Word: vespa
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...covert marketing is on the streets. Sony Ericsson has hired a troupe of actors this summer to pose as tourists in New York City and Los Angeles and to ask passers-by to take their picture with the company's new T68i, a combination cell phone and digital camera. Vespa promoted U.S. sales of its scooters last summer with a biker gang of beautiful people who were paid to ride them around such cities as Los Angeles and Houston...
...success has spawned a mini industry in Hong Kong. Artist Eric So's career took off when he released a collection of retro-dressed Bruce Lee figures in 1997. So, 33, a friend of Lau, describes his recent Sprite-commissioned dolls and Vespa-riding Sam Lee figures as "playable artworks." Radio presenter Martin Lam, 26, creates hunched bad-boy dolls as promotional items for streetwear shops such as Tokyo's Double Taps. "They are all animated versions of me, my other personas," Lam says...
...high-pitched horns. Many dozens of motor scooters in burgundies, grays and greens line the parking lot, displaying favored ornaments--a Tinky Winky doll hanging from one, a picture of Rocky and Bullwinkle's Natasha from another. Ahhh, the smell of exhaust fumes from tiny tailpipes. Welcome to the Vespa Club of America's annual rally, which recently drew nearly 300 motor scooterists from all over the U.S. for four days of partying, prizes and an obstacle course that required nimble riders to navigate around tires, duck under a limbo line and even bite a cherry off a swing...
Part of it is pure nostalgia. At the height of scooter mania in the 1950s, the sleek, steel-framed bikes were symbols of romantic escapism. Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn putted through Rome on a Vespa in Roman Holiday; it was a favorite toy of Hollywood's elite, including Gary Cooper and Jayne Mansfield. In 1960s England, while big, grease-sputtering Harleys were ridden by leather-clad Rockers, elegant Vespas were the signature of their archrivals--and regular rumble opponents--the fashionable Mods...
...many of these clubs for free--it's good for the atmosphere. Piper Ferguson, a promoter at Hollywood's Cafe Bleu, says that on some nights as many as 100 twentysomethings--sporting shiny sharkskin suits, pointy Beatles boots and tattoos--line up their bikes in the club lot. But Vespa fanatics include businessmen, middle-aged women and just regular guys. Hairstylist Robert Winslow, 29, moved from a roomy loft in New York City's tony TriBeCa to a dingier but more spacious Brooklyn apartment without a kitchen, strictly to accommodate his vintage bikes. "I'm obsessive," he says. "My place...