Talk:Café racer

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

message: 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)
thread_title: Needs big does of objectivity, and sourcing

message: 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)
thread_title:  Dear God, somebody PLEASE tell me this is an elaborate hoax 

message: 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)
thread_title:  FYI GS1000S 

message: 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: . 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.<P>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)
thread_title:  Google Trends 

message: 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.<P>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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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.. 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Suzuki S40 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 2 external links on Café racer. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20141111200357/http://www.americanmotorcyclist.com/Magazine/View.aspx?id=446 to http://www.americanmotorcyclist.com/Magazine/View.aspx?id=446
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20141227160824/http://superbikeplanet.com/2009/Feb/090203caferacer.htm to http://superbikeplanet.com/2009/Feb/090203caferacer.htm
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: BBC ‘The Listener’, 25 March 1971 was introduced as a citation by  in this change, 8 May 2012 (also suspected of being  and )
I firstly submitted a request for this document to admin  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)
thread_title:  {{tl|failed verification}} BBC ‘The Listener’, 25 March 1971