Vespa Scooter

Ask anyone who's ever ridden one and they'll tell you it's all about the feeling of wind on your face, the hair-dryer whine of the engine and the road whizzing by under wheelbarrow-size tires. After a generation removed from the American market, the Vespa scooter, retooled and in eight candy-store colors from bright red to pastel green, is back. Italian manufacturer Piaggio pulled the line from North America in 1983, citing its inability to meet California's stringent air-quality regulations.

Riding a motor scooter in Los Angeles is a religious experience. And that religion is Calvinism. You need a broadly fatalistic streak to ride a motorcycle in this city, where every day is like rush hour in Pamplona. Motor scooters -- the chic, Euro-style mini-motorcycles with the engine beneath the saddle and the step-through design -- are especially chancy. Being smaller and lower than motorcycles, scooters have less of a silhouette and are harder for drivers to see.

Riding a motor scooter in Los Angeles is a religious experience. And that religion is Calvinism. You need a broadly fatalistic streak to ride a motorcycle in this city, where every day is like rush hour in Pamplona. Motor scooters -- the chic, Euro-style mini-motorcycles with the engine beneath the saddle and the step-through design -- are especially chancy. Being smaller and lower than motorcycles, scooters have less of a silhouette and are harder for drivers to see.

Ask anyone who's ever ridden one and they'll tell you it's all about the feeling of wind on your face, the hair-dryer whine of the engine and the road whizzing by under wheelbarrow-size tires. After a generation removed from the American market, the Vespa scooter, retooled and in eight candy-store colors from bright red to pastel green, is back. Italian manufacturer Piaggio pulled the line from North America in 1983, citing its inability to meet California's stringent air-quality regulations.

John HUNADAY'S rant about the disappearing American vacation ["American Workers Deserve a Vacation," Letters, Aug. 24] is nothing but rabid anti-Americanism, short on reason, facts and judgment. According to him, American workers are "cowards" and "stupid" in comparison to our European counterparts because we forgo earned vacation time when we feel that taking it would threaten our job security. It would seem obvious that the really smart and brave thing to do would be to find a job you enjoy doing so that giving up some vacation time to keep [the job]

A Los Alamitos police sergeant single-handedly captured an armed-robbery suspect on Wednesday, freeing a hostage taken at the entrance of El Dorado Park in neighboring Long Beach. "It went down so fast," said Sgt. Bill Barrett. ". . . From the time I called it in to the time the suspect was in custody was less than five minutes. I didn't have time to think about it."

The last Fiat 500 -- the tiny car with the big personality -- rolled off assembly lines nearly 30 years ago. But it's still fighting retirement. With more than 600,000 Fiat 500s out on the roads, two Italian senators are pushing a bill to make sure the beloved mini-car that thrust Italy into the motor age isn't done in by modern antipollution laws. Sens.

Sergio Pininfarina, who headed a family company known for its designs of sleek Ferraris and other cars, has died. He was 85. Pininfarina died Monday night at his home in Turin, the company announced Tuesday. No cause was given. The company founded in 1930 designed cars for Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Lancia, Cadillac, Rolls-Royce and Volvo but is most closely associated with Ferrari, designing nearly all of its models since the 1950s. The design house was started by his father, Battista "Pinin" Farina, who later changed the family name to Pininfarina.

HAVING SOLD TENS of millions of iPods and more than a billion iTunes, Steve Jobs is turning Apple Computer's attention to selling ... Microsoft Windows? That's one upshot of Apple's latest move, which will give the latest Macs the ability run the Windows operating system. The point isn't so much to pad Bill Gates' quarterly revenues, of course. It's to sell more Macs, particularly to people who worry about the Mac's incompatibility with Windows programs.

Mostly, it felt like a party, with martinis, couples on dates, loud music, the brandishing of cellphones and lots of animated talking. There were a few unusual notes: a line of people painting a very busy mural, two crestfallen young men stopped by guards as they tried to enter an art exhibition with an open bottle of wine. Even so, it was the kind of crowd not out of place at any hip Hollywood hangout. It was the second-ever art party at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, a 7 p.m.

FIRST Cher, then Ozzy, now the Great One? Last year the pop singer and actress auctioned off her old Goth furnishings, and earlier this month, Osbourne and wife Sharon announced that they plan to shed some belongings with a sale of their own.

They putter playfully across IBM billboards high above the Sunset Strip. They pester SUV owners in Toyota commercials. Supermodels conspicuously straddle them in ads. While the Vespa motor scooter hasn't been sold Stateside since the early '80s, the plucky little two-wheeler is the advertising industry's new darling. "Open any issue of Vogue," says Derek Olry, owner of the Santa Ana shop Scooter Cafe, "and there'll be two or three scooters inside.