Which of the 3 would you select, and why?
None of them.
Cut your teeth on something in the 250-400cc range. Something that you can pick up when you lay it down.
Get a Kawa Ninja 250 or a Honda CB1, or something in between, and ride it until the wheels fall off. Once you've learned, practised, and mastered the basics of motorcycles, then move up to something in the 600cc range.
You'll probably find that a good quality 600cc sportbike will do anything on city streets or highways that the 1000cc bikes will do.
If, however, you spend some time on a 600cc bike and then decide: "Hey! I can only get to 140MPH on this thing, and my life won't be complete until I hit 160!" then you can start looking for a litre sportbike, and you'll have the 250cc and 600cc experience to guide your choice.
Just my 0.02 worth, as always YMMV.
LawDog
I most definitely won't start out with a 1200cc crotch rocket, just indulge me here.
Funny how people just can't read the post... if it SMELLS like a pet peeve, they jump on it with both feet.
Isn't a Ducati 999R around $30K brand new?
My buddy bought one this past week for about $22k. Don't quote me on that, though. I didn't get much of a chance to talk to him about it but I remember hearing something like that.
Edit: Just to clarify, he didn't say whether it was an R or not. I'm not sure on the difference in price but maybe that would explain the difference between the two listed.