History...
The Swarm was founded long long ago and back in the day we had a Swarmanifesto that went a little something like this:
"A motorcycle of a rational complexity, of organs and elements combined with a frame with mudguards and a casing covering the whole mechanical part". - Original Piaggio Patent
Who we are: (with apologies and respect to F.T. Marinetti, whose Futurist Manifesto we have bastardised)
"We have been up all night, my friends and I, beneath 12v lamps whose halogen cupolas are bright as our souls, because like them they were illuminated by the internal glow of 2-stroke hearts.
Our hearts were filled with an immense pride at feeling ourselves standing quite alone, like lighthouses or like the sentinels in an outpost, facing the four-wheeled army of enemy stars encamped in their celestial bivouacs.
Alone with the Piaggio and Innocenti engineers in the infernal stokeholes of holy Pontedera, alone with the black spirits which rage in the belly of rogue engines, alone with the drunkards beating their Fred Perrys against the walls. Then we were suddenly distracted by the humming of 2-stroke motors that went leaping by, streaked with light like the villages celebrating their festivals, which the Molonglo in flood suddenly knocks down and uproots, and, in the rapids and eddies of a deluge, drags down to Lake Burley Griffin. Then the silence increased. The Swarm, or something more menacing on our streets?
As we listened to the last faint prayer of the old TV175 and the curses of their riders invoking deities with "start you bastard!", suddenly the hungry Vespas roared beneath our windows. `Come, my friends!' I said. `Let us go!
At last Mythology and the mystic cult of the ideal have been left behind. We are going to be present at the birth of the centaur and we shall soon see the first angels fly!
We must break down the gates of life, to re-jet the carbs and to test the bolts and the clutch plates! Let us go! Here is the very first sunrise on earth! Nothing equals the splendor of a GS160 which starts first-kick in our millennial darkness.' We went up to the snorting machines to caress their breasts and side panels. I lay along mine like a corpse on its bier, but I suddenly revived again beneath the sputtering Dell'Orto - a guillotine knife - which threatened my wallet at the thought of a SIP order.
A great sweep of madness brought us sharply back to ourselves and drove us through the streets, steep and deep, like dried up torrents. Here and there unhappy commuters in our Stadium mirrors taught us to despise our mathematical eyes. `Smell,' I exclaimed, `the smell of gaudy blue 2-stroke is good enough for wild beasts!' And we hunted, like young lions, no reason to die unless it is the desire to be rid of four wheels and the great weight of registration and parking fees! We drove on, crushing beneath our burning 10" wheels, like Ben Sherman shirt-collars under the iron, the watch dogs on the steps of the houses. Death, tamed, went in front of me at each corner offering me his hand nicely, and
sometimes lay on the ground with a noise of creaking jaws and slipping clutches, giving me velvet glances from the bottom of puddles.
`Let us leave good sense behind like a hideous husk and let us hurl ourselves, like fruit spiced with pride, into the immense mouth and breast of the scootering world! Let us feed the unknown, not from despair, but simply to enrich our tanks with 98 octane, Motul oil and the unfathomable reservoirs of the Absurd!'
As soon as I had said these words, I turned sharply back on my tracks with the mad intoxication of puppies biting their tails, and the aid of front disk brakes, and suddenly there were two motorists disapproving of me and tottering in front of me like two persuasive but contradictory reasons.
Their stupidity got in my way. What a bore! Pouah! I stopped short, and in disgust hurled myself - vlan! - head over heels in a ditch. Oh, maternal ditch, half full of muddy water! A factory gutter! I savored a mouthful of strengthening muck which recalled the black teat of my Sudanese nurse! My Harrington stained and my 10-holes scuffed, as I raised my body, clad in my mud-spattered Corazzo, I felt the red hot poker of joy deliciously pierce my heart.
A crowd of bogans and gouty public servants crowded terrified around this marvel. With patient and tentative care they raised high enormous grappling irons to fish up my scooter, like a vast shark that had run aground. It rose slowly leaving in the ditch, like scales, its heavy coachwork of good sense, mirrors caked with black and its upholstery of comfort. We thought it was dead, my good shark, but I woke it with a single caress its powerful kickstarter, and it was revived running as fast as it could on its fins. Superior sputtering 2-stroke and a check of idle speed righted me. Then with my face covered in good Australian mud, covered with metal scratches, useless sweat and celestial grime, amidst the complaint of staid bogans and angry public servants, we dictated our first will and testament to all the living men and women on earth.
We will sing of great crowds excited by chrome, by pleasure, and by cheap online Vietnamese bling; we will sing of multicolored 2-tone paintjobs; we will sing of the Cuppini rack, the PM Tuning exhaust, the Pinasco cylinder, the Malossi roller kit and the reed valve; bridges that stride Lake Burley Griffin like giant gymnasts, flashing in the sun with a glitter of knives; adventurous cutdowns that sniff the horizon and smell only the welds of rescued frames and salvaged tanks; wide-bodied vintage Vespas whose 8" wheels paw the tracks like the hooves of tiny fat steel horses bridled by tubing; and the sleek flight of narrow Lambrettas whose flywheels chatter in the wind like banners and seem to cheer like an enthusiastic crowd, until they break down.
We affirm that the world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A scooter whose body is adorned with chrome, whose suckhole breathes with the spitting of great pipes, SIP, Simonini, Polini, Leo Vince, ScootRS and Sito, like serpents of explosive breath—a roaring scooter that seems to ride on fumes is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.
We intend to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and fearlessness. We sing of Italian style, of encased engines, of drunken nights and days spent cruising eBay for wheel hubs, and nights spent weaving between the lines of freshly-layed bitumen.
We offer allegiance to no man, nor woman. Outside of work hours and allowing for flex time and leave accrual, we will own our roads 7 litres at a time, allowing for smoke breaks, toilet stops and sparkplug changes.
We are who we are, this is what we do, we are many, we are proud, we are The Swarm."
"A motorcycle of a rational complexity, of organs and elements combined with a frame with mudguards and a casing covering the whole mechanical part". - Original Piaggio Patent
Who we are: (with apologies and respect to F.T. Marinetti, whose Futurist Manifesto we have bastardised)
"We have been up all night, my friends and I, beneath 12v lamps whose halogen cupolas are bright as our souls, because like them they were illuminated by the internal glow of 2-stroke hearts.
Our hearts were filled with an immense pride at feeling ourselves standing quite alone, like lighthouses or like the sentinels in an outpost, facing the four-wheeled army of enemy stars encamped in their celestial bivouacs.
Alone with the Piaggio and Innocenti engineers in the infernal stokeholes of holy Pontedera, alone with the black spirits which rage in the belly of rogue engines, alone with the drunkards beating their Fred Perrys against the walls. Then we were suddenly distracted by the humming of 2-stroke motors that went leaping by, streaked with light like the villages celebrating their festivals, which the Molonglo in flood suddenly knocks down and uproots, and, in the rapids and eddies of a deluge, drags down to Lake Burley Griffin. Then the silence increased. The Swarm, or something more menacing on our streets?
As we listened to the last faint prayer of the old TV175 and the curses of their riders invoking deities with "start you bastard!", suddenly the hungry Vespas roared beneath our windows. `Come, my friends!' I said. `Let us go!
At last Mythology and the mystic cult of the ideal have been left behind. We are going to be present at the birth of the centaur and we shall soon see the first angels fly!
We must break down the gates of life, to re-jet the carbs and to test the bolts and the clutch plates! Let us go! Here is the very first sunrise on earth! Nothing equals the splendor of a GS160 which starts first-kick in our millennial darkness.' We went up to the snorting machines to caress their breasts and side panels. I lay along mine like a corpse on its bier, but I suddenly revived again beneath the sputtering Dell'Orto - a guillotine knife - which threatened my wallet at the thought of a SIP order.
A great sweep of madness brought us sharply back to ourselves and drove us through the streets, steep and deep, like dried up torrents. Here and there unhappy commuters in our Stadium mirrors taught us to despise our mathematical eyes. `Smell,' I exclaimed, `the smell of gaudy blue 2-stroke is good enough for wild beasts!' And we hunted, like young lions, no reason to die unless it is the desire to be rid of four wheels and the great weight of registration and parking fees! We drove on, crushing beneath our burning 10" wheels, like Ben Sherman shirt-collars under the iron, the watch dogs on the steps of the houses. Death, tamed, went in front of me at each corner offering me his hand nicely, and
sometimes lay on the ground with a noise of creaking jaws and slipping clutches, giving me velvet glances from the bottom of puddles.
`Let us leave good sense behind like a hideous husk and let us hurl ourselves, like fruit spiced with pride, into the immense mouth and breast of the scootering world! Let us feed the unknown, not from despair, but simply to enrich our tanks with 98 octane, Motul oil and the unfathomable reservoirs of the Absurd!'
As soon as I had said these words, I turned sharply back on my tracks with the mad intoxication of puppies biting their tails, and the aid of front disk brakes, and suddenly there were two motorists disapproving of me and tottering in front of me like two persuasive but contradictory reasons.
Their stupidity got in my way. What a bore! Pouah! I stopped short, and in disgust hurled myself - vlan! - head over heels in a ditch. Oh, maternal ditch, half full of muddy water! A factory gutter! I savored a mouthful of strengthening muck which recalled the black teat of my Sudanese nurse! My Harrington stained and my 10-holes scuffed, as I raised my body, clad in my mud-spattered Corazzo, I felt the red hot poker of joy deliciously pierce my heart.
A crowd of bogans and gouty public servants crowded terrified around this marvel. With patient and tentative care they raised high enormous grappling irons to fish up my scooter, like a vast shark that had run aground. It rose slowly leaving in the ditch, like scales, its heavy coachwork of good sense, mirrors caked with black and its upholstery of comfort. We thought it was dead, my good shark, but I woke it with a single caress its powerful kickstarter, and it was revived running as fast as it could on its fins. Superior sputtering 2-stroke and a check of idle speed righted me. Then with my face covered in good Australian mud, covered with metal scratches, useless sweat and celestial grime, amidst the complaint of staid bogans and angry public servants, we dictated our first will and testament to all the living men and women on earth.
We will sing of great crowds excited by chrome, by pleasure, and by cheap online Vietnamese bling; we will sing of multicolored 2-tone paintjobs; we will sing of the Cuppini rack, the PM Tuning exhaust, the Pinasco cylinder, the Malossi roller kit and the reed valve; bridges that stride Lake Burley Griffin like giant gymnasts, flashing in the sun with a glitter of knives; adventurous cutdowns that sniff the horizon and smell only the welds of rescued frames and salvaged tanks; wide-bodied vintage Vespas whose 8" wheels paw the tracks like the hooves of tiny fat steel horses bridled by tubing; and the sleek flight of narrow Lambrettas whose flywheels chatter in the wind like banners and seem to cheer like an enthusiastic crowd, until they break down.
We affirm that the world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A scooter whose body is adorned with chrome, whose suckhole breathes with the spitting of great pipes, SIP, Simonini, Polini, Leo Vince, ScootRS and Sito, like serpents of explosive breath—a roaring scooter that seems to ride on fumes is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.
We intend to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and fearlessness. We sing of Italian style, of encased engines, of drunken nights and days spent cruising eBay for wheel hubs, and nights spent weaving between the lines of freshly-layed bitumen.
We offer allegiance to no man, nor woman. Outside of work hours and allowing for flex time and leave accrual, we will own our roads 7 litres at a time, allowing for smoke breaks, toilet stops and sparkplug changes.
We are who we are, this is what we do, we are many, we are proud, we are The Swarm."
