 More Than Just Hitting Him in the Wallet, High Gas Prices Have Tim Steiner Saying Ciao to a LifestyleThis spring in America, as gas prices rose above four dollars a gallon, everything changed. It was a sudden irreparable shift, and the reaction was a collective gasp, like the first glimpse of a monster comet streaking across the sky, about to impact, and to destroy those automotive dinosaurs known as SUVs. It was a feeling that, like any huge beast scavenging for scarce resources after a catastrophe, those massive trucks that had armored suburban moms and upwardly mobile IT guys from Menlo Park, may not be dead all at once, but their days were surely numbered. At that moment, we all knew that even if gas prices were to lower, we could never take cheap gas prices for granted again. This was the doomsday scenario we all had feared: an America without cheap and reliable supplies of gasoline. Would some sort of “Mad Max” inspired world emerge, where wolf packs of commuters would kill each other over jerry cans of gasoline? Would we see a return to the mile-long lines at gas stations that I remember from my youth in the Ford administration? Would there be rationing as they did during WWII? What would Americans do in this brave new post-apocalyptic world? Is it possible we would all become more European? When this shift happened, I was in Italy, a country used to high gas prices translating to roughly $10 per gallon. Still, Italians have a love of speed and of their cars that rivals our own. They just get their fix in a different way. The Italian roads are clogged with a mix of light trucks, motorcycles, scooters, and more tiny cars than a Shriners’ convention. It’s common to see an Italian family of four joyfully zipping along in a Fiat 500; a car roughly the size of the cargo bed of a GMC Denali. Smart cars and flatbed delivery vehicles with motorcycle engines park along the cobblestone streets, scooters of all sorts line the  sidewalks. In short, they get along just fine.When I arrived home, I took a look at the Jeep Grand Cherokee in my parking spot, the $85 a week it cost me to fill it, and realized it was time for me to evaluate some of the choices I had made. I had been feeding that thing for almost five years and I couldn’t remember the last time I actually had it in four-wheel drive. I was like a child who had demanded a pony for his birthday, got the thing, and watched it eat all of the cake, bite the partygoers, and walk over to the neighbor’s yard to defecate. Now, bucking and neighing, the pony had to go. I wanted to live harmoniously with the environment, I wanted to be more integrated into my community by consuming less resources, I wanted to live the way the Italians did. But hey, I’m a stylish guy; I couldn’t see myself in a Prius or a Rav4, which is, face it, the official mini-SUV of a freshman female college student. The Honda Fit was too boxy, the Scion too hip; too Bronx, roll the windows down, thump the bass, and blare Jay-Z, cool. The Yaris was just wrong. I needed a car that had a pedigree and some sort of cachet, a car that said something about me beyond the fact that I am cheap and didn’t want to spend a ton of money on gasoline. I needed a car that complimented the suits I wear. I wanted something with a European styling, with a bit of mystery. What is a well-styled man to do in this dawn of a sub-compact age? I chose a red and black Mini Cooper S. The Mini, built in Oxford, England, is a subsidiary of BMW, has 175 horsepower, and a 6-speed manual transmission. The 36 highway and 29 city it boasts for fuel efficiency seems like an afterthought to a sport coupe that is even more fun to drive than the bumper cars at the Jersey shore, even if it is roughly the same size. Yes, with its smart retro styling, spirited performance, and excellent fuel economy, this was the car for me. After saying goodbye to my Cherokee, jumping in for the first time, and pulling into traffic with neck-snapping speed, I had never been so satisfied with a car purchase. The car may be small, but it was engineered to fit a 7-foot tall man. My 6’2” inch frame fit nicely. OK, so now I had this car thing covered. Somehow, the car alone wasn’t enough to finish my transformation. I had learned something in Italy. The Italians had impeccable taste in clothes, access to fresh foods, good cheap wine, two-hour lunches, this casual laidback attitude, and beautiful women were everywhere; the Italians knew how to live. Maybe there is something to the old adage that there are two different types of people in the world: those who are Italian and those that want to be. Only, forget the nationality, I wanted the lifestyle. But how to achieve it? I certainly had the clothes covered; food and wine could be easily taken care of with a trip to Whole Foods; two hours lunches seemed a bit long for tuna salad. It was the change in attitude that I need the most. I am an uptight American, worried about the value of my 401K, plotting my next career move. The Italians? Well, as Eddie Izzard famously said, “…most Italian people are always on scooters, going, ‘Ciao!’ … it's like that. Everyone's cool." I knew what I had to do. Sales of scooters in the United States are up exponentially. In Boston, a scooter with an engine size less than 50cc does not have to be registered, or insured, and can be parked on the sidewalk or any bike rack. Basically, the law recognizes it as a motorized bicycle. So, scooters offer the same freedom here as they do in Italy. There, everyone from CEOs of companies to young people zip around town on them, weaving in and out of traffic, parking anywhere they wish, visiting monuments and restaurants, and generally living the café lifestyle. With gas mileage above 80 mpg, the convenience of parking them anywhere, and the cool European styling of some models, it seemed like the perfect choice for a city dweller like me. Scooters were once rare in Boston. Suddenly, they were everywhere. Some say the streets of Boston will soon look like the streets of Saigon, Beijing, Rome, or Paris; the scooter-thing is catching on and I wanted to be part of it. Now, that is just the attitude adjustment I needed. Once again, I couldn’t have just any scooter. I went for the Ferrari of scooters, the Italian Vespa. The Vespa has maintained its art deco styling, recalling images from films like “Roman Holiday,” where Audrey Hepburn wobbles precariously through Piazza Venezia with Gregory Peck hanging on for dear life, or the pin-up advertisements that famously promoted them back in the 50s and early 60s. A famous photo of Anthony Perkins shows him on a Vespa around the time he played Norman Bates. Now, everyone from James Gandolfini, Mickey Rourke, and Brad Pitt are riding them. The Vespa is an icon with lines as bold as a 54 Chevy and I had to have one. As I wrote the check to pay for the last red Vespa in all of Boston, I remembered an old joke I had heard, “what do scooters and fat girls have in common? They’re both fun to ride, but you don’t want your friends to see you.” I knew I would be subjected to the endless ribbing of my friends; I knew that some people would call it a moped; and you know what? I didn’t care. Once I had a young lady on the back of it, with her arms wrapped around me, and I was zipping through Boston’s traffic with ease, I had finally achieved that cool European insouciance that I had craved. I realized that the things in my life did not define me; I defined them. I was the man I wanted to be, prepared for whatever life, the oil market, or anything else had to deliver. I also realized that the Mini and the Vespa were from the same era; the time of Fellini and Godard, of skinny ties and narrow lapels, of Beats and Mods. Could it be that somewhere down the road, I had picked up a Mod sensibility? Me, the man who is known for 40s fedoras and belted-back jackets? If so, I was OK with that. Perhaps a mod-ification of America is a good thing. It’s certainly good for me. I want a café life in this brave new world. Can two-hour lunches and 30-hour work-weeks be far behind? About the Author: Timothy J. Steiner is a photographer, extensive traveller, and writer on men's fashions and his adventures around the world.
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