Talk:Café racer

Untitled

Royal Enfield Bullet -isnt that one famous custom made cafe racer? Praka123 (talk) 10:30, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi,

I'd like to be pedantic here.

A Cafe Racer is a Cafe Racer.

Not a Café Racer.

Indeed, they were originally spoken " Caff Racers " as they were used to race from Caff [ pronounced Kaff ] to Caff.

Again, this is a British thing. Not a french thing. If you want to be accurate, Wiki to be accuate, do not apply " dictionary rules " unless you actually know - or were involved - with the actual history of these things and know that you are right. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mitsu (talk • contribs) at 19:33, September 21, 2005

Actually, you don't need to be a part of the history to discuss something. There is no word in the world that is spelt "cafe" - it is always "café". Some people pronounce "café" as "kaff", but it is still SPELT "café". Some people pronounce "bath" as "barth", but it doesn't mean it's ever spelt that way - some people PRONOUNCE "café" as "caff" or "kaff", but it doesn't mean it's ever SPELT that way. The title should stay. --Andyroo316 04:55, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Well actually... if you read carefully what the originally editor wrote, you can see that they are making the point the history does matter a lot. Because apparently according to them the reason for it is because they raced from Caff to Caff, not because of anything originally doing with "café". Mathmo ^Talk 05:04, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Someone should have told Mitsu (four years ago!) that original research carries no extra weight at wikipedia. This subject indeed should have a page. This one, as is stands, is nowhere near up to wiki standards and I wouldn't feel the need to comment except it reeks of the same elitist attitude that seems to rear its ugly head whenever the subject of what a cafe racer really is is raised. What's hogwash about the whole issue is one would think that the only people customizing motorcycles to go fast at the time were located in the vicinity of NW London, or wherever the locale of the elitist thinks these "racers" were hanging out at- or that they were the source of the ideas for the modifications in the first place. Everyone in the years since with similar intents customizing their machine is held to their image, like it or not, and told they aren't "real cafe racers". Strangely enough, not usually by those real cafe racers.Batvette (talk) 03:36, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Needs big does of objectivity, and sourcing

You could say this about most motorcycle type/subculture/group/club articles: It was written by someone too close to the subculture, and they are tendentiously trying to act as a cultural gatekeeper, defining what is and isn't normative in that group. The cure, of course, is to source everything: delete the personal opinions and replace them with what reliable secondary sources tell us.--Dbratland (talk) 17:31, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Dear God, somebody PLEASE tell me this is an elaborate hoax

I've heard the term "café racer" for nigh on 25 years now, in both the motorcycle and car cultures, used to describe someone with a fast car or bike who prefers to sit around in a café talking about how capable his machine is rather than actually driving or riding it. A poser, in other words. Gribbles (talk) 16:03, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Age

The article claims that ex-servicemen who served in WWII created the first cafe racers and while this may be strictly true, the movement is (POV here) usually associated with a rather younger age-group. Also, the similarity with the 'bobber' movement in the US is more apparent than real, since no part of the machines mentioned in the article has its origins in ex-WWII machines. (The featherbed was well post-war, as was the Bonneville engine). Cafe racers made from M21s and 16Hs were, to say the least, distinctly uncommon. 86.182.42.110 (talk) 11:50, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Too right. Yeah, you're right the idea of ex-servicement from WWII creating caff racers is a mistaken myth. They'd be far too old by that time. There might have been a few de-mobbed national service boys who did but not as a rule. It does not seem to be in the article any more anyway. --Bridge Boy (talk)

Propose move from Café Racer to Cafe Racer

This seems to have come up before but I think it is worth saying again. Although café might be the correct way to spell the word, it was not the way it was spelt in England, nor pronounced. It was "Cafe" and pronounced caff, phonetically "kaff" with a hard c (e.g. not saff). I see many of the references actually follow this norm, Cafe racer not Café racer, and there are plenty of related references to "caffs" and "transport caffs".

The topic should be cafe racer.

For them what was not there ... caffs were basically working class greasy spoons and any "cafés" were posh. Sure as hell no café would let a load of rockers in. I accept that modern usage has evolved to include "caffay", and I suspect this has come about partly from people reading the words in a book and not knowing how to pronounce them and, secondly, from a change in the demographics of bikers and cafe racer types as biking has gone upmarket.

Caff is still a common pronunciation in the UK. There are plenty of references to this if you look for them.

I think it is one of the situations, as with the Hell's Angels apostrophe, where uninformed and uneducated-in-the-ways-of-the-subculture copyeditors have tried to enforce "proper" standards and only confused matters. --Bridge Boy (talk) 21:30, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

That's nice and all, but where are your sources for all this? --Dennis Bratland (talk) 22:36, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Pratt, American Motorcyclist, dated 1963. What's your rational to keep it Café? I don't see you arguing the toss for Hell's which surely you should be by the logic you are applying.

You can start with ... http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=cafe+racer&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=on, e.g. Custom bikes, Peter Henshaw, Peter Henshaw, 1994, or read the topic page itself. These are for "cafe". I am working my way to the earliest and just added couple from Popular Mechanics, dated Sep 1973. This ought to be pretty convincing Top five bikers' cafes. I am confident all the contemporaneous ones are going to be "cafe", because that is what they were. A café in England, where the racer trend started, is a cafe. Caff for cafe is common usage in the UK (and well referenced too).

'Take the Kids England', 3rd edition. Fullman, Joseph. New Holland Publishers, 1 Jun 2007. P. 21 ... "It's available at hotels and 'caffs' or 'greasy spoons' (the BRitish version of the café) across the country." [23]

You can have up to date ones if you want, e.g. [24], or American ones for the Harley-Davidson XLCR (Tod Rafferty, Complete Harley Davidson: A Model-By-Model History of the American Motorcycle, 1997. There is really no argument against it.

If you don't know the book and site but you ought to check this out ... www.classiccafes.co.uk The Very Best of London's Vintage Formica Caffs. These are the type of caffs where it all started --Bridge Boy (talk) 04:20, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, missed out Classic Cafe URL/book reference above. So, any movement on this? ––Bridge Boy (talk) 06:37, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

FYI GS1000S

FYI, I took out "Suzuki offered the café-style GS1000S" because arguably it was actually modelled on the factory superbike racer and not a caff racer. --Bridge Boy (talk) 04:29, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Google Trends

Can I ask what is the point of the Google Trends sentence? It's a highly dubious metric for several reasons, and is it really helping anybody? I think you could find cultural pundits who would say cafe racers are hip or trendy in the same way fixie bikes or artisanal beer is "a thing" in certain urban areas. BikesnobNYC for example: [25][26]. How does that play out in the rest of America? Where more than half of bikes are Harleys? To say nothing of the rest of the world? Very hard to say. We can say that bikes like the Ducati SportClassics, an niche of a niche products, are now gone. Maybe not so hot.

I think the best way to talk about this is to directly quote the opinions of authors who have spent time on this, for example from Mike Seate's book, or Paul D'Orléans. Get a quote like, Seat wrote in 2008 that "Cafe bikes are big now!" or "D'Orleans said in 2014 that, "Cafe conversions are the hot trend today." It's merely an opinion but those guys are considered experts so their opinions can be quoted. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 04:45, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Suzuki S40

Suzuki S40 customised in a café racer style

There have been a couple IPs who have some kind of a problem with the Suzuki S40 bike. Either claiming it's not a "real" cafe racer, or spuriously making up a Wikipedia rule that you can't show images of logos. There's no such policy against the appearance of a logo on a photo of a product, whether it's stock or an aftermarket kit. I added two sources saying the S40 is a cafe racer.

I think the photo enhances this article because it helps to illustrate the range of bikes that fall under the cafe racer name. If there are purists who think that's wrong, they should cite a recognized authority who says so, and we will attribute that opinion to them in the article. Please see WP:IJDLI for why we don't remove content just because somebody somewhere doesn't like it. I think it's an ugly bike but that's besides the point. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 20:04, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

It looks kinda weird having citations in captions, but I just did it myself in another article (here). I wonder if there is a more elegant way to do this? — Brianhe (talk) 01:55, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I know. But when the caption asserts a fact -- that the S40 custom is a cafe racer -- and a couple IPs dispute that fact because it has no "relation to cafe racer culture" or doesn't meet "basic cafe racer performance and handling specifications" then it seems like citations are needed.[27][28]. But we know there's no requirement that a bike have a relationship with cafe racer culture, and there are no such thing as "specifications" for cafe racers. So the citations could be deleted on the grounds that the "controversy" over the S40 is manufactured. I get the sense that somebody just has an axe to grind against the kit vendor. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 02:07, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I agree with the inclusion. The very fact that it is not viewed as a "real" cafe racer makes inclusion even more valid - to show that the cafe racer culture is not just limited to Norton, Triumph, etc, and has a wider audience. Chaheel Riens (talk) 12:48, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Ben Stewart

The lead currently has the final sentence: "In 2014, journalist Ben Stewart described the café racer as a "look made popular when European kids stripped down their small-displacement bikes to zip from one café hangout to another."[8] There are three incongruous elements here: (1) "small-displacement bikes" seems wide of the mark; most café racers were British twins, and typically 650cc or 500cc, (although some were based on the 250cc 2-stroke Ariel bikes). I can't think of any that were less than this, and indeed the "rockers" scorned the small-displacement Lambrettas and Vespas so beloved of the "Mods". (2) "Kids" - while this may mean anything from babes-in-arms to late teens, such an age group in 1950s Britain did not have the money to splash out on motorcycles, (although Mods tended to be younger than the rockers who rode café racers). (3) "European" - café racers began as a specifically English (not European) phenomenon. I suggest deletion of this Stewart quote. Arrivisto (talk) 14:12, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

This information is sourced from Popular Mechanics magazine, a highly reliable source. Because of the policy WP:OR, users of Wikipedia do not add or delete information based on personal opinions. You must be able to back up your views on a issue with a reliable source or even better sources. These bikes were at best only half the displacement of the larger bikes from that era and kids is clearly just referring to late teens and 20s. There is clearly no enormous error in the information that would dictate any removal. 72bikers (talk) 21:22, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

"Popular Mechanics" is indeed a notable American popular technology magazine, but is not a well-informed source on the social subcultures of post-war England. By contrast, this reference on subcultures states,"The Rockers were associated with motorcycles, and in particular with the larger, heavy and powerful Triumph motorcycles of the late 1950s". Arrivisto (talk) 12:52, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

You make no mention to there age as you brought up originally. In that reference the rockers and mods are clearly called teenagers and youth i.e. KIDS. As far as any reference to the motorcycles that source only says the larger, heavy and powerful when comparing rocker motorcycles to the Italian motor scooters of the mods. And indeed when compared to scooters they are larger and heavier. But that does not make them large-displacement when compared to motorcycles as a whole. That source never stated large-displacement or café racers or referenced any café racers. In fact the picture in the article of a rocker sitting on a motorcycle was not even a café racers. I would also point out that even if the United Kingdom was the only place to start the café racer it is a European country. Made up of multiple European countries of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. So it would seem that the (as you called it) ill-informed "Popular Mechanics" got it completely right. 72bikers (talk) 19:42, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Please stop your disruptive editing, as to Wikipedia policy WP:DE. Your immediate edits after here at Popular Mechanics[29] could easily be construed as a attempt to belittle the magazine simply because you disagree with one of there articles. 72bikers (talk) 20:54, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Of course, "Popular Mechanics" is a perfectly good middlebrow popular science magazine, and if the fact that it's over 100 years old makes it a classic, so be it. However, the magazine is not a credible source on English subcultures, nor even on motorcycle nomenclature: the 1973 comment by "Popular Mechanics" journo Wally Wyss stated "(to date) only Triumph has anything that approaches a cafe racer—a new model called the Hurricane. While Craig Vetter's X75 was fabulous, few would consider it a "café racer". Arrivisto (talk) 13:01, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Please stop your disruptive editing, as to Wikipedia policy WP:DE. Your removal of sourced information along with multiple references and replacing it with your unsourced personal opinions will not be left to stand and will only get you blocked or banned indefinitely. Please do not add any more pictures of café racers to the article, the page is full of pictures, the article can not have a picture of every café racer ever built or made. Your opinions of the prestigious Popular Mechanics magazine is clear and there is no need to continue to verbally attack them any more, might I suggest posting on the Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard‎. Though I would point out that your one and only actual attempt to discredit them here with this is not a well-informed source on the social subcultures of post-war England. By contrast, this reference on subcultures is. Your source never once even mentioned café racers the subject matter here and only confirmed that rockers and mods were just kids as said on the pages of Popular Mechanics, with this line from your source teenagers and youth. So I am not sure if you are fully understanding how Wikipedia works by trying to say thing here and place views on the article that is not supported by your source.

Your opinions of the prestigious Popular Mechanics magazine is clear. Note: (i) It helps to be grammatically correct. (ii) "Prestigious"?! In whose opinion?! I note that, yet again, my edits to the article, which were well-written, concise, intelligent, informative and accurate, were, yet again, reverted to a substandard, illogical and inaccurate version. I am immune to absurd blocking threats; having received support from other editors on this issue, I know that I am not the minority of one.Arrivisto (talk) 09:31, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

I see no support here for your edits that removed sourced information along with multiple references and replaced it with your unsourced personal opinions. These action regardless of your fabricated support are contrary to Wikipedia policies WP:DE, WP:POV, WP:OR. I also offered up no threats just helpful advice of what the outcome would be if you persist with your current behavior that runs contrary to wiki policy. And I am not the first editor to bring this to your attention. I will also point out the editor and his WP:SOCK accounts that you perceived in supporting your similar actions elsewhere was indeed blocked indefinitely. 72bikers (talk) 18:51, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Any other editors who are not yet bored stiff with such endless spats may draw some comfort that my posts never use the second person. I have now had enough of this nonsense and supposed "helpful advice", so I am signing off (again). However, I will not stand by and watch while Wikipedia bike articles are reverted to older versions that are substandard and inaccurate. Wikipedia is about well-written, properly-spelt and grammatically correct articles that are succinct and clear and informative and interesting and well-referenced with reliable citations. It is also about the enjoyment of the collegiality of improving the quality of the the encyclopaedia, and of late there has been precious little joy to be had here. One tip I do find useful: one should use the sandbox rather than using Wikipedia itself for dozens of minor iterations and edits. In other words, an editor should decide what to say, use the sandbox to get it right first time, and only then amend the page. Arrivisto (talk) 07:42, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

You say that the article is reverted to older versions that are substandard and inaccurate. This is a example of the content you added after removing sourced content and two references. After the seaside clashes in Easter 1964 between Mods and Rockers, café racer bikes and their riders briefly became a moral panic.[6] The cition you left for this comment while being very crude was not the reason for removel nor was it removed because blogs are generaly not considered a reliable source. A source I would point out you clame to be more informed than Popular Mechanics. But the contenent was removed because your statement was not supported by the blog. While it was a stretch to say that the general public was in a moral panic over a youth gang fight that consisted of some chairs thrown and some rocks thrown at police followed by a sit in. Your assertion that café racer bikes were included in this moral panic was not supported in this blog. Café racer bikes were not even mentioned in the blog once and motorcycles were only used once to just differentiate Mods from Rocker with this statement, Mods with Italian motor scooters and Rockers were associated with larger, heavy and powerful motorcycles. That's the only mention to motorcycles in the whole blog and there was two period pictures on the blog one of a Mod next to a scooter and a Rocker sitting on a motorcycle, that was clearly not a café racer. So what you would call a well-written, concise, intelligent, informative and accurate and well-referenced with reliable citations. Would in fact appear that you were just trying to interject you own personal opinions into the article, and falsely representing that they are supported by some dubious reference. I again will offer up some helpful advice do not make personal attacks on others or edit contrary to Wikipedia policies WP:DE, WP:POV, WP:OR, WP:PA. Also please read up on how to leave a proper citation and also how to do conversion.72bikers (talk) 20:46, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

References

Without wishing to re-open old wounds, I still feel that the text of this article leaves a lot to be desired. I propose a substantial rewrite of the lead and the following paragraphs, some of which could usefully be conflated.Arrivisto (talk) 14:08, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

"text of this article leaves a lot to be desired" what do you feel is in need of change? Are you going to show the text here before included into the article? -72bikers (talk) 15:52, 10 August 2018 (UTC)

Arrivisto after further reflection perhaps my comment sounded a little overbearing. I realize this after dealing with a editor that did not even have any article topic knowledge but demanded he have sign off on article content. That was not my intention and I was only interested in lending a hand and being a sounding board.

I was also thinking of archiving this current talk page content as it is all quite old. -72bikers (talk) 22:49, 16 August 2018 (UTC)

72bikers, None taken! I'm busy at the moment, but will before long do some work on this page. I'd leave the archiving until once the changes are made as there are some points that may be useful in the exercise. Arrivisto (talk) 12:59, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

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{{failed verification}} BBC ‘The Listener’, 25 March 1971

BBC ‘The Listener’, 25 March 1971 was introduced as a citation by Bridge Boy (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) in this change, 8 May 2012 (also suspected of being Triton Rocker (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) and LevenBoy (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log))

I firstly submitted a request for this document to admin BU Rob13 who could not access it but suggested a general submission to WP:RX, which was successful (Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request/Archive 43#Historic BBC periodical (1971), digitised and available (?) through Gale Cengage). The short BBC printed article is seemingly an account of a short-story recited on BBC Radio 4 around the time. It was a fictional, semi-fantasy, semi-horror, narrative-anecdote only – so non-factual and almost completely unencyclopedic. The following is the only part of the text that related to what was introduced in May 2012:

"And he was in a transport caff just outside Watford,..."
"...Well, these two Rockers, motor-bike lads, came into the caff".

That’s it. At the time (and I think since) there were concerns over the pronunciation of café (caffay) versus caff (as in caffeine)

This change was in bad faith by introducing to pre-existing text an almost-unrelated, irrelevant citation that does not mention café racer motorcycle (or people). It is WP:SYNTHesis and is further covered in WP:MASK – the citation only covers the introduced arguably-irrelevant content – being one word only - "caff" - and bears no relation to café racer as was already promoted into the lede with a citation added in October 2010. This is an account by a freelance journalist of an interview with a motorcycle owner in England, when the journalist quoted another writer “Mike Clay’s words in his 1988 book Café Racers…” then submitted to an American website, so all significantly later than the 1971 alluded to by using the BBC citation wrongly.

It is important that this bogus citation not be featured as inline citation [1] as people will believe it was used correctly in good faith, particularly so with BBC being a universally-recognisable name.--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 23:06, 9 February 2018 (UTC)