Post this stuff up over the weekend...what the hell's wrong with you people?!
The position from Utahdog World Headquarters is, (if anyone really cares!
)
Vintage! - Old stuff, early MTB stuff, these things don't necessarily need to work very well, and many look like complete time machines to a bygone era never to return. Slathered with Deer Heads, Nitto posts and stems, Specialized "flag" cranks, Bullhorns, goofy brakes, and more brass filler that the London Philharmonic, people buy these bikes and claim to ride them regularly more than they actually do. Mostly they get use by die-hard west coaster fire-road cruisers, pot puffing friends of the builder himself, or younger cash-fat yuppie hipsters starving for cycling hobby credibility. Poster child brands include Potts, Otis Guy, early Ritchey stuff. For the most part, I avoid this boring crap like the plague.
Retro! - stuff from any era which draws from the logic that a bike isn't bought, its built. Frame up, deliberations on the parts right down to the cable hangers, rider-owner sweat and tears smeared into the threads with Phil Wood grease and JP Weigle Frame-Saver. Retro means 'built in the tradition of' more than it means 'old'. More recent brands, some defunct, can fall into this category along with current builders seemingly left behind by the brainless march of time by their industry. Poster child brands include, IF, Sycip and Rock Lobster, Fat, pre Trek Bontrager and Klein...not that you'd be using any Frame Saver on your Klein, mind you.... Higher end frames from major manufacturers may also play here.
Classic! - Icons of the sport. Period. Reasons be damned, these are the bikes good or bad, that defined the sport for many enthusiasts leading up to and during the heyday of mountain biking in the mid 90's. Names that immediately generate a picture of the bike in your head, like "*POW* I know what that looks like!" Poster children include Adroits and Attitudes and Rascals, Zaskars and Xizangs, Ritchey P bikes, AMPs and Horst-link clones. If you cruise eBay and they help you out by suggesting other retro brands when you search for one of them, and as eBay works off of statistical popularity, then thanks to eBay and the simple laws of math...you're probably seeing a list of undeniable classics....like it or not.
There's overlap of course, but you get the drift.
Undeniable garbage should be excluded from all three distinctions...so Kooka should not be on any of the three lists.
