observations

A few days ago, I gave you a taste of the motor­cy­cle scene here in Oax­aca, at least those that are pressed into worka­day ser­vice. Today we look at scoot­ers here in Oax­aca, a species per­haps even more numer­ous than the work­ing motorcycle.

Frist off: in the above-mentioned dri­vel, I men­tioned that every man­u­fac­turer here in Mex­ico has a copy, with greater or lesser fidelity, of the ubiq­ui­tous Honda CG-125 Cargo, and then failed to pro­vide a pic­ture of such. So here­with, over­sight reme­died, the Honda CG-125, in Domi­noes deliv­ery regalia:

Honda Cargo

Now with the scoot­ers. Actu­ally we’ll start with a sub-species of scooter, the step-through. The most com­mon type scene around Oax­aca is the Ita­lika, a par­tic­u­larly rough exam­ple I found on Inde­pen­de­cia this morn­ing:

Ita­lika Step-through

There are, of course, the Honda 90 and 110cc units in abun­dance, here seen in per­sonal trans­port form:

Honda Step-through

and the local-made copies, ita­likas, i believe. We see them here again, press-ganged into ser­vice of the evil Domi­noes:

Deliv­ery Vehicles

and now for some­thing com­pletely dif­fer­ent, before we get to the con­ven­tional scoot­ers, is a WTF moment. I have no earthly idea what ser­vice this lit­tle beastie per­forms, but it’s here near the Zocolo every day, and it’s back tires are worn smooth, from on-road use, i pre­sume:

who knows?

A fairly large local user of scoot­ers as trans­port are the police. Here we see two of Oaxaca’s finest arriv­ing at the sta­tion aboard their fire-breathing Honda Elite 125:

Honda Elite 125

Another pop­u­lar brand of locally-made scooter is the Vento, here seen trans­port­ing a local busi­ness­man on his daily errands:

Vento

but some of the local folks have a more finely honed sense of style and are will­ing to part with the seri­ous dough (by local stan­dards) to show it off. To wit, a clas­sic Vespa:

Vespa

in con­trast to the clas­sic vespa above, here we see an older scooter, logos (and gloss) long since lost to the rav­ages of time and blaz­ing sun. I think this is an older Ita­lika:

Old Ita­lika

Speak­ing of finely honed sense of style, this gent obvi­ously has it goin’ on: newish ita­lika 150 scoot, board shorts, UNAM Pumas shirt, shades, beis­bol cap, and iPod:

Which brings us to a few scoots that are obvi­ously objects of some enthu­si­as­tic focus of their own­ers. First we have the Rizla Gilera, com­plete with LeoVince pipe and RaceTech stick­ers:

And then a pair of mex­i­can car­bella Koncepts:

and in the “ideas above it’s sta­tion depart­ment”, the Ita­lika that wants to a Kawasaki when it grows up:

And to fin­ish off, it’s not a scooter, but it gives a great idea of the demands that these folks put on their trans­porta­tion on a reg­u­lar basis. Car? who needs a stinkin’ car?

well, that wraps it up for today. We’ll see what tomor­row brings. Keep the rub­ber side down and keep those feet up!
black­dog