To be honest I've owned both strickly performance oriented and custom bikes with big tires...it is a thing of personal preferance. About the performance issues, to the average rider the difference is marginal, I rode my bike with both regular and wide tires and streched swingarms...I honestly didn't note any major difference in handeling, but hey I'm not riding at Daytona or anything. I think up to a certain size the bigger tire is more fitting of a big-bore bike, which are mostly geared toward straight line top speed performance anyway, I don't remember the last time a busa won Daytona or even competed in that area anyway. The little performance loss for a better looking bike, which most people don't even come close to pushing to its upper potential isn't even noticable to a mear mortal. And for the record I wouldn't quote a magazine article that is put out there by a company that advertizes nothing but big tire kits, get a big tire kit and your real world experience will show you the truth.
