Updated 05/09/2023
It's been a while since I wrote this nonsensical rant about e-scooters. It’s fair to say the article has not aged well.
Back when I first wrote this article, e-scooters were still a bit of a novelty. While I and many other people didn't feel like e-scooters were the end of the world, many people did experience conspicuous difficulties coming to terms with the changes they brought to our lives and communities. Instead of seeing e-scooters as just a new way to get around, many seemed to have confused them as the fourth horseman of the apocalypse.
These days e-scooters are everywhere, from busy sidewalks to quiet streets. They are very commonplace and many people would find it hard to imagine getting around without them. But even though e-scooters are now a familiar sight, it seems people have not lost their zeal for pushing them over, throwing them around, and generally sacrificing them for bloodsport.
So if you are one of the many people who look back on the advent of the e-scooter as one step further from simpler times, and one step closer to our sad demise, take solace in knowing that while these and several inventions hence have indeed changed our lives and modernized our streets, people have proven themselves to be scandalous vandals at heart. Not even modern conveniences can extinguish our desire to destroy something beautiful.
E-scooters are finally here! It’s about time.
To be exact, E-scooters are twenty-five years overdue. When I was a kid, the world promised me electric scooters would be ubiquitous by the early nineties. I was also promised hover-boards no later than October 21, 2015.
Life, it would seem, is full of bitter disappointments. So, if we can’t have hover-boards, I guess I’ll settle for scooters. Better late than never.
My review of the electric scooter.
I love E-scooters! They’re ridiculously fun and the vehicle of choice for heavy drinkers.
If I had one complaint, it’s that you have to operate the accelerator with one hand and the brake with the other, which leaves no hands available to operate a phone, let alone a camera. How the hell am I supposed to ‘Gram my scoot?! Come on!
Do E-scooter’s make us lazy?
Yes. But it’s a drop in the bucket. Life remains very very hard.
While life is still crushingly difficult and exhausting, I am pleased to report, that E-scooters take actually zero effort to operate. Any amount of walking I might have accomplished before E-scooters is now a hassle of the past. I’m still waiting though, for the app where I can summon someone to come and pick me up, from my office chair, and carry me to the nearest scooter.
Until then, I guess I’ll just have to walk.
How Lazy?
It wasn’t until my second ride on a scooter I discovered just how lazy I could get.
The scooter I’d chosen had a full battery, but there was something wrong with the accelerator. You could feel the drive catch and the scooter pull forward just before slipping and slowing down again. The scooter never got over one or two mph.
I did stop, to look for another scooter I could swap for my broken one, but there was nothing close by. So, like this, I rode a half mile, sputter-stop-starting to my destination, rather than just getting off to walk, which would have gotten me there much faster.
My Review of People
E-scooters are a big change for a city. If it’s one thing people cannot abide, it’s change. As such, our reaction to the dawn of E-scooters has been less than savory.
There’s been a rash of complaints about the scooters being parked in the middle of everything—in the middle of sidewalks, in the middle of the street, in the middle of bike lanes or in the middle of the Willamette River—I don’t know what all the complaining is about. Why is it such a hassle to just walk, or pilot your wheelchair, around a scooter in the middle of the sidewalk?
As for everybody complaining about how e-scooters are causing pandemonium on the streets—I swear to God, if I have to listen to one more person complain about how they nearly killed some guy who was trying to enjoy his first scoot… They say “nearly killed” like that’s a bad thing. Seriously, there are so many people in the world. Thanks to e-scooters, we might finally be able to more effectively cull the herd.
This is Why We Can’t Have Anything Nice
E-scooters are a miracle. The best thing since penicillin. The sooner we can get over ourselves and accept that we might never have to walk anywhere ever again, the better. But just like Anti-Vaxxers and Penicillin, all of the people are welcoming this miracle device the only way we know how to welcome any other miracle, with brutality, death and destruction.
If e-scooters have revealed one thing about ourselves, it’s that people are assholes—soup to nuts. You give us one nice thing and we devise endlessly creative and elaborate ways to destroy or villainize it.
Gifs via @pdxscootermess
Author’s note: this story was transcribed using a dictation app. I’ve become exceedingly lazy lately and I’m officially over the whole typing thing. Since I’ve stopped typing with my sandwiches, typos and grammatical snafus are peanut for the course. You should fly it for themselves! Never in the years of scallop has aluminum been more affordable, I think to eat a Diet Coke&