Segway & Spaghetti?
I saw my first Segway scooter a couple weeks ago and saw them again today. The first time, I was sitting at a restaurant, looking out a window when all of a sudden on the sidewalk in front of me, 2 people smoothly floated past. It really confused my brain for a second. Through the window, I could only see slightly higher than the waist up. And usually when you see people travel by, you’re used to seeing the natural rise & fall of a person’s body as they’re stepping. Yet this was eerily smooth and alien-like as the person quickly jetted past the window without any bouncing motion. In milliseconds, my brain must have been thinking : “walking? nope. no bounce. bike? nope, no pedalling. skateboard? rollerblades? nope, nope. how the hell did is that person moving?”. When you see one, you’ll think the same thing…it’s wierd to just see someone lean and be propelled in a direction.
After my brain woke up and saw the segway and clued in to what I saw, I started thinking about why these people on scooters had shirts for The Old Spaghetti Factory restaurant. I assumed they’re trying to draw people to the restaurant. Today when I saw them again, they were human billboards for the restaurant. There didn’t seem to be a purpose to riding around on the scooters..erm…segway human transporters (sorry Dean) other than getting people to turn their heads. They weren’t stopping, weren’t talking to people, weren’t handing out coupons for discounted meals. But honestly, if you were on one of these things, would you want to stop and bribe people to eat at the restaurant? Hell no, you’d hit the road and have as much fun as possible while you still had the chance to play. I was so tempted to offer them $20 for 5 minutes to try it out.
I’m not sure if the Spaghetti Factory is getting their advertising moneys worth by - but maybe they are - I don’t think I would have written in my blog about them if someone had just handed me a flyer for free garlic bread.