From Europe, a Beautifully Simple Concept for a Kick Scooter

Kick scooters have been around for at least half a century, yet they've never managed to obtain the cool cachet of skateboards or the great practicality of bicycles. The Pigeon scooter goes some of the distance toward both these things: The streamlined, tangerine-hued design exhales style, and its lightweight frame (about 4.5 pounds) collapses to be carried on the shoulder like a color-guard's rifle.

The prototypical people-propeller is the handiwork of Ignas Survila, an art director and CGI designer in Vilnius, Lithuania. The Pigeon's simple appearance hides a couple of nifty features: a foot-press tab that makes it fold up, so the rider doesn't have to bend over, and a hidden magnet that adheres the wheel to the steering column to prevent its opening swatting a passerby in the face. An asymmetric axis gives the scooter a pleasant quirkiness, and Survila is also trying to incorporate a braking mechanism in the riding platform so people can tear down steep hills.