Rome’s New Cooking Museum Invites Visitors to Feast with Their Eyes
hyperallergic.com
hyperallergic.com
>If there’s one thing Italians are known for, it is zipping around on Vespas without a care in the world — but a close second would of course be the country’s long and delicious history of cuisine.
It seems to me like old clichès are really tough to die.
"Roman Holiday" is 1953.
This (reknown, by Ruth Orkin) photo :
http://www.ansa.it/webimages/img_900x700/2022/3/5/b3b30da089...
is 1951.
Some 70 years have passed since, something, maybe not much, but still something, has changed, or at least I rarely happened to see people in Italy zipping around on Vespas without a care in the world.
Lots of people zipping around in Vespas - they can be a bit bigger these days, but scooters continue to be utterly popular in any medium-to-large city in Italy, particularly around the centre. They are mostly not Vespas though, because they are very expensive these days and most of the local industry at lower price levels has gone; they're more likely to be Chinese or Korean products. Malaguti was recently relaunched though, so maybe things will change again.
without a care in the world - that's a very subjective assessment, that is hard to measure. For sure Italians have not been particularly happy for a long time, and their respect of road laws has markedly increased since the postwar period (a result of increased education and stricter enforcement, often with essential technological aid). This affected scooters significantly, since compulsory helmets put off a lot of people.
Maybe.
But that (helmets made compulsory) happened in 1986, i.e. more or less 36 years ago, for most people (moped drivers more than 18 years old were exempt) and in 2000, still more than 20 years ago, helmets were made compulsory for all.
I would say that by now they (the Italians) have managed to deal with that.
But what I meant is that helmet rules were one of the factors that resulted in the decline of sales that eventually wiped all the local manufacturers except Piaggio (which survives on Vespa and Ape built in cheaper factories offshore). The peak years were the late '80s / early '90s.
In the '70's and '80's (AFAICR less so in the '90's), any kid was waiting to get 14 to be able to get (if the parents could afford it) a moped, even a Ciao, and then started waiting to get 16 to be able to get the "A" driving license and be able to drive a 125 cc.
I think that there has been a general shift due to these and possibly other factors that made mopeds (but also motorcycles) less desirable to most young people.