OK if you like to A D V E R T I S E

Well said Luft….

very well said.

The bike doesn’t really call me but I just gave it a sympathy 10 vote anyway. Not sure what all the dust up is about. This whole website is a menu for Mexican food. Different dishes made with essentially the same ingredients. Cliche? As in stereotypical? This humble thing, with its few modifications, is so different from most of the bikes here? Fly as in the British slang of knowing and clever? Or, do you mean the mid-80s appropriation of the word fly; as in, dope, or the perennial “cool”? Don’t really know anything about Aerospokes except they are distinctive and must be as stiff as (add cliche here). The set up looks correct. A guy with short legs? Not sure what the fuss is. Looks like someone grabbed a frame that suited them and added a mixture of decent, half-way decent and slightly off parts. Like every other cliche on this site. Speaking of cliche –I’ll wait for that master epistemologist Luftmensh to chime in with “lame”

jqnyc i meant fly in mid 80’s hip hop way. more cool than dope. i always felt dope meant better than fly. by the way i think i’m going to start using dope again.

I still think this bike with its labels would look right at home being towed behind a small airplane over Lake Michigan advertising. Where is Gabriel when you need him?

Needs a Sperm Whale scrotum saddle.

word up ng.

jqnyc got me started all mid 80’s -early 90’s slang going forward.

we’ll drink negra modelo’s outside a bodega.

This is a first all 10 comments on the same bike, are we bored or what? I must figure out the photo submission technique soon and put the crank puller to the side for a while. A Raleigh coming from Holland soon. Raleigh Competition 1986 . Bought a pump for a 62 cm. bike and had to get a bigger bike to fit the $15 pump. How is that for irrational? 6 foot rider, it should fit maybe put on the Ape Hangers and the SWSS and ride with the wind. Come Soon !

Freshher, I don’t necessarily think people need to be into the vintage bikes when they build conversions. It because bikes like this are supposed to look unique, and I don’t say ’supposed to’ as in that’s a conversion requirement in general, I mean ’supposed to’ as in that’s what the manufacturer is intending because they know that it is what the market is buying right now. Even the manufacturers trying to anticipate the demands of the market doesn’t bother me, that’s one of the keys to making our little free market economy work. It’s when the manufacturer’s aim is to mass produce ‘uniqueness’ itself that it starts to bug me. By definition, once uniqueness is mass produced it is no longer unique. It’s like studded belts. I remember in the late 80’s to early 90’s if you wanted a studded belt you had to go find some little shop that sold the individual studs, buy a leather belt, and then hammer them in yourself. Each belt came out looking different and when you wore it, it was yours. Now, you can walk down the street to macy’s or urban outfitters and buy one off the rack. Even worse, if you wear a belt you built yourself out now, people not only think that you’re just another hipster following the fad, they think you can’t even do it right because your belt looks shitty because the studds don’t line up or some are missing, which used to be part of what made it unique in the first place. I feel like one of the most unique parts of our (bike) culture is now being flooded with late late 90’s and current 2000’s studded belts :/

sure a lot of talk about a stock bike.

up w/ condom dispensers. cs i own one studded belt i bought it in 1993 from the gap it wasn’t orignal then or even in 83′ (google grand master flash)i’ve cycled my whole life that’s why i can wear a belt i bought when i was barley a teenager. i dig what you’re saying though what i meant (wsb) is that vintage heads have their must haves (brooks saddle, year specific crank etc…) just like fgfs heads do (bmxish forks) and hipsters (aerospokes, white chain etc…). it’s all relative 99% of people on here and general aren’t innovative. it just bugs me out that you all hate on some other scene cos’ it not yours. i’ve seen in a million scenes i remember seeing messengers on track bikes as a kid when i was heavy into mtbing and thinking it was stupid no brakes in nyc!? i came across a cannondale track bike in 01′ and traded it for a pair of jordan V’s and some kush. now i could kick myself, but then again i sold those jordans on ebay for 3 yards. you’re all hipsters you’re just too hip to see it.

btw i must say there were plenty of dudes non messengers riding track bikes. props to the old school heads @ kissena.

Freshher, I see what you’re saying. I don’t mean to hate on a whole scene, its just the hipster kids (I look at hipsters as the kids who are getting these bikes because they’re popular, riding them for a bit, and then moving on to the next popular thing) building these impractical bikes and then trying to justify them as practical that drives me up the wall. Bikes with aerospokes (especially on the front) that are obviously used only for commuting, riser bars on racing frames (why not pay less for a non-racing frame if you’re just going to put riser bars on it), taking brakes off of bikes used for riding in traffic. These things don’t make sense practically so why are people doing them if it wasn’t a fashion thing? I feel like every time one of these functional tools that mean so much to me stripped of its practicality and turned into a cookie cutter version of all of the other impractical bikes out there its like someone is making a joke out of something I care deeply about.

True. I still don’t prefer the risers but I do remember the conversation and understand the practicality. I think the only time the really bother me now is when they’re on a frame made for racing, and its necessarily the bars that irk me but the fact that its a racing frame purchased for commuting when a different frame made for commuting that cost considerably less would work better. At that point it just seems like flashing a price tag. I’ve actually looked at the fixed conversions that come through our shop differently since our riser conversation and while it doesn’t make sense where I’m at, I have a better perspective on how that could be useful in different traffic types. The mag throwback with the aerospokes I can kind of see but part of the point is lost for me since the large diameter and thin width of an aerospoke makes them way way more fragile than mags. Overall, I don’t mind doing stuff for ascetics, but when its done in the face of practicality and/or safety it just doesn’t make sense to me. I agree about the use of the forums, that’s why I’m so vocal.

we went from cliche hipster bianchi to fashion culture and back. that’s awesome.

thanks for the compliment jqnyc. epistemologist. I’ll have to put that on my resume.