The Electric Scooter and the Fall of Dot-Com

— Pete Townshend

My electric scooter is a Currie Phat Flyer. You can’t miss it with that coat of paint, the yellow of Captain Kirk’s uniform, a shade that Schwinn ought to patent. I say Schwinn because if you go to Currie’s Website, you’ll see that the company was swallowed up by Schwinn and Mongoose. No more Currie scooters — it’s all electro-powered bicycles now. Scooters are left to the two senior partners.

Two years ago I purchased my scooter second-hand for $250, pushing the philosophy of conservation to its logical conclusion: environmentally sound and fiscally smart. The previous owner handed me the original sales receipt, from a store called Green Machines. I called them up a few months back because the rechargeable electric battery was running down on my Phat Flyer, only to find that they no longer exist either.

You still see a few Phat Flyers here in San Francisco. They won’t win a fashion contest with the goosey necks and handbars, the fatty tires. When I pull the brakes on mine, you can smell the friction. Compare that with the new boxy, silver-and-black Schwinn and Mongoose models, with military-issue names like “M250” and “M350.” I can’t help thinking of B-2 bombers.

It’s difficult to lug my 65-pound Phat Flyer up and down the stairs to the metro, but I have great affection for it. The motor whirs like the mini racing cars I had as a kid, and nothing matches the sensation of hurtling down Sacramento Street and its 60 degrees of invigorating angle — standing up. Setting aside the environmental advantage, there’s a strange exhilaration in being propelled by pure electricity, zipping across town without building up so much as a bead of sweat. And yet, riding is sometimes a lonely experience, as it reminds me of headier times. Keg parties at the office every Friday. Public offerings and direct purchase stock plans. Pure money motive tied to a modern-day hippie’s dream of bettering life on this planet.

In my memory, scooters are inseparable from my first dot-com job at LookSmart, circa 1999. Both burned with the passion of the new and faintly ridiculous, both were imbued with a charming “gee whiz” mentality. I remember the television commercials, the Industry Standard paeans, wunderkinds and grinning Internet employees gliding through space-age corridors on their two-wheeled chariots. The world was changing, of that we were all certain. Paradigm shifts. The entire globe connected. Walls coming down. Liberal arts majors with steady jobs. Like the Pets.com sock puppet, like these cocky new dot-coms with their venture capital billions, scooters seemed ill-advised, only half-formed, but they were too charming to ignore. Who thought it would be a good idea to pit these little gizmos against the steepest San Francisco hills, the car drivers who run red lights as easily as we breathe, the reckless bicyclists and their holier-than-thou airs? But the SUV, with its bloated excess masquerading as practicality, symbolized the shady side of dot-com. Scooters, with their Little-Engine-That-Could modesty, reminded us all that we were really geeks at heart — and it was okay.

Alvin*, one of my fellow editors at LookSmart — they called us editors, but we were really glorified web surfers — would cruise in every day on his scooter. These were the early days of scooter evolution, so his made quite a racket, a cross between a bee and a dive bomber, but you couldn’t help but admire the elegance of his approach, how he stood stock straight as he swooped in, how he dismounted with pattering rhythm, one-two-three. People would advise him to be careful, the older people in the company going all school-marmish, and he would take it in with a satisfied smile, pleased at the attention but confident that nothing would befall him. He was invulnerable. We all were.

It wasn’t an easy lifestyle. Even in those days, electric scooters were objects of derision to most. We scooter owners couldn’t be like normal people and ride the bus, or just buy a real scooter, for God’s sakes. Where was the speed? What was with the dorky designs? Dot-com wasn’t being taken very kindly, either. LookSmart was leasing an entire office building for millions per year, and artists were being forced out of the Mission District by skyrocketing real estate prices. Gentrification, commercialization, homogenization — all of it laid at the feet of the evil Dot-Com Gods. It was easy to single out the electric scooter — no one with a scooter could possibly be unrelated to the Internet industry. And to be in the Internet was to be a moneygrubbing, soulless, corporate sterilizer. Often I was reminded of the Lenny Bruce routine: We can’t separate the authority from the people with the authority vested in them... And so, gliding down the street, exposed and vulnerable, I would see those hooded glances, the barely veiled contempt. Or frat boys on the sidewalk would take swings at me as I passed, as if I was a shooting gallery duck. Even a child on a tricycle would be spared such indignity.

And yet, pride of ownership prevailed. There were those thrilling moments when I was approached by a curious passerby at an intersection: Is that electric? How much does it cost? I have to get myself one of those... Interestingly enough, it was the poorer people, the ones without means, the ones not obsessed with image and appearance, who evinced sincere interest. The skateboarders, the teens with the fancy tattoos, the Financial District denizens in their Oxfords were the ones who despised and ridiculed. Perhaps they were afraid the same way they were afraid of dot-com, this new class of being, this threat to their ordered existence. I paid them no mind. I could ride to work, plug my baby into an outlet to recharge, and zoom anywhere with impunity. This was freedom, this was individualism, this was the Phat Flyer.

Now that I look back on it, the boom ended when Alvin showed up to work one day with bandages smothering his face, his eye bloated black. The inevitable had happened — a car had run a red light, or perhaps switched lanes too sharply without checking in advance. I never got the full story, but everyone knew: his electric scooter was dead, the dot-commoner had proven to be mortal after all.

Soon after that incident came the next stage in electric scooter evolution: the Segway “Human Transporter”. Built like a lawnmower on Power Wheels, made to hog the sidewalks, retail priced at over $3,000, it even took the fine art of balance out of the equation with its self-correcting equilibrium. But the stock market was crashing, LookSmart was laying off all those liberal arts majors, and with clenched jaws, the experts were saying “I told you so,” and ushering in a sober era of American flags in every window, hushed discussions of oil prices. In such an environment, no one was fooled by the Segway for a moment. Even San Francisco, Alternate Transportation Capital of the world, was agitating for its banishment from the sidewalks. When the Segway was recalled due to mechanical problems — it turned out that auto-balancing feature wasn’t as “auto” as it was supposed to be, and users had been injured as a result — it wasn’t so much of a surprise as it was an exclamation point, a fulfillment.

Five years since 1999, and much has changed. Alvin has disappeared, as have all the familiar faces at LookSmart. We used to hold variety shows there every few months. Alvin brought his guitar and belted out an altered version of the Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” changing the title to We’ve Got the New Funnelweb — a select few will get the in-joke, but it will fade with time, like everything else. I still survive at a different dot-com, but no scooters are allowed in the building due to liability concerns, just like playing Frisbee in the nearby park is prohibited due to liability concerns. I still ride the scooter every now and then, but as the battery continues to die, I average about four miles before I run out of juice, compared to eight during the glory years. Barreling down Sacramento Street without even a touch of throttle is as easy as ever, but I have to get off the scooter and run alongside it while giving it the gas to get back up the hill.

The other week I buzzed past some skateboarders doing their thing on the sidewalk. One of them saw me and shouted, Loser! The words cut me to the heart, but still I continued on, until I ran out of juice once again, and pushed my way home, like a regular motorless scooter, the old-fashioned way. Even as I lick the wounds to my pride, I will press on until the Phat Flyer is good and dead, and by then the new paradigm will have emerged, austerity giving way to new hopes and ideas. Perhaps a folding bicycle — they allow folding bicycles in the office.

• Names have been altered to protect the innocent.