Updated, 10:38 a.m.

Good morning on this sparkling Thursday.

The West Coast is abuzz with electric scooters — standing scooters, like a Razor, but with a motor — and we’ve started seeing them around New York City.

So what’s the deal: Are they legal here?

“They are illegal and I am not aware of anything in the works to change that,” Scott Gastel, a spokesman for the city’s Transportation Department, said in an email.

Violators may receive a $500 civil penalty if they are caught riding them, and their scooters may be impounded.

But many New Yorkers are seemingly not concerned about getting a citation.

“They are not legal, but it’s not enforced,” said Sarah Kaufman, an assistant director at the N.Y.U. Rudin Center for Transportation, whose research there has focused on scooter share markets across American cities and around the world. “Anecdotally, everyone has seen a motorized scooter on a sidewalk.”