At 1:10 PM -0500 12/30/08, <wheelman@nac.net> wrote:
>It is almost insulting to the person being deified as it does not allow
>credit for them building their skill from ground up. The hard work it took
>to gain that skill. We all know that he had to fail to get better, that
>some of his frames are better than others.
Others will go into the hard work Mario Confente put in before he ever came to the U.S. He was not a novice when he started building bikes in the U.S.
However, hard work does not equal skill. Some people are more gifted than others. There are builders who spend 30 years refining their craft, and still don't have the heat control that makes a great frame, or still don't create frames with balanced aesthetics.
Perhaps some builders are so revered because they got it right from the beginning. Rene Herse is another example - even his early bikes are stunning (albeit with an output of more than 100 bikes a year, it did not take long to get experience). Perhaps more stunning is the fact that he managed to hire people who for the most part put out a very consistent high quality with few glitches.
Beyond that, myths like Herse and Confente always are cultural phenomena. Herse is revered in part because his bikes won Paris-Brest-Paris, the Poly de Chanteloup, and later even world championships (women's). Cyclists went to these events, and saw the bikes that just had done these incredible feats... and dreams were born.
Confente (and Masi) are revered in the U.S., especially on the West Coast, because they were part of the cycling revolution of the 1970s, when cycling went from a very obscure activity to a just-barely-outside-the-mainstream one. Add to that that many current builders worked and learned at Masi, and you realize that the shop had a huge importance for U.S. cycling that goes far beyond the bikes they made.
If the bikes are good, so much the better! At least the bike world has few cases like the car world, where Ford Mustangs are sought-after, even though most were rather ordinary cars.
Jan Heine
Editor
Bicycle Quarterly
140 Lakeside Ave #C
Seattle WA 98122
http://www.vintagebicyclepress.com