I am also a new Lister from NYC (is there a trend here?).
Regarding classics:
It is important to maintain boundaries and definitions for the sake of knowing what we are talking about. The List is quite instructive for someone like myself who has enjoyed riding bikes for thousands of miles a year on an old '74 Holdsworth I brought back from England years ago, but who is otherwise relatively ignorant of technical issues or bicycle culture.
However, like jay arrau, I am also tired of what strikes me as the elitist, narrow-minded and nihilistic flow of this discussion. Maybe it is because I was an eyewitness to a mass murder just a few blocks from my home last year, but it is also because judging from the depth of technical knowledge that most in the group apparently have that I know that everyone has the intelligence to keep things on a higher level.
Most importantly for the health of the group, I think it is counterproductive. Speaking as an artist myself, having graduated from The Cooper Union School of Art down here, I know a little about the classics myself, and if people like Moon, Sachs, Weigle, etc aren't accorded the respect they deserve as artists working within the continuum of a particular design and construction philosophy (I can only imagine how they must feel if they have been reading this stuff), then it becomes that much more unlikely that there will be others to follow in their footsteps.
Then you surely will be talking about a dead art form instead of one that is at the moment a living one, but gasping for air if its artists have to create within this kind of environment. As a group, shouldn't we be encouraging the continued life of this art form, instead of deciding what color the roses should have been in 1983?
Michael Lebron
Noho, NYC