Hopefully it was tongue in cheek, but I object to the elitist tone of this. I may not own, or have owned a bunch of bikes, but I have looked at a lot of them. My opinion is good enough for me. At the same time, the hobby is something like a never ending art appreciation course. It is always possible to learn to see beauty in something that you didn't value previously.
I think it would be more interesting to discuss what we term beautiful. I know there have been discussions about fancy lugs, but I think it can go deeper than that. One could judge a bike on several levels Overall first impression: Balance, stance. How the bike looks just standing there. Content: Fancy or plain lugs. Seat cluster style. Fork crown style. Reinforcements for fork blades, chainstay and seat stay bridges. Fork and stay end treatments. Braze-ons. Cable routing. Craftsmanship: how well it is put together. Lug preparation and brazing. Here things seem to be a bit more objective. I think most of us would agree on what is better and what is worse. Appearance/condition: Paint. Color. Chrome. Patina. Again, subjective. Components: Clearly modifiable, but are the components appropriate as the bike is presented? Function: How does it ride? Reputation/name: It is hard not to take this into account. It figures in unconsciously.
My 2 cents.
Marcus Helman Huntington Woods, MI
Charles Andrews wrote:
The formula, or metric, must take into account the following, in some fashion:
*the collecting experience, in years, of the person making the judgement of ugliness
*the number of bikes of the same national origin, quality, and value, owned by the judge
*the fair market value of said bikes
*if the judge has designed and built more than 20 custom, high-quality lugged steel frames with their own hands, the collecting experience number is increased by some factor to be determined.
The judge need not currently own any bikes, the *number of bikes* may include *all* bikes of the relevant kind that the judge has owned in the past, even if they have none in the present.