Rebels Without a Hog: Inside Brooklyn’s Moped Gang

**HungusMaximist** · 4th October 2010, 17:26

BROOKLYN — Cassette tapes, typewriters, vinyl records, NES consoles. The reclaiming of forgotten technology is every hipster’s siren song.

Mopeds are no different, and the vintage bikes are forming better meatspace communities than most iPhone apps.

Almost every major city in the U.S. boasts at least one moped gang, and the names straddle being badass and ironic: Creatures of the Loin (San Francisco), Puddle Cutters (Portland, Oregon), the Tom Cruisers (Tempe, Arizona), Latebirds (Los Angeles), Landsquids (Sacramento, California), Decepticons (Kalamazoo, Michican), Hells Satans (Richmond, Virginia) and more.

The Oprhans are Brooklyn’s fearsome two-stroke contigent (pictured above), and they’re obsessed with the abandoned pedal-start bikes.

Mopeds reached the height of their popularity in the late 1970s during the oil crisis. Now they litter backyards and clutter garages with their rusted frames and rotted tires. A growing subculture, to which the Orphans belong, is eager to breathe life back into these motorized gems and turn them loose in the streets.

In April, some Orphans opened the Orphanage in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. It’s a full-service moped shop that carries parts and accessories, as well as engine and exhaust kits to power up a moped. Most of the shop’s business comes from fixing broken mopeds, since the bikes that roll through its doors often haven’t run in 30 years.

Read on as we meet some of the Orphans, have a run-in with the law and take a ride over the bridge into Manhattan, moped-style.

Read More http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2009/08...#ixzz11MeYSNMx