The true beauty of this motorcycle. (another LONG read)

[pdedse]

pdedse, you must have added your markedness theory comments after I saw your initial post. I'm not sure that I totally understand what it is that you're trying to explain, but at least it did get me thinking. Ever since i was a little kid, I've been hung up on the way things look. I pay attention to how almost everything has been designed, but cars and motorcycles in particular have always been of keen interest to me. In fact, I have a couple of books from my childhood that I've hung on to for many decades now.

- The Golden Guide to Sports Cars (published in 1966)
- Motorcycles, Knowledge Through Color (published in 1975)

(The Sports Car book shown in the photos is actually my backup copy that a friend purchased for me years ago as my original copy was marked up with my personal notes and highlights and then browsed to the point that it is now almost unusable.)

At any rate, if you look at my original Sports Car book, you can definitely tell pretty quickly what designs appealed to me (by way of my highlighting). By the time I acquired the Motorcycle book, I had stopped drawing in my books. But I can still remember which bikes featured in the book really appealed to me way back then. Now here I am over four decades later and what do I own? A sports car and motorcycles of course, lol. I'm certain that if I took photos of the car and the bikes that I own today and I were able to send them back in time to my little kid self, I would have loved the way they looked without knowing anything else about them. My mind had been programmed this kind of stuff long ago. I definitely have a bias.

Wile I love the way my CB1100 looks, I certainly don't consider it to be one of the most absolutely beautiful motorcycles ever made. It should be obvious by now that I dig it, but it can't compare to something like a number of the late 60's Triumphs. But my dad was a Honda guy, so I tended to pay more attention to Hondas when I was a kid. Amongst the old CBs that really stand out for me are the 1970 CB350 (my dad owned one), the first CB400F that I ever laid eyes on in person (my dad and i both admired that one quite a bit) and then on to the CB750F and CB900F of the early 80s. There are others of course — I personally paid more attention to dirt bikes back then. But motorcycles in general always tended to catch my eye (along with cars).

If we are simply comparing motorcycles that are available today, then the I must admit that I find the CB1100 to be like a fine jewel. The way Honda went about designing and building this bike, it reminds me of a fine mechanical watch amongst a sea of really nice quartz watches. The quartz watches perform better, but there's an inherit beauty to the mechanical watch that is hard to define. By today's design standards, I find this bike to be amazing because it comes the closest in terms of looks and appeal of those bikes that appealed to me when I first became aware of motorcycles. I'm guessing that might have something to do with markedness theory, but I'm not really sure.

That makes two of us! : )

I was hesitant to bring it up because "markedness" is a theory from linguistics and other social sciences. It's defined as "the state of standing out as unusual or difficult (marked) in comparison to a more common or regular form (unmarked)." So for me , the CB is an example of an "unmarked" mc because it looks regular to me, normal, "the way a bike should look" based on perhaps very early, positive experiences. And a "marked" motorcycle for me would be one that is unusual, or even "difficult" to accept as being a well designed mc. Something like this:


or this:


I look at the above photos and wince..."those aren't motorcycles!". Obviously they are because they have sufficient characteristics to make them so. I can even the appreciate the technology behind them. I guess they have a certain "coolness" about them...for some...but not really for me.

Now this is a motorcycle!



Ok, I promise, no more theory.