In New York

I've been in New York since Wednesday. Had a little time to hang out with local scooterists. I met up with some folks at the Brass Monkey which is in the meat packing district. In the photo to the left, there's Scott from Vespa Soho, Alan, me and Vinny. Alan had a spare helmet so he gave me a ride around the city. He took me to a restaurant called Lucha Libre where I had a flavorful, juicy taco and a roasted corn on the cob with cheese & spices. There were so many people hanging out at this place, which had probably been a street-corner diner in the past. I took a photo of Alan eating one of the cobs. We then rode around the city a bit and then went to the punk-rock bar The Double Down where we had some Ass Juice, their signature drink. Hopefully no asses were injured or compromised in the making of the drink.

We ended up driving around during the wee hours and it was fun to be riding around with only taxis circling looking for drunk fares.

The next night, I met up with Marty who used to live in San Francisco, but now lives in Brooklyn.

In the time that I've been here, I've seen many more scooters on the streets than the last 2 times that I came (which was about 6-7 years ago). I spoke to some scooter folks that I saw on the streets. I gather that lane splitting isn't legal, but widely practiced. I'd be splitting lanes if I had to be in this type of traffic! I took a cab somewhere because I was running late & didn't have time to figure out the subway. It took about 20 minutes to go about 2 miles. I haven't seen any mass moto parking anywhere, like in San Francisco, but I have seen scooters parked on some sidewalks and curbed.