monday, march 29, 2004
news
tne university daily kansar
5A
ScooterHawks gains momentum
Scooter owners come together to have fun and voice their concerns
Patti Yager, Marysville first-year pharmacy student, carried on the ScooterHawk tradition after the founder graduated. Yager is now the president of ScooterHawks.
Abbv Tillery/Kansan
By Samia Khan
skhan@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
"Hey, it's scooter girl," is the first thing Patti Yager usually hears when she runs into casual friends.
Her red scooter, a Chinese model that she bought off the Internet for $600, doesn't define her, but it makes her more noticeable, she said. Other scooter owners now have a way to be noticed together. Yager, a first-year pharmacy student from Marysville, is president of a group called ScooterHawks.
ScooterHawks is an organization that tries to "work to promote the rights of scooter owners at the university and city level," as stated on the group's Web site. It started last July as a way for scooter owners and enthusiasts to come together for fun and scooter solidarity. Yager said she and six others were at the first meeting. Now, the group's list server has 30 members.
Members of ScooterHawks will soon begin to plan the group's biggest event, a scooter rally held in the fall. The idea for a scooter rally gave Luke Middleton and his scooter-owning friends a cause to start ScooterHawks. Middleton, research assistant for the Policy Research Institute, helped start the organization last summer.
At last year's rally, scooter owners gathered at Buford M. Watson Park on Seventh and Tennessee streets to display and talk about their scooters, and enjoy one another's company. The rally ended with the group riding its scooters down Massachusetts Street together. Yager and Middleton said that last year the group of 25 scooter drivers received anything from funny looks to yells from onlookers.
"There were five guys on Harleys that saw us drive by," she said. "They didn't seem too impressed."
"There were five guys on Harleys that saw us drive by. They didn't seem too impressed."
Patti Yager
Patti Yager
ScooterHawks president and Marysville
first-year pharmacy student
In addition to planning tapes and group rides, Yager said the group had also been working with city officials to deal with scooter related issues such as theft.
Inconsistencies and confusion with laws are also concerns for the group.
Yager said some police officers told scooter owners they could park in a certain place, while other officers ticketed scooters in the same spot. A police officer once pulled over a scooter rider for wearing sandals while riding, even though it is not illegal to do so, she said.
ScooterHawks' biggest concern is parking downtown. Middleton said the group was working to get a resolution to the city commission to create more spaces for scooter parking. It is illegal to park scooters on sidewalks, and there are only a few designated scooter and mo-ped parking spots behind downtown stores.
Middleton and Yager said using an entire car parking space for a scooter was impractical and wasteful.
City Commissioner Mike Rundle said the commission was still in the early information-gathering stages. He said he was working with the city manager to find little-used parkingareas.Now the city is assessing the specific needs of the ScooterHawks and other scooter riders in order to find a solution.
Other than the inconvenience of parking downtown, Yager said scooters were a cheap and convenient way to get around town and campus. Yager said the University had a scooter-friendly campus. Scooter owners can drive on campus and park in bike racks.
Middleton bought his scooter because he didn't have enough money for a car and thought a scooter would be more convenient for small-town Lawrence traffic.
Yager and Middleton said most scooter owners didn't just ride scooters for convenience, but grow to love or obsess over them. Even though Yager has what she calls a "particularly crappy kind of scooter," she still loves it. She
affectionately calls it her "piggie because it's not quite a hog.
"But I have a Harley sticker on the back," she said: "I thought it would be funny."
Members of the scooter subculture notice one another. Middleton said if you saw two scooter owners meet, you would soon find them talking about their scooters or riding in the cold weather.
For more information visit the ScooterHawks' Web site at www.ku.edu/~scooterhawks.
— Edited by Collin LaJoie
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