THE SCOOTERATI

Trying to fit in with the scooter club reminded me of why I dropped out of Girl Scouts: girls in clubs can be so mean.

It started when I finally decided to go to a meet up of my local scooter club in the meatpacking district. I had read a lot about them online – the club heads urged new scooterists to come by, “don’t be shy”. “Everyone’s welcome.”

It’s not easy walking into a place alone, especially when you're ascending on a club where everyone is already old friends. I rode up on my scooter and parked alongside all of the other member’s Vespa’s and “the like”. A bunch of the members were standing around outside the bar with their pints of beer. No one greeted me but what was I expecting, a marching band? I figured I’d give them a chance to warm up to me, so I made my way into the bar and got myself a beer. I looked around inside and much to my delight I noticed a woman who had been selling her scooter on Craigslist, I had met her a couple of weeks before when I’d gone to check it out. She was standing next to another girl rider. It was great to see a familiar face in the crowd, I walked over to the two women to say “hi” but was taken aback by their mean girl glances. I was back in the 4th grade, only the mean girls were close to forty, dressed as Mods, and instead of drinking school milk slighly through straws, they were sucking Screwdrivers through tiny cocktail stirrers and red stained lips. I mustered a feeble “hi”, they briefly glanced my way but abruptly turned their backs - apparently attending to some private club agenda - pressing their Betty Page heads together to make sure I couldn't hear.

I’d been meaning to go to this weekly meet up for months, had kicked my butt to take a shower, to fight rush hour traffic over the Brooklyn Bridge. I took another swig of my draft beer and went outside where the other members were gathered. Soon enough, the president of the club came over. “Hey, you’re new here,” he said warmly. He was a big, nice looking guy, he was into scooters, but also rode a motorcycle. He called a couple of guys over and introduced me, they were equally friendly. I was glad I’d come. Finally, the president called over one of the few females in attendance there at the weekly meet-up. “Honey, hey, this is Claudia – this is her first time here.” She muttered a “hey” without looking at me as she trailed over to join the amoeba of scooter club regulars.

Soon, the mean girl I knew from Craigslist appeared outside, she’d walked up to her new scooter; a red modern Vespa that she’d fitted with a black and white zebra print seat. Her red and black outfit color coded precisely to her pride-n-joy Vespa. “Hey,” I said, “I met you a couple of weeks ago, you and your husband, I came over to look at your LXV.” “Oh, yeah. How ya doin,” she said, not looking up from adjusting the zebra shower cap that donned her scooter’s seat, “can we get out of here, please,” she admonished her husband who looked equally unimpressed when I reintroduced myself as the woman he’d spent 40 minutes talking bikes with but a couple of weeks before. Within ten minutes or so, the scooter club members buzzed off in groups of two or three, hootin’ and hollerin’ in wild ingin code, leaving me there alone to find my way out of the tangled streets of the West Village.

By the time I found my way back to the bridge, I realized I would probably never take the time to make it back to their bar. The guys were cool, but the mean girl’s cold facades had eclipsed their efforts – hell bent on keeping their female membership down near the single digits.

I’ve since spent some time on their forum. I jumped in on a couple of topics, even posted a couple of question of my own, all of which went unanswered. Seemed all the comment threads were dominated by about 10 key members, peppered with back and forth ribbing and private in jokes. These senior club members were all crowned with the badge, “Scooter Royalty” by their names. At the top of the club’s forum page was an invitation in bold type, “Join us on Wednesday nights, we’ll make you feel welcome,” yet I’d felt anything but. Whether it’s lunch tables, Country Clubs, or Scooterati – the dynamic isn’t so much about who’s in the club, it more about who’s not.