Scooters required to be sillier

In an effort to regulate the motorized e-scooters people use to travel short distances around the downtown Tampa area, the city is requiring that they play silly music at a high volume level.

“These things are essentially toys and people seem to have lost sight of that,” said Mayor Jane Castor. “It’s not unusual at all to see grown-ass businessmen in suits with briefcases or backpacks zipping around on them to serious meetings as if they’re legitimate, viable motor vehicles.”

“We need to restore the sense of whimsy that should be associated with these micro-mobility devices,” she said. “And we hope to accomplish that by making people point and giggle whenever one is nearby.”

“Now that I think about it, we should take similar action on grown-ass businessmen carrying backpacks,” she added.

Effective immediately, all e-scooters owned and operated by contractors HOPR, BIRD, LIME, & SPIN within Tampa city limits will be equipped with two FSX65-4 6.5″ 300 Watt 4 Ohm Pro Audio Midrange speakers that will play a recording of a little girl singing, “La La La La La La” on a repeated loop when the scooters are in use. 

“At first, we planned to use a MIDI file of ‘Turkey in the Straw’ but we were worried that citizens might respond negatively to false alarms of available ice cream”, said Castor. “Then we considered Julius Fučík’s ‘Entry of the Gladiators’ from the circus and also ‘Yakkity Sax’ from The Benny Hill Show but we didn’t want outright slapstick comedy and the potential for injury that might come with that. Eventually we decided that the song little girls sing when jumping rope conveyed the appropriate level of gravitas. We got my administrative assistant’s 6-year-old niece to record it and she nailed it.”