In Memoriam: Steve ‘Sausage’ Porter

Steve 'Sausage' Porter, master scooter mechanic and all-around good bloke.

The Westenders Scooter Club joins scooterists all around the world in mourning the untimely passing of Steve ‘Sausage’ Porter, who succumbed to cancer.

Anyone who works on, or wants to learn to work on, their geared Vespas or Lambrettas is familiar with Sausage’s most famous works, the Vespa and Lambretta maintenance and engine rebuild DVDs, available through Scooter Techniques in the UK. These DVD’s, which take the viewer through the processes of tuning up or rebuilding their Vespa or Lambretta motors in a real-time, step-by-step process, featured Sausage as the mechanic and host.

Which his ‘thicker-than-the-head-on-a-glass-of-Boddingtons’ Norfolk accent, and his softspoken, wryly humorous and avuncular manner, he made the idea of wrenching on your own scooter seem not only possible, but fun to boot! These well-produced videos (who can’t love the little ‘top tip’ animated sausage popping out at key moments?) are a ‘must have’ for any serious scooterist’s library.

Sausage is gone, but his legacy as a dedicated scooterist and teacher will live on, and all scooterists around the globe are the better for him.

Requiescat in pace, mate.

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Chinese Mods? Why Not? (Or: Hang on to your Vintage!?)

A fascinating seven-minute short on YouTube.  Will the Chinese be bitten by the Mod bug?

While surfing the interwebs, we happened to come across this intriguing little short.  Featuring clips from “Quadrophenia” and “Brighton Rock”, it offers some history of the ‘mod’ movement and subculture, and introduces us to a fellow who’s helping to start a mod/scooter movement in China.  While the narration is in English, the interviewee speaks in Mandarin (or Cantonese?), and we don’t have the benefit of subtitles.   More’s the pity; I suspect what he has to say would be very interesting.

Interesting too, are the possible implications suggested by what is an otherwise an innocuous little vid.  Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last few decades, China has become an economic powerhouse.  More and more Chinese folks are achieving a middle-class lifestyle or better, and there is more emphasis on easing into a consumer culture.  So what would happen if a Mod revival happened to take place in China?  Scooter use is widespread, and a growing interest in vintage could make for interesting developments in the scooting world, as a growing population of aficionados could put real pressure on a finite supply of scooters and parts.  Best to take care of those vintage machines and your parts stocks; who knows, they could become quite a hot commodity!

Just sayin’.

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Great New Riding Blog!

Scooter blogs tend to run the gamut from self-indulgent wastes of bandwith to some really useful resources. ScootSafely.com is definitely in the latter camp. British expat Alan Hearnshaw applies his thirty-plus years of riding experience, as well as motorcycle training and safety, to produce this easy-reading blog chock-full of commonsense safety tips and tactics for scooter riders.

Never preachy or pedantic, Alan is a very welcome new voice in scootering’s blogosphere. By all means check this blog out!

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Jazz Nite at the Avalon + Studio 66!

Okay, we can't promise it will be as much fun as our LAST 'Jazz Nite', but at least we won't wake up in jail this time!

Come and join your scooter peeps for an evening of smooth jazz at the Avalon this Saturday (2/4)!  Tom Brooks of the Firkins SC is playing with his jazz trio at the Avalon (2940 SW Avalon Way – formerly Cafe Revo).  They will be playing from 6-9pm; we don’t know if there’s a cover or not, but it will be a great time!  Looks like the weather will be great, so scoot on down and check out the hip sound this cool cat and his trio puts down!

And just because the jazz winds down at 9, that doesn’t mean you’re all dressed up with nowhere to go!  We can ride on over to the Lo-Fi for the latest incarnation of Studio 66!  Westender Yuri in on the bill with other great area DJs and local bands (and g0-go girls too!) as they offer a night of great retro sounds, fashion, and fun!  Be sure to check it out!

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A-Bowling We Did Go!

At the first Inter-club bowling tournament, there were some REALLY interesting styles of bowling seen!

The whole idea began, as most ideas begin, with a conversation over a pint.

At our joint Club ride on Vashon Island last November, someone mentioned that it would be fun to get scooter clubs together for a fun bowling tournament.  It would be something neat to do while the weather was poor.  Needless to say, great ideas don’t need a lot of prompting to be turned into action, and so last Sunday, the Westenders hosted the F-Yeah SC and the Firkin SC from Tacoma for what will be the first of many quarterly interclub bowling tournaments.

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