Re: Could anyone spare some time to answer a few questions?
I'm a total amateur, but I've read this thread and tried to keep my mouth shut but f*** me, I cant anymore.
There seems to be serious emotional baggage around HOW a frame became a frame.
I call bullshit.
The frame is the frame. Period.
If it's good, well, it's good. If it's crap, well, it's crap. HOW it got that way isn't of particular consequence because it's still either good or it's not.
If God himself came down with torch in hand and built a perfect frame people would complain that He didn't spend enough time at a bench, or working in some frozen British workshop or some production house.
Fuck that.
Don't get me wrong: I think experience is invaluable and I wish, desperately, that I was lucky enough to have had it. I wasn't, and I never will be that lucky. I'll take what I can get and keep trying put together as many sources as I can to learn more until I'm comfortable in my own skin.
So maybe I 'don't know what I don't know' but I figure if builder A has a gift and can make a kick-ass product that people buy, good on 'em.
As for art, Steve Jobs was right. Real artists ship. If somebody buys it, you're an artist. If they don't, you're fucked.
FWIW, I think FLW was terrible and utterly useless as an architect. He had zero tolerance for understanding what his clients actually needed in a structure and, sadly, he ruined an entire generation of architects. To apply him to bicycles is insane. I've been through Fallingwater and Taliesen West and they're both crap. They are, in parts, beautiful, but mostly idiotic.
It probably sounds all pissy and drunk, but I'll back it up. A good frame is a good frame. Nothing else matters.
Will Outlaw, Amateur
Build it. Ride the hell out of it.
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