Seen these messenger messagers around town? Yesterday, driving up 14th Street NW just north of Federal Triangle, I spotted four or five of these guys riding in a column on the road. From behind, they look exactly like scooter-powered pedicabs. Which seems like a bright enough idea: smaller than an auto rickshaw, with more speed at less physical cost to the driver, just in time for the brutally humid summer. (No doubt a pedicab rider would say that a scooter rickshaw constitutes a gross perversion of everything pedicabbing stands for.)

But these scooters aren’t pulling anyone around, unless corporate speech counts as people now. So four scooters take up the right-hand turn lane for an entire block, and I’m supposed to like the product they are peddling? Anyone know what these scooter-powered ads are called?