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They buzz, they flit, they fly. They dart, they dash, they zip.
Ethan Stowell putt-putts from Union (downtown) to Tavolata (Belltown) to Wolf (Queen Anne). Corino Bonjrada bounces from La Vita e Bella (Belltown) to Mondello (Magnolia). Jim Drohman shuttles between Le Pichet (Belltown/Market) to Café Presse (First Hill/Madison). Scott Staples hops from Zoë (Belltown) to Quinn's (Capitol Hill). Josef Jimenez doesn't ride himself but sends his cooks on a scooter--a Honda, not a Vespa--from Harvest Vine (Madison Valley) to Txori (Belltown).
Hey, parking's tough in Belltown, but there's always room for a scooter.
They are Seattle's wasps, those Vespas. Truly: vespa means wasp in Italian.
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Now, my question is, why do people park them in the street here? They take up a lot of space and seriously interrupt parking for cars. When I lived in Taiwan, where they have the world's largest per-capita ownership of scooters/vespas, they just parked them (and rode them!) on the sidewalk, (such as this or this)
Ah, the dreaded Taiwanese motorbike, not nearly as benign as the lazy wasp.
It's apparently illegal to park a licensed motorized vehicle on the sidewalk in Seattle. That doesn't stop many of the chefs, though. Most of the bikes in the picture are sitting on sidewalks.
Let me just add that the NYTimes has a blog entry today that extols scooters.