New ways of getting around San Francisco

Gawker - With every tech boom, we get an awkward and doomed walking replacement. First there was Segway, heralded by Steve Jobs as being "as big a deal as the PC" and now strictly used by gross tourists and mall cops. Now, San Francisco's "tech hipsters" are tooling around town on "self-balancing unicycles."

KRON 4 interviewed Focus Designs, which calls their electric unicycle "the SBU," but they are not the only manufacturers of these devices.

"As you might imagine, these things, which are basically the social equivalent of Google Glass for your feet, are a hit with the code jockeys behind Silicon Valley's hottest companies. The motorized unicycle's marketing team targets people "that are just out of college" and notes that that Twitter, Google, and Facebook employees are "really in love with the product because they are early adopters."

Those one-wheeled weirdos can often be found gliding through the Mission District—Silicon Valley's preferred bedroom community—topping out their disrupted Segways at 12.5 miles per hour on local sidewalks.