Beat Boys in the Jet Age: Brigham's Bees Scooter Club

The blue ’59 Vespa in front of me swerves and its rider points to the ground, warning me of a potential hazard. I drift to the left and look down as I pass what isn’t much more than a greasy spot in the road framed in bloody fur and broken teeth. Sure, I’ve seen plenty of road kill driving my car, but I’ve never been able to take in the full effect like I can while riding my scooter.  The world’s details are harsher when they aren’t boxed out by layers of metal and glass. Blasting four feet over the asphalt, I’m forced to examine exactly the way in which these dead animals decompose and cook in the desert sun, eyes popping out, spilled guts filling with maggots. There’s something unhealthy about this, I imagine. Constantly being so close to the more brutal side of nature must have permanent, mind-warping effects. Maybe this is why scooterists, real scooterists, are so wild and deranged.

I’m riding through American Fork Canyon as part of an event hosted by the Brigham’s Bees Scooter Club—Utah’s most active scooter club. It’s a chaotic collective of scooter enthusiasts who get together every two weeks or so for rides and barbeques.  Not only do they do local rides around Utah Valley and Salt Lake City, but in recent months they’ve participated in rides as far south as Moab and as far north as Antelope Island. Although occasionally known for their out-of-hand partying, the Brigham’s Bees work to maintain a reputation as the friendly, harmless scooter club in Utah. But the striking sight of twenty scooters howling down the road makes quite an impression.

Leading the crew on his red Stella affectionately dubbed “The Albatross” is club president Sean Blake. Face obscured by scratched sunglasses and a goatee, Blake looks like some kind of crazed beatnik slicing through the heat mirages that rise from the asphalt like steamy ghosts. It has been two years since Blake took leadership of the club, and he has been instrumental in helping it reach the level of activity that BBSC now enjoys. Boo Crandall follows close behind. Crandall is a longtime BBSC member and local scooter legend infamous for launching off of poorly constructed jumps on his ’59 Vespa. I trail the two on my orange Stella, and to my rear is a vicious crew of riders as varied as the bikes they ride. Among them is Taylor Allen, a barely-legal scooter mechanic on his dark purple “Frankenstella”—an unholy mishmash of salvaged parts fueled by siphoned gasoline. He has a toolbox bungeed to the rack just in case roadside repairs are in order, as they often are.

The BBSC came together in 2001, founded and led by David Hurtado, the owner of Orem’s Scooter Lounge. Aside from being home to some of Utah’s best and most trusted scooter mechanics and dealers, the Scooter Lounge serves as the Bees’ official headquarters, playing host to summer barbecues and pre-ride meet-ups. Hurtado, now a busy family man, didn’t make it to today’s ride, but he’s logged enough miles over the years to put the rest of us to shame. In fact, this is one of his shop’s major selling points.

“The Scooter Lounge is the best place to buy a scooter or have one serviced because we have the most knowledgeable staff and the best mechanics. We are scooter enthusiasts, we ride what we sell,” Hurtado says. Before opening the shop and after years of hobby restorations, Hurtado had a gig with a Vespa dealership, and it was there that the idea struck him. “I realized that there was a need for a shop like ours, and that nobody was really interested in meeting it, so The Scooter Lounge was born.”
   
It is very much because of the Scooter Lounge that our stylish band of real world misfits are now climbing the mountain road to Tibble Fork Resevoir. The roads are thick with weekend traffic, SUVs loaded with coolers and fishing poles, vehicles large and powerful enough to kill any one of us should they be piloted carelessly. Blake looks back to young Allen, as if to make sure he’s still there. He’s explained it to me before, “Taylor has nine lives like a cat, and I’ve seen him lose three of them.” But, like any dedicated scooterist, even being sideswiped by a distracted driver in a blind intersection hasn’t deterred Allen from getting back on his scooter. He grins, taking in the scenery and crowds.
   
We ride as a group across the narrow dam, the reservoir to our left and the rest of the world to our right. The view is spectacular, and we stop to drink it in. Everyone kills their engines and the rumbling stops, leaving a strange void in the air. The emptiness is quickly consumed by the laughter and general shit-talking that follows this crowd around. Folks pull drinks out of glove boxes and backpacks and loiter, admiring each other’s scooters.  Shit-talking turns into good-natured bickering and arguing about which make of scooter is the best.

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Comments on this article

Posted on September 1, 2010 by Eliasothoth

Bummer that Mr. Perkins missed the LDS Rally - it was a hootenanny!

Posted on September 17, 2010 by Matt Stout

The Gropers is a Gang, not a Club.

Posted on September 20, 2010 by pharaohs SQUIRLY

the pharaohs are the greatest scooter club in the world. nothing is required of pledges, debauchery is just part of the pledgeing process.

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