“We take our jokes seriously,” says Alex Gvojic of the Peddy Cash moped gang. We’re standing in Chicago’s Warbux Mopeds storefront, staring at his appropriately named “Peddy Kruger,” in the style of the villain from A Nightmare on Elm Street—complete with a metal-clawed leather glove resting on the headlamp and a striped army green and crimson sweater stretched over the seat and frame. The Peddy Cash crew was founded in 2002 by Warbux co-owner Patrick Turner and Flosstradamus DJ Curt Cameruci, both natives of Kalamazoo, Michigan. Kalamazoo is home of the 19-branch Moped Army, and, according to Turner, “the mecca of the modern moped movement.” But Peddy Cash is no movement, unless its members are uniting to flummox small town locals like a band of moped carnies. “To them, we’re assholes,” says Cameruci. “But it’s fun.”
What’s the first thing people need to know about mopeds?
Pat Turner: If you want to get into vintage mopeds, you definitely need to know that your level of involvement goes up drastically. If you buy a new moped, it’s like getting a new car. You can jump on it in the rain and it will take off whenever, wherever. Vintage ones, your level of involvement goes way up because it’s 30-something years old. But that’s one of the things that attracts people to it.
Curt Cameruci: Another thing to know, too, is anywhere you go you will be asked so many questions about it—“Where’d you get that? How much does it cost? How fast does it go? How many miles per gallon? Is that an engine?” There are tons of questions that you get asked about it, but every red light you stop at, there’s always someone, like, “Whoa!” It blows their mind.
Why mopeds?
CC: Originally, because it was fun and it was so cheap. Back when Pat and I started doing this, we could buy a ’ped for $75. And you’d just have to tweak it a little bit to get around. No one really even cared about mopeds except for 40-year-old guys in the suburbs.
You two are responsible for getting moped culture off of the ground here in Chicago, and it’s a major scene right now.
PT: I would have never seen it going this way, you know? Like, we’re standing in my moped shop right now, but I would have never seen it going that way.
CC: We were doing this just for fun, and then it got bigger from all of that. Me and Nigel [Hollywood Holt] were both touring all over the place—all around the world—and started getting in magazines and everything talking about this whole moped movement. And then we got the Cool Kids on mopeds and it really started blowing up from there.
PT: We kind of pushed a lot of things within the Moped Army and people stepped their game up. More gangs saw what we were doing and started getting into it. Chicago has definitely become a hotbed for mopeds since we started.
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