Ebay's most majestic bike..

[jeffyjeff]

Here is a pretty sweet looking machine that has languished in somebody's garage for a few years. Considering its condition, the price ain't bad.

If I had room in my garage, I might consider it. Inexpensive eligibility for application to the Vintage Japanese Motorcycle Club. https://www.vjmc.com/

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51756457699_188c43078a_h.jpg
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History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men - BOC

[Bhud]

In the UK, VJMC eligibility is for Japanese bikes 25 years or older. That's anything made in the years up to 1996.

I do like their magazine, but it's more for the smell and the pictures than anything. It's like joining a club for schoolboys. You get a very quaintly edited and presented periodic journal and a membership card. I used to be a member of the Dinosaur Club. Others were members of the Star Trek Club, the Chess Club, the Computer Club, etc.

But that sort of bike is peak VJMC...
I'm the last sort of person to choose a bike because it looks cool, or is the fastest, etc. But that bike even makes cafe racers look cool, and the cafe racer crowd look more interesting. And it has the (un?) intended side effect of making sure that ER5 / GS500 owners won't join VJMC, just as scooter owners and delivery owners won't join MAG. I just don't like it - sorry. 7000 miles since 1968, so it wasn't that well liked generally, anyway. Is it a membership card of sorts?

[A100man]

[Bhud]

Each to their own, but if I owned that thing I'd be looking at it constantly and ruing the fact it isn't an iconic 60s Honda. I don't mind if a thing is outperformed by a tired donkey and cart in a Marrakesh street market, but it has to look at least a little but cool.

[Polarbear]

[Bhud]

I'd like to find a way to enjoy the best of what's left, while at the same time helping to manage the expectations people have of the imminent future. I'm not sure if it's possible but I feel it's a sort of obligation, regardless. There's someone who rode illegally, with a pillion, as if it's 1983, when he shouldn't even have been thinking about bikes at all, given his age. As lame as it may seem, it helps him and us more if he was on the computer, building something new. These worlds (old and new) are separating out, and it's presenting a confusing and paradoxical picture to everyone. People didn't go to bike meets during the lockdowns, but attendances had been falling for years anyway, right? I just hope we can all get what we like and enjoy it until the end of our days. I don't think the consensuses that have formed over the years will hold. A lot of these old bikes so revered here will be turned into Coke cans. We will save a couple for our own use but that whole classic and valuation thing isn't a given in the way it was in years past.

[jeffyjeff]

[Polarbear]

Ah, the days you could sit a beauty on the saddle and not get howled down as a sexist
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Triumph Trophy Launch Edition

[jeffyjeff]

[Zen Dog]

[WD Forte]

Nowadays, the closest to a bikini babe on a bike you'll get
is probably something like this
( shudder!)


https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fc1.staticflickr.com%2F7%2F6115%2F6375219685_3646f12b33_b.jpg&f=1&nofb=1


It's not the same IMO and dont get a fwoar! knickers knackers knockers from me
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2Fjs3xIg2pw8w%2Fhqdefault.jpg&f=1&nofb=1
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bikers smell of wee

[Hong Kong Phooey]

[Bhud]

The girl-in-bikini-on-bike thing has, unfortunately, come to take on some kind of great symbolic meaning, in the society in which we now live. People are very, very offended by such imagery, nowadays. I remember when it seemed as though nearly all cars were promoted by means of draping a near-naked young woman over the bonnet. It wasn't considered bad or shameful, she got paid, nobody was demeaning or abusive, etc. It wasn't a big deal at all. Just an ordinary part of, say, Earls Court, or a TV ad. It disappeared amid controversy, and the last remnants of it were the MotoGP girls.

There's been a seismic shift in society over the past 30 to 40 years. It's the main reason I'd like to help reshape and guide expectations, if that's at all possible. The Langoliers are coming for anything that belongs to that previous age, and everyone is walking on eggshells all the time. The situation won't hold - lots of people are just deeply unhappy, and the old world and the new world just don't seem to mix well and play nicely. The days of the old world were, among other things, highly competitive. In a highly competitive environment, you get winners and you get losers. Or, at least, you get people who pigenhole themselves as losers, and then take up any sort of social or political cause at all that hoves into view, in order to revenge themselves upon those perceived (often, but not always, wrongly) to have deprived them of a particular path, goal or outcome. So, if you perch a scantily clad girl on a bike, you'll get your fair share of middle-aged dudes pretending offence. And at the same time, nobody can really jump in the middle and say it's harmless without appearing insensitive (plus they'd have to be occupationally resilient). Even if they're a girl. Because it's a power play that's already been played out. That's why we will have to find ways to manage expectations. The future just doesn't have as much fun in it. Not for the girls and not for the dudes. This is because they're the robots of the future, who think they're people (like the android PA in Blade Runner 1982). The real people, of course, are not subject to this new peasant morality. You remember, robots were going to do all the work? Well, it's not nice finding out that it's already happened, and you are one of the robots. Or, to look at it another way, this is post-civilisation, and the human being is being domesticated.

You see this man cooking lamb:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnRZRa3n2MQ
He has a pet goat, that's very fond of him. To the goat, it's a goat's world. But the man intends to eat the goat.

It thinks it's fully human, but it can't understand "what do you mean, I'm not helping?" There are subtle signs. The program is good but it ain't perfect:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSOzdFoZsho

Better keep an eye out for the referee...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NToiB8kpBzM

How could they get this system this good? Because they've been studying how it works (watch out this is a long one):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HFFr0-ybg0

[A100man]

[Bhud]

[jeffyjeff]

[Polarbear]

[jeffyjeff]

[Bhud]

Come on guys, you know what I mean. The loudest voices in any room except the very few places like BCF will be saying that that's "objectifying women". People will get angry - unfortunate, but true. Everything is different now.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/apr/29/beach-body-ready-ad-faces-formal-inquiry-as-campaign-sparks-outrage

[Bhud]

Funniest question I've seen on Quora yet:

"Should Harley Davidson be protected from competition from Japanese motorcycle manufacturers in America by tough new laws in the same way as, for example, obese women are protected from seeing "Are you beach body ready" posters in London?"

https://www.quora.com/Should-Harley-Davidson-be-protected-from-competition-from-Japanese-motorcycle-manufacturers-in-America-by-tough-new-laws-in-the-same-way-as-for-example-obese-women-are-protected-from-seeing-Are-you-beach-body-ready

[jeffyjeff]

[A100man]

[Diggs]

[WD Forte]

[jeffyjeff]

Getting back to business: Don't know why I keep coming up with these 2 strokes. I don't even like 2 strokes that much. Anyway, here is a relic from 1971. These bikes were really popular in my corner of the world back in the day. Considering the bikes rarity and apparent condition, the asking price isn't bad.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51770302958_7ac7d7317e_b.jpg
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History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men - BOC