Carried over from an off-topic exchange in siome recommendation thread
Now, if you give One Piece a try I'd suggest you to skip the first arc and directly jump to the Baroque Works arc.
The first 60 or so episodes aren't really that great, they're more or less devoted to the gathering of the first members of the crew. The missing info won't distract that much when watching the further story, flashbacks will provide you the info you need anyway.
PS : the art sure does take a while to get used to.
But the arc that starts at episode 31 is so awesome 
And in fact the first 3 episodes are also pretty neat D:
(I mean, in a way I kind of agree, but it's hard to say if you can relate fully to everything without the Origins of all of the characters. Besides, with his track record, he'll probably enjoy the first 2 seasons anyway, And then he'll be hit by a giant wall of epic quality.)
Well, One Piece tends to be too drawn out anyway. Going through the first, rather uninspired arcs, before things really get going can be quite a task.
For someone like me, who used to be quite skeptic -and I'm not gone further than "I kinda like it"-, I consider that people should be warned that the series takes 60+ episodes until you get serious business. But once the series gets into cruise speed, it doesn't look back and keeps getting better and better, while still being too drawn out at moments.
I mean, would you freely accept to go through that much of lesser material without thinking "this is shit" ?
I wouldn't say it was crap. To offer a comparison, I started marathoning One Piece for myself during the 2008 christmas break. Bleach anime was just entering the Arrancar world arc, and Naruto was in that sluggish "chase Orochimaru" bridge pre-fight dragged out bit(Look up the episode names, I don't want to spoil anything).
In these circumstances, the early OP episodes still felt superior to those two series, Bleach was grinding through a series of battles and Naruto was just dragging its feet. OP's characters were as colorful and awesome, the early episodes are just lacking the clear main plot that ties the whole series together and the sense of "world" that becomes clear in the arc that starts at episode 31.
In terms of manga, Oda had to establish himself as a mangaka and his characters in the early times, since he had no prior experience writing manga for himself. Hence, because he had to establish himself, it means people thought that first stuff was good enough to see it keep going. It just happens that it got way better once Oda got established.
It's true that the quality of those early episodes isn't as high as the rest of the series, but by Shonen Jump standards, it was at least good enough, which means that it isn't "crap". 
I'm much more critical regarding the basic fight-based shonen series. The constant Dragon Ball/Saint Seiya recycling/rip off the genre does irks me a lot, and I'm not fan enough to wade through the equivalent of 2 full series of any anime of introduction until I get my first serving of meat.
Not to be offensive but "Shonen Jump standards" aren't good enough for me, I know there's a good reason for One Piece taking that long to pick up steam. I'm just not fan enough of that specific type of shounen to watch such an amount of second rate material.
Even the One Piece fans among my friends admit that for a newcomer it would be better to skip the pre-Baroque Works part, unless you're a fan of the genre.
I grew to enjoy One Piece over time, but I'm still not a fan. After the Baroque Works saga, I was somehow thinking "hey, it's not that bad after all". After the Skypeia saga it changed to "it's well worth watching", and while watching the CP9 saga i was about to change my opinion to "it's actually quite good". But then came along the Ennies Lobby arc , with great story, excellent character development -especially for Ussop, who sorely needed it-, but stretched to such proportions it became almost unwatchable at times.
I mean, come on, they extended the OP and recap up to 5-6 minutes per episode and inserted 5 full episodes of flashback in the middle of an arc.
It's kind of a shame, because the CP9 saga marks in a certain way a loss of innocence. The comedy is still there, but it isn't as lighthearted as it used to be. The underlying story gets way more serious, while still being told in a totally goofy way, which is the series saving grace.
Many people may not agree with me, but I consider One Piece has already outgrown its model, Dragon Ball.
