For Mr. Mark, acquisition has streamed into everything.
Mr. Mark is a large man with a face pale as a headlight who has a room full of vintage Vespas. Before I met him I wasn't even looking to buy a Vespa. It was a warm evening, the sky lit like an outdoor movie screen before the film starts. My friend Scott and I walked along Airport Way South in Georgetown. We were both dressed simply in shorts, T-shirts, and flip-flops. The sound of the flip-flops was crisp and pleasant against the rush of traffic on the highway above, and to accentuate it I curled my toes while I walked: pop, pop.
It was after-hours, and we idled at the windows of Seattle's only Vespa store, Big People Scooters, which sits next to Jules Mae's saloon. The windows shone with a Santa's Toy Shop kind of glow, and beyond the gleaming toaster-shaped scooter bodies we could see a man -- presumably the owner -- asleep at a desk, his arms folded, his head down, as if exhausted by cataloguing all the numerous accessories and tiny parts associated with his overburdened shop. Black half-bowl style helmets, lozenge-shaped seat cushions, and round rearview mirrors like giant dental tools crowded around him. We knocked softly, steaming up the windows as we leaned in to look.
The thing about things is that their desirability is inevitably enhanced by difficult circumstances. To my friend and I, the Vespas suddenly looked the beautiful toys they were, perfect and unattainable. So when Mr. Mark ("My friends call me Mr. Mark," he announced at our introduction) appeared, herald-like, from the dim back alley and asked, "Interested in Vespas?" it all seemed in line with some sweet-faced sister of fate.
The desire for a vintage Vespa is a very particular and aesthetic necessity, one which might easily find the person afflicted with no ready remedy in sight. It isn't easy to find, for instance, a powder pink 1972 Vespa Sportiv with a two-piece headset and original chrome trim.
Mr. Mark schools his own desire. He's been in love with these scooters from Italy for decades, but just started collecting them about two years ago. The prospect turned out to be a lot more difficult than he imagined, he says. His story winds in and out of mechanical and bureaucratic jargon, the kind of talk particular to those obsessed. He owns 10 scooters himself, and he and his wife rode around Ireland in the off-season for their honeymoon.
"I don't know, the Vespa symbolized some alternative to the mainstream for me," says Mr. Mark, who takes time off from his administrative job at the UW to travel to Italy and make purchases. "I got into Vespas in the '70s, after I saw Quadrophenia by the Who. I liked the punk rock gritty lifestyle, and coming from a white middle-class background I thought, 'Ooh, this is pretty cool.' People all have different ideas about what owning a Vespa symbolizes. For some it means being very alternative and cutting edge, to go along with the piercings and tattoos and whatnot. Then there are others, semi-professionals in their 30s, who look at it as a practical way to be alternative. The Vespa really gives you that feeling that you're special."
Thus the Vespa came to be linked in my eyes with transgression, sin, and even temptation -- not the temptation to possess the object, but the subtle seduction of faraway places where the Vespa was the only means of transport. And it entered into my imagination not as an object of desire, but as a symbol of an unfulfilled desire. (Umberto Eco)
My friend Scott and I followed Mr. Mark across Airport Way South. The lots along that street are barricaded by brick buildings settling into disrepair, buildings that once served some prodigious purpose: foremost the old brewery. Mr. Mark led us into one of these, a space like a grain silo, in which the ceiling was so tall that it looked like the night sky. We gaped upward.
Then, suddenly before us, there was a room full of Vespas. Lined up neatly, like horses in a starting line. Ice cream colors, candy-striped running boards, everything evoking Roman Holiday. I wanted one, bad, and Mr. Mark smiled knowingly. "Take a look," he said. "I can answer any questions." He lit up a cigarette.
Lovingly kept by Northern Italians, these were vehicles decked out in chrome trim and baby-blue gloss, the seats imprinted by hours of wind-blown embraces, the baskets sagged by picnic bags of baguettes. The wear holds romantic appeal because those who become interested in such vehicles are plagued by romance. Practicality would lead a person to a Honda, or one of those sleek plastic Japanese scooters disparaged by Vespa fans, whose patriotism is purely fashion.
Every Vespa Mr. Mark brings back has a story of acquisition to go along with it, a history of parts, a kind of mechanical family tree. Greasy kick-starts and brake cables clutter the countertops, competing for space with rust-spotted coffee mugs in smoke-filled shafts of twilight. Mr. Mark himself is shrouded in smoke; he lights one cigarette after the other, and his answers are enveloped in the filtered stuff of habit. He can throw numbers and probabilities like a bookie, but he's honest. Or he seems that way. Asked about an iffy kick-start, he says, "I gotta work on that one for you."
"The first bike I ever rode was a little Yamaha, a 60, believe it or not," Mr. Mark says. Since he is not a little man, the image zooms around the room unspoken. "I used to kill it going up hills. Rapped it out." He grins, and the shadows under his eyes pool. He drags off his cigarette. Perhaps a habit like this isn't healthy. Maybe you become like one of those blindered carriage horses, your knees worn down by years of steadfast forward tread on cement, without the benefit of a view. Or, maybe it's all as simple as denominational devotion: Vespas, vespers, you know. Some kind of religious concern.
With the announcement in August that a United States investor group plans to buy a $650 million controlling interest in Piaggio Veicoli Europei S.p.A., the Italian-based maker of the Vespa, cult lovers may cringe. But Mr. Mark has a solution for you, in the dark corridors of Georgetown: He wants you to believe in the simple seduction of faraway places, in the unfulfilled desire. by Traci Vogel photo by Monica Lau
