Old is the new new

Are classic bikes the best bikes?

There’s an entire subspecies of humans who ride and collect only old bikes. They are as numerous as the insects hitting your helmet at night. Now, with most bikers it’s a constant battle to be the coolest guy on the road. But that’s especially the case with these folks. They’ll rattle off endless stats that only bike nerds seem to comprehend. It’s mostly posturing. Vintage riders have a certain rite of passage to biker manhood and that’s out-statting another biker. I know this isn’t the only category of male behaviour in which this happens – sports, cars, carpentry and baking that perfect muffin all come to mind – but it’s even more amplified when it comes to vintage bikes.

There is one man I met on the road to understanding vintage who stood out from the rest. His name is Stuart Parr and he’s a designer, architect, movie producer and collector of all things amazing, but most notably vintage Italian motorcycles from the 1960s and 1970s. His hidden warehouse in Manhattan is home to gaggles of rare Ducatis, MV Agustas, Laverdas, and Magnis, all perfectly preserved and working, with very few kilometres and mostly original paint. Dressed in fine Italian denim, a crisp white bespoke shirt and cashmere, Parr explains how bikes are an extension and reflection of the aesthetics in his life. Beautiful, expensive, welldesigned treasures will last forever. They’re not just items to admire, but functional machines to be used. Often. Parr points out a couple of MV Agustas that he recently acquired for about R1,5 million each and asks if I’d like to ride. I decline, concerned about riding one of the fastest and priciest Italian racing bikes on cobblestone streets. But it doesn’t seem to faze him. You pick the bikes you like, and you ride them how you like.

Me, I own a 1996 BMW K 1100 RS with 55 000 kilometres on the clock. It’s certainly not vintage, it’s just old enough to be, well, old. It’s the first bike I’ve owned and it belonged to a friend who owned it from day one. It has been loved over the years and I’m told it’ll run for 500 000 km if I take good care of it, which means let someone else take care of it. My 1100 is a battle-hardened beast, having zigzagged America from New York City to San Francisco and back, up and down the East Coast from Maine to Florida in pursuit of the finest country roads. The gears are broken in perfectly. There’s an abundance of Velcro that has held various devices including radar detectors, a compass, EZ pass tags, iphones for navigation, and Bluetooth devices. The bike is missing everything that a modern bike has built right into its LED dash. The serial numbers are scratched off the frame and the licence plate is held on by Velcro so it’s hard to get a ticket when illegally parked on city streets. It has two massive side fairings that meet at the giant square headlight. It’s as ’90s as it gets, and if you’re around my age, the ’90s don’t seem that long ago. This bike isn’t too old and isn’t too young. It’s exactly how I feel.