Northwest scooter club links

Los Gatos Gordos Seattle AND Portland group, famous for annual Paseo con los Muertos ("Ride with the Dead") rally.

Retroactive SC - Boise The Retroactive gang welcomes new and vintage bikes.

Minions of Boise Not affiliated with us...just some freaky namin' coincidence.

Bombastic SC - Richland Currently, our closest allies, despite Dr. Strangelove's advice.

Scooters of Bellingham Great new club in a great town, just south of Canada.

2% Scooters - Coeur d'Alene Inland-weird like us...but on a much larger scale.

Vespa Club of Seattle It's a Vespa club, in Seattle. Who needs fancy names?

Belladonnas - Seattle All-girl club. Viva Belladonnas!

Flying Monkeys SC - Seattle Seen the WWW's monkeys fly? You've seen these guys ride.

Wussys - Seattle Old-school, secret society stuff here. But Wussys don't bite.

Oregon Scooter Club Large, well-organized, all-Oregon club. We like their style!

Twist & Play - Portland What, more rain? Time for more beer!

The Orphans - Portland New, and hard at work on that Bad-Boy reputation.

Capital City SC - Victoria, BC Just a little cooler, in every sense of the word.

In the News (Other Clubs)

As we cruise the Internet, lots of stories crop up about scooterists and scooter clubs in other cities. Whether they’re fairly close to home - when we can maybe identify with the place, or perhaps know a little about the club from an area rally – or if the story is based in a city we’ve never visited, it seems riders and clubs have a lot in common.That said, here are four articles we’ve culled recently, most posted for different reasons.
The first is actually an older story concerning the Portland scooter scene. First published in 2005 in the Mercury, the article presents a tale of two (or three) clubs in the Rose City, one focused on old-school imbibery, the other about riding – and doing so safely. Opposites, as it were, astride the same vehicle.
The second is a more straightforward take on scootering in another city much like Spokane – and in this case, a club with a name strikingly similar to ours. Of course we’re talking about Boise, and the article, published in the Idaho Statesman in April of 2006, concerns the Minions of Boise. (BTW, see the nice post by MOB's Jay about Spokane Scoot 2007!)
Number three, like the MOB article above, is a short piece about Boise's second club, RetroActive. "Motorcycles are cool," founder Karen Nelson is quoted as saying, "but scooters are cute." (Hard not to be in Nelson's case - since she rides a pink sidecar-equipped Stella peppered with Hello Kitty! stickers...)Finally, we’ve posted a link to an article published by the University of Arkansas Traveler, about a small club doing a nice bit of work raising money for a children’s shelter by raffling a donated scooter. Our group has certainly talked about doing something similar, perhaps becoming an annual thing, but things haven’t jelled yet. With the Minions tripling its membership between June and October, maybe it’ll happen next year?
Enjoy.
"Vespa vs. Vespa" (304 Kb, Acrobat® file)"Scooters are a Gas" (252 Kb, Acrobat® file)"Scooters Gain Devotees" (68 Kb, Acrobat® file)"Club Raises Money" (Arkansas Traveler, weblink)

posted by Minions scooter club.

Where Fireballs Come From

What does Ferrara Pan's Atomic Fireball candy have to do with scooters? Not very much, actually.
But for some reason - and we're glad it happened - a couple years ago the marketing gurus at the Chicago-based Genuine Scooter Company and the Chicago based candy company got together to produce the special-edition Stella scooter, the Atomic Fireball edition, of which only 150 were produced. The bike came with loud and proud yellow flame graphics over fire-engine red paint, flame-embossed handgrips, a striped mudflap and a whole bag of the cinnamon-flavored jawbreaker candy to fill the bike's coin tray with. Maybe it's the audacity of the bike itself, or maybe it's just candy nostalgia, but we think the Fireball is the best special edition Genuine ever made.
It should be pointed out that we've got another bias, namely that two of our members own a Fireball Stella. In fact, it's the one given away at this year's Amerivespa.
But this blurb is about the scooter and the candy.
First, in the heat of trying to find a five-pound bag of fireballs for this year's Spokane Scoot, we came across some interesting (to us, anyway) trivia about the candy itself on the Ferrara Pan website - namely, that each and every jawbreaker starts as a single grain of sugar that is "grown" to the grape-sized finished product inside a rotating drum. Check out the GIF animations on the process at the link below (no one has to know you're a candy geek!) Want some of those red-hot candies, or a bag of another Ferrara Pan favorite, Lemonheads? You can order vast quantities right from the factory.
Second, we noticed that Genuine still has a couple of pages up about the Fireball Stella. Kinda surprising, given the fact that these were last available in 2005, but kinda cool, given the fact that one features several shots of the bike, and the other contains a special registry and photo gallery for Fireball owners - though there are far fewer than 150 such owners listed so far. Hint, hint, Paul and Marla?
Finally, we're looking forward to seeing some of the new Genuine Scooters - including the long-rumored return of the Stella, in a special pea-green color - at the home of our new friends at RPM Motorsports, Spokane's only Genuine™ dealership. When they come in, we'll be sure to post an update.
Fireball Candy Tour (Ferrara Pan website)Fireball Stella registry (Genuine Scooter website)Fireball Stella info (Genuine Scooter website)"Candy Store" Ad (Image file)

thanks to minions of spokane scooter club