Whether it was trendy twenty years ago? I’m not entirely sure, but…
it’s safe to say it was definitely a quiet boom—or maybe not, depending on who you ask.
I think everyone is drawn to what’s unremarkable and ordinary.
It’s a cycle: if everyone goes one way, we go the other, and so on.
While it’s reassuring when your taste matches the majority, ultimately what’s different from others is what’s good…
Human behavior is hard to understand.
I got deeply into 70s and 80s superbikes in the late twentieth century.
That was about twenty-some years ago…
It was still an era when people watched things on video (VHS).
Completely analog.
Tire diameters all became 17-inch radials, and Brembo calipers and radial master cylinders became hugely popular.
Everything was rapidly adopting new technology and changing.
In the midst of all that, going against the times, I somehow ended up with a GS1000S.
Someone lent me a video of Wes Cooley riding a GS1000S at Laguna Seca, and I was amazed when I watched it. *In modern terms, I guess you’d call it emotional?
Super cool!
A wolf in sheep’s clothing—stock-looking but incredibly fast.
The stickers casually placed on it—ones I’d never seen before—looked incredibly cool.
Since those superbikes looked so stock, even just stickers could create an amazing vibe, and that was part of what got us hooked.
Some people would go to great lengths to make them, or beg DENSO in Shibuya for stickers—the passion was incredible.
Lately, the flavor has been getting richer and richer, so I think the pendulum will swing back toward subtlety.
The ultimate destination might be to maximize the material’s natural flavor—full stock—which is the sophisticated, mature approach.
Looking back at old articles can be moving, so it’s interesting.
