Grown-ups are being spotted with one foot on the pavement, one on a board, and their hands on the handlebars, doing the vehicular equivalent of skipping down city streets and sidewalks.

``It's selling like the Hula Hoop. It's a natural,'' says Kevin Rankin, assistant manager of a Sharper Image store on Madison Avenue. ``People come straight from Wall Street in pinstripe suits and pick up one for themselves, one for the kid and one for grandma. It's pretty wild.''

The new scooter is a far slicker version of the child's toy, with lightweight fold-up frames, Rollerblade-style wheels and, in some cases, seats and even gasoline- or battery-powered motors.

They have snappy names like Zappies, Xootrs, Hoverboards, Razors, Go-Peds and Know-Peds and sell for $100 to $600 or more.

Keith Strahan, a 6-foot-4 artist in Brooklyn, says he is not embarrassed to ride a scooter, because he ``never stopped being a kid.'' He uses his foot-powered Know-Ped every day to get around the city fast.

``I'd been waiting years for something like this to come out,'' says Strahan, 42. ``Years ago it was a great idea, but the wheels weren't too good. If you hit something you'd go flying. It took awhile for the materials to really catch up. These new ones work great and they're idiot-proof.''

His wife, 35-year-old Robin Perl, a computer animator, says she doesn't know how she got along without her Razor.

``I use it to get to meetings and it's perfect for me because I'm a big traveler. You can easily bring it on the plane and use it to tour around foreign cities,'' she says.

The lightweight models also appeal to children.

``Sometimes I don't like walking to school. And the wheels come in colors I like,'' says 6-year-old Ariadne Irving Estrada, who zooms down Madison Avenue on her red-wheeled scooter.

``I never imagined when I was riding a wooden scooter in the Dominican Republic as a kid that I'd grow up and start using a scooter in New York - and selling them,'' says Philip Chaitman, 32, co-owner of the Third Street Skate Co. in Brooklyn. ``They're the hottest rage right now.''

In San Francisco, Go-Peds (right) are among the hottest tickets.

``Down here it's hard to park, so we have a lot of the dot-com people buying them to get around,'' says Eric Haladay, owner of San Francisco Moto and Scooter.

The hip downtown Manhattan crowd seems to prefer battery-powered versions like the Zappy, which sell for around $650. But police say they pose a problem.

``If we catch them we give them multiple summonses, because since they have motors, they legally must have lights. But the officers on foot have a hard time keeping up with them,'' says Detective Walter Burnes.

[Posted 6/19/2000]