Just a little runaround
The walls of Don Sercombe’s Glendora scooter shop are lined with candy-colored miniature motorcycles, like rich kids’ toys but with enough gusto to top 70 mph.
A year ago, Sercombe was selling the petite gas-powered bikes at an average of three per week. Now he’s moving them out daily -- by the dozens. His clients include preteens and adults, all of them in search of a new joy ride. It doesn’t matter that the bikes are so small that their riders find themselves at eye-level with car bumpers or that the pint-size cycles buzz along, whining like souped-up leaf blowers.
For riders, the little bikes provide a big thrill: At 16 to 20 inches tall, they travel so close to the ground that 25 mph feels like 50 mph. They’re cheap, selling for as little as $175 at flea markets. And they’re light -- about 35 to 60 pounds -- making them easy to maneuver.
They’re the closest thing so far to riding a speeding bullet.
“They’re cute and they’re exciting,” Sercombe says of the motorcycles, known as pocket bikes or mini motos. “Now it seems they’re everywhere.”
Despite their recent popularity, pocket bikes are illegal to ride on public streets. But many people do it anyway, irritating their neighbors with the high-pitched lawnmower-like sound and worrying politicians, who see them as a safety hazard.
Fourteen-year-old Ryan Neddeau, of Chino Hills, has been tooling around on a Chinese-made pocket bike for almost a year. His father bought it for $400 from a vendor who advertised in the Penny Saver. Ryan says he rides it on the streets and parking lots near his house. “They’re fun, they’re fast and they’re different,” he says.
He confesses, however, that the bike is uncomfortable.
“It’s sort of a pain to sit on it,” he says. “It rumbles too much.”
Cindy Simons, who rides with her husband and 14-year-old son, says she bought her candy-apple red Harley-Davidson mini-chopper two months ago. “It’s cute,” she says. “At 40-some years old, you want to look good.”
The Azusa woman outfitted the motorcycle with miniature Harley saddlebags, which she found in the bike department at Toys R Us. On the weekends, she and her husband -- who owns several mini motos -- used to show off their bikes in the vast parking lots at the Rose Bowl, a popular gathering spot for fellow riders. Now, as Pasadena and other municipalities crack down on the bikes, there are few places the Simonses can go.
“At first it was cool, and then there were too many bikes too fast,” Simons says. “You can tell someone a hundred times that it’s illegal to ride them on the streets, but they don’t care. They’ve ruined it for everyone else.”
Simons is not the only one complaining about the bikes’ newfound popularity. Internet chat rooms have been full of banter in recent days.
“I can’t stand these little bikes,” complained one blogger on the MetaFilter Network. “They seem to be everywhere all of a sudden, and they tend to be ridden illegally on sidewalks (lookout!) or in the streets (did we just run over something?).”
One woman wrote that she was in Minneapolis three weeks ago and saw a group of about 15 men riding pocket bikes.
“You have not lived until you have seen a gaggle of these things coming down the street. Annoying, loud, laughable to look at .... I still find it hard to believe it was the nightly pleasure ride for a group of men.”
During the 1990s, the only pocket bikes available in America were sleek models made by Harley-Davidson and Italian companies, including Blata and Polini. With price tags that range from $2,000 to $6,000, the high-performance bikes sport 10-horsepower engines, allowing them to break all speed limits.
Then came the knockoffs from China -- with their noisy 3-horsepower engines (an average-size lawnmower operates on a 5-horsepower engine). Although they lack the speed of their Italian counterparts, the Chinese motos are colorful and cute, shaped like miniature Ducatis and other racing bikes. On average, they retail for $200.
By the time school was out for summer last month, the bikes were up for grabs everywhere: at flea markets and on street corners, at Pep Boys and at toy stores. Through his store, Mini Motos Etc., Sercombe started wholesaling the bikes to vendors across the country.
Kevin Holmes, a sales associate at Sercombe’s store and a longtime mini moto enthusiast, says he warns customers that the bikes are illegal to ride on the streets. They usually reply with a shrug.
“People don’t care; they just keep riding them,” Holmes says. He recalls seeing one man in a suit and tie on a pocket bike teetering down the road like a circus clown.
“There’s too many of them out there,” Holmes says, “and it’s making it hard for everyone else.”
It didn’t take local authorities long to notice the trend. Los Angeles and San Francisco have begun ticketing riders, with fines that top $250, and confiscating bikes. (One man was arrested in the San Fernando Valley for driving a pocket bike under the influence.)
“We’ve had reports of 5-year-old kids riding these bikes,” says Mitch O’Farrell, a field deputy for Los Angeles City Councilman Eric Garcetti. “The other day, I saw a guy selling them on a street corner out of the back of his truck,” he says.
“It’s a big deal, and it’s about to get even bigger.”
