Scooter a Paris

When I arrived at the airport, the metro system was down. Apparently there’s been a transit strike going on for the past 3 weeks. I tried to keep an open mind about the transit workers and their plight... but after I read about their grievances I think they’re a bunch of lazy fucks who don’t want to be judged by performance. The dancers union joined in the fray of whiners to make the situation seem even more ridiculous. In America, these striking workers would’ve been replaced already.

At the center of the labor dispute, which sparked widespread protest and strikes lasting over two weeks, are reforms that would do away with 42 different pension schemes and replace them with a points-based system. Additionally, the reforms seek to set 64 as the age until which people must work to earn a full pension. That is two years beyond the current official retirement age in France. Even Paris Opera workers, who can retire at 42, joined the strike. On Tuesday, some 40 dancers performed Swan Lake to passers-by on the steps outside the opera house with banners warning: "Culture in danger." French unions are hoping the government will back down on pension reform, as it did in 1995, when three weeks of metro and rail stoppages just before Christmas resulted in a win for labor activists.

N’importe quoi. I used my French to give directions to a cabbie. “Cent vingt cinq rue de serves s’il vous plait.” I’ve been to Paris 3 times before, each time spending extensive time riding subways and trains to get around to sites. I had never taken a cab before. Without a subway, you start experiencing the city differently. You have to speak to a cabbie in French to get to where you want to go. All of a sudden I appreciated the fact I learned useless language French for 6 years in middle school and high school. Paris is a vast city. Without a subway you realize it takes a lot of time to walk from one neighborhood to another. You see the connective tissue that holds the city together. The ubiquitous low lying buildings with mansard roofs, small squares and plazas, pocket parks, and cobblestone intersections. With kids, however, the distances become daunting for walking. A mile here, a mile there.. all of a sudden the kids are complaining about assorted health issues like bad backs, strained hip flexors and calf soreness. As they were about to mutiny the ship of boring walks they looked in awe at people whizzing by in electric scooters. In no other city have I seen more adults on scooters than Paris. It’s useful to get around a large city, especially when their transit system goes down the toilette. In nyc, I’m a pariah.. an embarrassment.. a source of shame when I ride a scooter. In Paris scootering is cool. Thank god for electric scooters. They’re exactly what boys want to enjoy moving. Dangerous, fast, and autonomous. To them it’s like an amusement park ride.

For the paying adults in the audience, scooters are 1 euro to activate, and 15 cents for each minute. They reach a max speed of 12.4 mph or 20.5 km/h. Scooter riding is probably 4x more expensive than riding a cab but 4x more fun.

By the end of 2019, there will be 20,000 electric scooters on Parisian streets, 1/3 of which are ridden by foreign tourists at any given moment. There are about a dozen scooter companies.. Dott, Lime, tier, circ, bird. The rules of usage are not clear. Although they are not supposed to ridden on sidewalks and would incur a 135 euro fine if caught, you see them on sidewalks all the time. They are supposed to be parked on bicycle parking areas on streets, but you see them on sidewalks. Uncharged scooters litter the sides of roads abandoned. Not a few have been thrown into the seine. Scooters are meant to be used solo. To amass a large group of scooters for 5 people is like playing a game of Pokémon go.

Similar to Pokémon go’s augmented reality where you can tell which Pokémon of certain rarity are near your vicinity, in the lime smartphone interface you can see where scooters are in the city and how much electric charge they have left. We learned to scan maps to find the most scooters with the most charge within the closest distance. You never find more than a couple scooters at a time. Their distribution In the city is random... so you try to wheel them into a group. The front wheel locks when you try to wheel them on two wheels. This means you have to roll them on their back wheel. But once they’re activated together via the app, the fun begins. A gentle send off on foot coordinated with press on the throttle near your right thumb to accelerate... a squeeze of the left hand brake to decelerate. With these simple controls you are free to hover glide through Paris streets. Our first ride spanned from 125 rue de sevres all the way to atelier des Lumières show near pere la chaise cemetery in the northeast section of town. The sun was out, the wind was brisk and we scootered in a general direction... checking our map every so often so as not to be completely lost. When you encounter cobblestones you feel them rattle your ride and jaw. When you enter pedestrian zones, you weave slowly through the crowds. When you ride on the street you become aware of all the flanking motorized vehicles whizzing by. We made the Lumières show just in time. A 30 minute cheap taxi ride was replaced by a 2 hour electric odyssey on two wheels.