Modern Vespa

I was in Toronto, Canada a few months back. There's a great Vespa shop there. Big, full of bikes, kind of dirty, what a REAL shop should look like. The fellow who owns it seems to really know his bikes and has a loyal customer base. We spoke for a long time...I wish I could deal with him on a regular basis.

Is there a REALLY good Vespa/scooter place in the NY area? Everything thing I see is style/pretty/overpriced. THERE MUST BE SOMETHING!

I used to live in northern NJ
and Westchester is a tough market

The folks at Scooters Originali in Orange, NJ
have the sort of shop that you're talking about
but they specialize in vintage scooters
(Although I still recommend a visit)

My recommendation is:
to survey the local dealers in your neighborhood
find the best one
then do what you can to encourage them

Yeah it's probably a hard sell though since I hear people are not to sanguine about later model Vespas.

I heard somewhere there is a good one in Brooklyn.

You might want to cross the border to Connecticut, you can check out Vespa Ridgefield http://branchville.com They are also a Triumph shop.

Very good option, if you don't mind a long ride, is Vespa Hartford in Plainville, CT. http://scootercentrale.com Exclusive scooter dealer. Carries Vespa, Piaggio, Genuine and Kymco.
Great scooter people who know their stuff.

I have had the pleasure of meeting and speaking numerous times via conference call with the folks from Vespa Brooklyn. They have mad passion for this, I am pretty confident that your visit to their shop would be a positive experience for you.

Vespa Soho is an original shop in NYC, anyone been there lately?

Best,
SDG

Yes, I believe the teenagers would say: "It's mad overpriced yo".

I know you can't judge a shop by just one person but the owner should know what his employees do. I ordered a very expensive helmet from SoHo and it PAINED me to have to do it. The woman knew nothing about it and was rude. The ONLY reason i bought it from them (believe me i tried not to) was because they had the only one in the USA at the time. Maybe the actual store is different but i'm not even tempted to go in there when i hit the city every year on my way back here from upstate.

What I said here appears to be inaccurate,
so I've taken it out

Thanks for noting the distance from Westchester. Truth is, a good motorcycle shop would probably suffice. As far as "not wanting to deal with a modern Vespa" I DO own one and really like the bike.

It's just REALLY a pain to solve problems for.

MANY at least you have choices. Our "vespa" dealer sucks Mainly a HD shop and they know squat about fixing the Vespa's. That said we have a cool group of about 8 of us that get together and wrench. We brought the experts over and they showed everybody the things we needed to know about working on them. Our standard scooter shops here won't touch them either. Good luck in your quest. Perhaps you could get together with some people from your area and work on them together.

Did yo visit Motoretta in Toronto? I've seen a lot of pics of that shop; looks very cool.

Don't remember the name, it was in a "hippy dippy" neighborhood next to the
Toronto Chinatown neighborhood

Fada Scooters in Kensington Market.
http://www.fadascooters.com/
Dudes friendly and knowledgeable, good people there, switched from another store to there in fact because of this. Looking forward to getting my vespa back today from them.

You can try Metro Scooter across the bridge on the Rockland county/NJ border about 15 minutes after you cross the Tappan Zee.

Vespa does not have shops, they have "boutiques". Real shops are like the one in Canada. Boutiques are orderly but sterile. Just what newbies want.

Not so much anymore. Many Vespa boutiques have closed and in several instances scooter shops that carry multiple lines have started carrying Vespa/Piaggio. The boutique model will continue in the largest, high-volume markets but it seems the Vespa has (sensibly) started favoring more sustainable retail plans for the rest of the country.

It must have been FADA SCOOTERS, located at Augusta St.

We work on modern vespas. We are taking on new clients for modern vespas. I own a modern vespa, as has Gene and we were one of the original 30 vespa dealers when Vespa came back in 2000.

Sometimes, when we are slammed by work, we don't take on ANY new jobs, vintage or modern until we clear some space in the shop.

I do have to comment that there's a lot of crap stated as fact in this thread.

Soho were NOT one of the original Vespa dealers BTW. Manhattan Motor Car were before them in NYC. Soho didn't open until around 2002.

OP, you missed a good opportunity on Sunday. We had our swap meet. Tons of auto vespa parts marked down and lots of other modern riders from the area meeting up, as well as vintage.

Andrea

Oh dear! Sorry, Andrea!!
I moved away from NJ a couple of years ago, so I was working from old info
(They used to be frantically overworked, back when I was in NJ)

Now that I know that they're working on modern Vespas,
I can't recommend Scooters O highly enough!
They always did a brilliant job on our modern Vespas (mine & the husband's)
and are very helpful when you're trying to fix your own

Plus they're old-school scooter people like you were asking about in the original post
and they provide a lot of support for the scooter scene in the NYC area

They're right next to 280 and easy to get to
See X below and the map from their site:

Must be part of the same chain as is here in sadelaide, Judy - Nothing more fun though than parking the Vespa out the front and watching all the poorly endowed boys wince - but there is nothing worse than their service - don't know their Vespas. their parts, and every second word is "mate";

"no, Mate, That, eh mate, er part, mate, is um, mate, um, er I er, Dunno mate!!!"

and that is from some pimply little shit who just got out of his nappies

GRRRRRRRRRRR

Heh... you guys have it good!

The "local" dealer that Piaggio lists,
they moved to Aiken years ago

See below for their snipped the description, from the current Vespa dealer list for SC
(and the reason you need to call the dealer for directions is... )

Vespa Brooklyn.

http://www.vespabk.com/

Near Brooklyn Navy Yard. I bought three bikes from them and do my service there. Andrew is the owner. Was just there this morning. Will pick you up and drive you to nearest subway.

TWIN our vespa dealer told JimBo when he brought his scooter in to fixed (before being on MV very long) and the vespa tech said and i quote "my daddy would kick my ass if he saw me riding that". Jim has a GT 200.

Must be at least related - I go to a small guy who has been brilliant. only job he cannot do is reprogramming the ECU. when that happens I'll buy my own magic box!