Venture onto a suburban sidewalk this summer and just try to avoid getting nicked by the swarms of neighbor-hood kids whizzing by on their foot-propelled scooters.
Sleeker, speedier versions of the old skateboard-on-a-stick are no longer a mere novelty around town. With edgy new names like Razor and Xooter, they have popped up everywhere to become the season’s ultimate playground status symbol. And their cachet extends beyond the Pokemon generation, with older urban faddists buying them up as well.
But as summer fades into fall, will the scooter inevitably find itself thrown into the back of the garage to make way for the next big toy? Or will a truly strange trend take permanent hold — that of the scooter commuter?
Constantly scavenging for ways to save an extra dollar and shave that last minute off their commute, more and more harried rush- hour warriors are turning
to their children’s toy closets. The craze has become full-blown in places like New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo and Europe, where a few German parliament members are even riding them to government meetings.
But change has come a bit more slowly to the conservative Midwest, with only a few brave Chicagoans daring yet to scoot to workin public.
People like Barbara Keeney, a secretary at a North LaSalle Street law firm, and Jim Johanik, a Northwestern University graduate student who works at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, are itching to give it a try, but they still need some convincing that the scooter really is a useful alternative.
So to do them a service, and discover for myself whether the odd vehicles could become as commonplace as women wearing gym shoes with business suits, I bought my own Razor and tested it out one recent Friday morning on the perilous downtown path from my train station to Tribune Tower.
Besides some sore thighs and a near collision with a minivan, I have lived to tell the tale:
At 8:20 a.m., a good 40 minutes before the work whistle blows, I stepped off the Metra train at Ogilvie Transportation Center near Canal and Madison Streets with my scooter folded up and stowed in my backpack. One nice thing about the redesigned new versions is that they’re compact and collapsible, making them much easier to bring along than a bike and hardly noticeable to prying eyes on the train.
That quickly changed, though, once I made my way onto Madison Street. I whipped out the scooter, snapped it into its upright position, and all eyes immediately focused on me. Good or bad, these things attract a lot of attention.
Each time I stopped at a light, someone grilled me about how much the scooters cost (from $75 to $389.95) and how the ride feels (takes getting used to). As I coasted along in tie and dress shoes, I got everything from hushed expressions of awe from kids to a scoff from a middle-aged woman who branded me a “damn yuppie” to her amused friends.
The humiliation factor seems to be what keeps most commuters from trying them out. “Riding a scooter with shorts and a cap is degrading enough, I’d imagine,” said Johanik, who stopped to talk to me at a red light along the route. “But I’d feel like an absolute idiot doing it with a suit and a briefcase.”
Potential embarrassment aside, the scooter definitely can fly if you avoid particularly thick throngs of rush hour walkers.
After walking the scooter across the densely packed Madison Avenue bridge, I hopped on and swiftly began outpacing pedestrians, easily weaving past clusters of commuters as I glided by the columns of the Civic Opera House.
It was at the corner of Wacker Drive and Washington Street, though, when reality set in. Mastering the scooter requires much less practice and coordination than in-line skates, but it still takes more time than the single day I had devoted to it. Crossing Wacker, I gained too much speed and had my first mishap. I managed to stay on my feet but nearly collided with three suited men going in the other direction.
After sheepishly apologizing, I resolved to climb right back on the horse and made the bold move of taking to the street, riding the outer lane down Wacker to Randolph Street.
I tried to make this transition with the confident ease of a bike messenger, hoping perhaps to achieve the coolness of the late John F. Kennedy Jr., who used to pedal down the packed thoroughfares of Manhattan. Instead I got honked at by three taxis and bumped into one cabbie’s fender before I could escape again to the sidewalk.
Later I found out that this maneuver is illegal. City law forbids riders from using foot-powered scooters on the street and requires them to make an audible signal each time they pass a pedestrian on the sidewalk, according to Jennifer Hoyle of the city’s law department. The same applies to electric and gasoline-powered scooters.
I took some time at the corner to compose myself, then continued down Randolph, eventually growing comfortable with my new set of wheels. I rolled under scaffoldings, past crowds, over subway grates and deep cement cracks, all without incident. Gradually I realized that if I kept my knee bent, hands firmly on the handlebars, I could gain more control. I had found my rhythm.
I whipped down LaSalle Street at a brisk pace, but soon my right thigh began getting sore from the constant effort of staying balanced. Scooter aficionados say that after a couple weeks the muscles get used to the strain, but interested commuters should practice switching legs when riding to avoid that feeling of muscular lopsidedness and the danger of a muscle pull.
Another pitfall to avoid is overconfidence. Cruising across Wacker Drive at high speed, wearing a smug grin across my face, I must have been tempting the gods because a turning van almost plowed into me. Stunned, I slammed into the steel curb and staggered off the scooter to an audience of three laughing girls.
The vehicle’s complete lack of street credibility caused cars, trucks and cabs along the road to give it little respect or right of way. Sometimes they were too distracted by the sight of the scooter to even stop.
“I’ve been dying to buy one of those things for months,” Keeney, another closet admirer, told me as she waited on the corner for the light to change. “But I’m afraid I’d look as dumb as you did right there.”
Please don’t let any of these horror stories dissuade you from purchasing a scooter. Bear in mind that I’m supremely unathletic, and I’m glad to say that was the last life-threatening encounter of the trip.
I rolled along Wacker’s wide sidewalk to Michigan Avenue with only one ungraceful dismount near Wabash Avenue, when I tripped over myself and sent the scooter wheeling 360 degrees. Luckily no one saw that. I curved with ease through the crowds crossing the busy Michigan Avenue bridge. Once on the other side, I made one last push against the pavement and glided 200 feet to the Starbucks across from the Tribune for a well-deserved cup of coffee.
The 1.6-mile walk from the Ogilvie Center to the Tribune usually takes just under 30 minutes. Aboard my scooter, I did it in slightly less than 17 minutes, and I hadn’t even gotten the hang of the contraption yet.
The only complaints I had was that the workout built up a considerable sweat, I could barely walk afterwards and my vanity was mildly bruised. But on the plus side, I didn’t have to sit down and take off clunky skates or find a space to lock up my bike. I could just fold the scooter up and shove it under my desk.
The scooter was similarly quick, not to mention cost-efficient, compared to other travel alternatives. Making the same journey by bus took 17 minutes as well, but it costs $3 per round trip. A taxi reached the Tribune in 12 minutes but on a daily, round-trip basis, it would run a hefty $10 plus tip.
The riverbus is the most attractive option, the journey lasting under 10 minutes with breathtaking scenery included in its $4 round-trip price. But I also would have to wait an extra 10 minutes at the dock each morning for the boat to arrive.
If others decide to jump on the bandwagon, the scoot commute could actually catch on, if its marketers can solve what remains the product’s most nagging problem–the sheer idiocy of seeing a businessman riding a child’s toy.
Ken Sheetz, a 46-year-old commercial real estate broker, has used his Razor all summer to travel between his office at the R.R. Donnelly Building on Wacker Drive and his Streeterville apartment. He boasted that it cut his commuting time by two-thirds. But when his company’s casual dress policy ends with the summer, so will his love affair with the scooter.
“It’s fun, useful and a great workout, but I’m not using this thing in a suit, no way,” Sheetz said. “Maybe it might look hipper sometime in the future when more people use it, but until then I’m not going to be that one dope who does it.”
