Originally Posted by
nlerner
Here's how the
Classic Rendezvous list defines it:
The Classic Rendezvous list focuses on bicycles made from the early days of the Twentieth Century, up to 1983. (there are good reasons for this cut off date, search the archives for that.) The Classic Rendezvous also embraces "on topic" fine bicycle makers who are called "Keepers of the Flame", those who use traditional methods and aesthetics. New age welded, injection molded, or glued modern bicycles belong in some other mail list, not this one! Ditto for mountain bikes & balloon tired bikes. Those items have merit, but they just do not belong here.
This is pretty much how I feel, minus CR's exclusion of mountain and balloon.
For me, the distinction is aesthetic. If it looks like your current conception of something that should be flying through space either in reality or in a non-ironic, futuristic video game, or if it looks like modern athletic shoes or anything entered into a contest by a a naive young design student, it's not classic or vintage.
If it reminds you of a time and place when craftsmanship, beauty, and durability were jointly valued, even for things that have purely practical purposes (and even if this time or place never existed ... and even if the object itself is not particularly well crafted, though this helps), then it may be classic or vintage.
Historically, it's a moving target. For example, personally, certain nicely lugged bike frames from the late 1980s and early 1990s (Schwinn Premis?) have graphics that remind me of the coming deluge of soul-nullifying, carbon fiber, space pod bulls**t don't appeal to me. I don't think of them as C&V, I think of them as "modern" or whatever. But other people may have a completely different idea. And that's legit.