Here it is 5:30 in the morning. I woke up thinking that I'd write Wayne about this very subject and when I turn on my computer, I see that he has just posted on the very issues I wanted to cover in a post to him. It seems more appropriate now to post to the list instead.
I love the original and period perfect bikes I see at Cirque. I do feel that the focus has become excessively narrowed on them, however. Imagine a car show where all the entrees are just the way they rolled off the assembly line. There are such shows.they hold my interest for a little while and then I start thinking "Where are the Hot Rods? The Roadsters? The Customs?". It seems to myself and to some others that the emphasis has taken a turn away from any sort of individuality on the part of the folks restoring and creating bikes as hot rods or expressions of their own individuality. This is fine. It will work on a limited basis. We can make it a Concourse d' Elegance if we wish. Do we really wish to? I sure as heck do not.
Where would be the room for bikes like that fantastic Hetchins with the 19th Century handlebars that won People's choice a few years ago? How about John Barron's breath taking Red Paramount with the stunning drillium additions of two years ago? Or even that ghastly but very interesting Ostrich Skin covered Colnago from this year? Do we really want to relegate bikes like these to some kind of second class status? Remember when we make our tent a lot smaller, a lot less bikes and folks fit beneath it.
For me, every year the Cirque event becomes more and more about the people there than the bikes. The bikes are just wonderful, but the chance to hang out with friends I mostly only see once a year is even better. Lots of these friends have an individual idea of what they want their bikes to be. If they want absolutely original or even unrestored absolutely original that is fine with me.but there is variation in the bike owner's vision of their bikes and this variation is every bit as important as any other aspect of bike collecting, in my opinion. We need room for these varying visions of bicycle excellence and we need to do it without relegating a major (and to me most interesting) portion of folks bringing bikes to a second class status. The idea of folks declaring their bikes as one thing or another sounds good at first but the more I look at it, the more it smacks of a 1950s Loyalty Oath.
I think we either need to judge the bikes as to how nice they are or to quit any but a People's Choice Award.
Celebrate diversity.
Tom Sanders
Lansing, Mi USA