sale later this year. No detail was overlooked: a touch of chrome, a new beige seat and tubeless tires to provide extra comfort. Even the custom palette -- “Portovenere Verde” (metallic green of the Ligurian coast) and “Vibrante Rosa” (dual tone red and pink), a color that the famous Vogue editor Diana Vreeland once called the “navy blue of India” – were meant to reverberate with the world’s largest democracy’s enormous and upwardly mobile middle class while paying homage to the Vespa’s roots.

Read more:

Vespa Scooter Design

Vespa Scooter
http://www.patricktaylor.com/vespa-scooter

Vespa Scooter


The Vespa is the world's most famous scooter. First manufactured in Italy by Piaggio & Co. S.p.A. in 1946, it has been described by the Times newspaper as the most completely Italian product since the Roman chariot.  

More scooter Blogs

Scooter in the Sticks

Life on two wheels, the scoot commute

 

 

Scootin' Old Skool

 

 

Vespa Gonzo

Scooterfile

ScooterFile is dedicated to producing, curating, and sharing news, reviews and opinion in the world of scooters. Founded in response to a gap in two-wheeled news coverage, ScooterFile exists to specifically serve an audience of scooter enthusiasts. Press outlets abound to cover motorcycles and ATVs, but whenever these publications cover scooters (which is rare), this coverage usually comes from a motorcyclist point of view. Founded by a scooterist, for scooterists, ScooterFile exists to provide a new point of view in covering the two-wheeled world.

Behind Bars: Patrignani

Behind Bars: Simple Love: 1979 Vespa P200 Touring, and Reunion with Guest Author, Conchscooter from KWD.

The Scooterist

The Scooterist

Vespa Traveller: Bettinlli

Legendary Vespa traveller Giorgio Bettinlli died in China from a sudden illness on 16 September 2008 at the age of 53. He had lived there for 4 years, on the banks of the Mekong, with his wife Yapei.

Giorgio got his first Vespa in 1992 aged 37. Living in a village in Indonesia, a friend gave him an old Vespa which he promptly rode through the country. Upon returning to Italy he continued his Vespa adventures on a grander scale and it’s probadly easier to list the countries where Bettinelli didn’t travel, rather than where he did.

Travelling upon a simple Vespa PX, with his guitar and backpack, Bettinelli did things that many of us never achieve in our lives. Surprisingly, he had little mechanicals knowledge. When asked what he did if the Vespa ever broke down, he replied “ You wait. Someone comes, someone helps. Acar, a truck, a camel. An hour, a day. Someone comes, someone helps.”

The Scooterist: Giorgio Bettinelli – RIP

Vespa: Solex

Films & Architecture: “My Uncle” | ArchDaily

„In contrast, Uncle Hulot, the quintessential poète des terrains vagues, lives in a small old corner of the city. He is unemployed, and gets around town either on foot or on a rather tired VéloSoleX”.

JF Le Helloco » Balade en Solex sur les traces de Jacques Tati

 

Kaster: Appian Way

Robert A. Kaster, The Appian Way,

The Roman poet Statius called the Via Appia the Queen of Roads, and for nearly a thousand years that description held true, as countless travelers trod its path from the center of Rome to the heel of Italy. Today, the road is all but gone, destroyed by time, neglect, and the incursions of modernity; to travel the Appian Way today is to be a seeker, to walk in the footsteps of ghosts. Our guide to those ghosts - and the layers of history they represent - is Robert A. Kaster. In The Appian Way , he brings a lifetime of studying Roman literature and history to his adventures along the ancient highway. A footsore Roman soldier pushing the imperial power south; craftsmen and farmers bringing their goods to the towns that lined the road; pious pilgrims headed to Jerusalem, using stage-by-stage directions we can still follow - all come to life once more as Kaster walks (and drives - and suffers car trouble) on what's left of the Appian Way. Other voices help him tell the story: Cicero, Goethe, Hawthorne, Dickens, James, and even Monty Python offer commentary, insight, and curmudgeonly grumbles, their voices blending like the ages of the road to create a telescopic, perhaps kaleidoscopic, view of present and past. To stand on the remnants of the Via Appia today is to stand in the pathway of history. With The Appian Way , Kaster invites us to close our eyes and walk with him back in time, to the campaigns of Garibaldi, the revolt of Spartacus, and the glory days of Imperial Rome. No traveler will want to miss this fascinating journey.

Vespa Museum Pontedera

Vespa Scooter Museum in Italy - YouTube

Vespa Museum

In October of 2000 my wife and I took a tour of the Vespa Museum in Pontedera, Italy. Here you will see early prototype Vespa scooters as well as classics like the Vespa GS and 90SS. If you ever go to Italy and are near Pisa be sure to go see this excellent Museum!

Representation: vespa

Cultural Studies

Representation:

Society and its cultures are subjected to Sausserian texts constantly. These stimuli elicit various responses based on individual and cultural values and experiences. Meaning comes from representations from language, photography, painting and other media, which uses “signs and symbols to represent or re-present whatever exists in the world in terms of a meaningful concept, image or idea.” (du Gay et al, 1990, p.13) Representation is utilized by industry to present products to consumers as described by Hebdige (1998) and the marketing of the Vespa motor scooter by the Italian company immediately following World War II. In post war Great Britain the motorcycle companies were confident that men would not want to purchase motor scooters as the scooter was seen as not being “manly.” Due to the marketing efforts which represented the scooter as a manly means of transportation, the Vespa company shocked the British motor cycle industry with tremendous Italian motor scooter sales. The power of representation, and re-representation, is now clear in the images generated in media marketing. (Yon, 2000, Bourdieu, 1984).

Radical Design: Vespa

Adopting radical design | thewanderlust.net

My example about scooter shopping came up when comparing the Piaggio MP3 to the new range of Vespas (which I’ve owned in the past). At first I thought it was ugly and didn’t consider it over the classically designed Vespa but then I started to think why I’d jumped to that conclusion. Why did I think a scooter needed to resemble the original design that’s now 50 years old in order to be beautiful? This view was shared by many people I showed the MP3 too, though the MP3 is a production model, and does sell, I would be interested to see who is buying it though — and what they think of it’s appearance. Maybe it’s only sold to people who don’t care about it’s physical attributes, or maybe there are people that see past traditional design and are ready to embrace a more modern approach to an old idea? The bike has an option of a hybrid engine that’s better for the environment, it’s got 3 wheels so it’s safer and handles better, it uses an internal frame so it’s more rigid — in many ways it’s a better bike.

Another interesting thought is what sort of reception did the Vespa get when it first came on the market? It’s design was far removed from any other available bike, yet it went on to become a great success and develop a cult following. Maybe radical designs do that once they’re accepted?

This principle may work better in graphic design, not to say challenging conventions isn’t worth while. However, leveraging existing cultural visual language to ensure the right message is delivered is a valid argument. More so in interactive design, where you need to ensure an interface is useable and performs as it’s expected. Should we be so strict when we talk about product design and architecture though? Maybe I should really examine why I want a Vespa over an MP3 ..

Visual rhetoric: vespa

Rhetoric from the standpoint of the Lifeworld1

Good examples of other varieties of this kind of rhetorical figure are found in the publicity for « Absolut Vodka », in which the characteristic Absolut bottle appear each time in the guise of some landmark of well-known European cities. In « Absolut Munich », « Absolut Geneva », and « Absolut Amsterdam », some details suggest the shape of the Absolut bottle. Here we have a picture of a real-world object, such as a pair of « Lederhosen », a clock, or a house, the shape of which appears quite possible in itself, though perhaps not particularly probable, and which takes on a secondary meaning as a bottle, only because of our knowledge about what the Absolut bottle looks like and what is indicated by the text.

In other cases, we get pictures of real-world objects deformed so as to resemble other objects. Thus, in « Absolut Rome » (Fig. 6.Absolut Rome), the vespa is seen from a particular perspective and slightly modified so as to resemble the bottle; and in « Absolut Paris », the shapes and colours add up to something which is clearly identifiable as being of the general type of a Metro entrance, but too narrow to be a real instance. At first, one might be tempted to think of mixed objects, such as « la chafetière », as the extreme case of such deformations: but « la chafetière » really depicts parts of a cat and parts of a coffee pot, while « Absolut Paris » depicts an underground entrance and suggests an Absolut bottle. 

Asian: scooter

Urban Asian | Farah Khan and Boman Irani’s Fulfilled Visit.

‘Shirin Farhad ki Toh Nikal Padi’ is a lighthearted romantic comedy with an unconventional pairing of Boman Irani and Farah Khan for the first time. The film is slated to release on the 24th of August. Are you ready too see this funny couple on screen show the highlights of many films which come together on one screen? We sure are! Check out the trailer and the pictures and make sure to hit the theaters and check it out.

Bomans: Vespa

Bomans. Portret van een levenskunstenaar - Athenaeum Boekhandel



 “Stel u voor: een plankje, met daaronder twee wieltjes en erop een gemakkelijk fauteuiltje. Men gaat in dit fauteuiltje zitten, drukt op een knop en hoort een gezoem, als van een wesp die tegen een raam gonst en er niet uit kan; vervolgens draait men een krukje om waarop het cijfer 1 staat en rolt statig de wijde wereld in. Het kan ook sneller. Dan draait men naar cijfer 2. Maar wie de wind om zijn hoofd wil voelen en de aarde in langzaam wentelende cirkels om zich heen zien wervelen, die kiest het cijfer 3. En daar gaan we dan, berg op, berg af, dwars door het land, dat Italië heet. Soms houdt het gezoem op. Verontrust u niet. Er is op gerekend. U draait een kraantje open, waarop ‘riserva’ staat en gonst tevreden verder. U moet nu wèl uitkijken. Zodra u een blinkend apparaat ziet, waaraan een slang bevestigd is, houdt u stil. Er treedt een bijzonder beleefde man naar voren, voorzien van een witte pet, bruine handschoenen en het vaste voornemen u ter wille te zijn. Laat hem rustig begaan, hij heeft het goed met u voor. Hij schroeft een dop achter uw fauteuiltje los, steekt daar een slang in en laat een heldere vloeistof naar binnen stromen. U zult het niet geloven, maar dit is voldoende: u kunt nu weer uren doorgonzen. In ruil hiervoor verlangt hij niets dan enige beduimelde papiervodden, die u in overvloed bij u hebt. (..)

Eén fout moet u met zorg vermijden. Het is de fout, die de meeste mensen maken. Zij noemen die heldere vloeistof benzine, die vodden geld en het fauteuiltje een Vespa. Het vreemde gevolg hiervan is, dat zij ophouden zich te verbazen. Misschien is in deze zonderlinge wereld dit wel het meest verbazingwekkend: de bereidheid van de mensen, om in ruil voor een paar woorden hun verrassing prijs te geven. Als bij Andersen een student in een vliegende koffer naar Turkije vliegt, bij Grimm een tovenaar over een afstand van honderden kilometers met iemand kan spreken of in Moeder de Gans de boze stiefmoeder het beeld van Sneeuwwitje in een spiegeltje ziet, dan noemen wij dat een sprookje. Nu deze wonderen gerealiseerd zijn, noemen wij het een straaljager, een telefoon en een televisie-apparaat. Het is wel duidelijk, dat dit aan het sprookje niets verandert. Wij leven inderdaad in een sprookjesachtige tijd: wij hebben het alleen niet in de gaten. De poëzie van de moderne techniek ontgaat ons. Eerst als wij, gelijk ik hierboven deed, haar uitvindingen omschrijven in de termen, die Andersen zou gebruikt hebben, wordt het bijna ongeloofwaardige van de omstandigheden, waarin wij leven, ons bewust.” (Bomans is in 1954 op een Vespa van Rome naar huis gereisd.) 

Bomans en Rome