Here is the first post of photos of bikes you guys have sent me. I've made the photos small, but they get bigger when you click on them.
The first photos come from Bill Talbot. The Gitane is my favorite; go to the link to see details. The blue bike is a Mercian Audax. The white machine is a 1971 Raleigh 
Grand Prix 650B Conversion1971. That red Richard Sachs is okay too, if you go in for gorgeous and superbly constructed frames, but where are the fenders? ;<) Here is the link to more pics.
On the right is a very nice city bike, a Rudge, that is Brian Trout's favorite bike.
Richard Pressel writes: "Here is my bike. It is a steel frame I had copper plated. It has wood
fenders, green anodized wheels, 
moustache handle bars with bar end brakes, downtube 8 speed index shifter with Mega range rear sprocket and 3 front chain rings. Topping it off is a green Brooks seat with copper rivets and rails. This is a rider and I put over 1500 miles since I put it together last summer including a tour of the Upper
Pennisula in Michigan. Oh yes, it is called the "Copper Bopper"."
Also, I have the first Velo Orange Rando frame and I'll take and post photos of it late today.
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4 comments:
Beautiful bikes!
Nice. Love the Rudge. It reminds me that one of the most calming sounds I think I've ever heard is of the tick-tick-tick of one of those Sturmey Archer hubs in top gear on a quiet road. In our quest here to arrive at the perfect city bike -- though I think we're looking to the east of the Channel for most of our inspiration -- let's not forget about those sublime English 3-speeds, particularly the pre-bike boom variants.
I always liked them because you could make no judgments whatsoever about the status of the rider. The Brit term is "classless", which has a very different meaning when used on that side of the pond. (By no means does it mean undignfied; it simply means the princely or pauperly status of the owner cannot easily be deduced.)
I have heard that Volkswagen Beetles and Mini Coopers were the two classless cars. As David points out, British, and perhaps Dutch, town bikes also seem classless. But it seems that an expensive bike need not signify class or wealth, but simply an interest in fine bikes.
In our discussion of town bikes we did kind of ignore the Rudges and Superbes didn't we? I knew a man that had 6 or 7 of them just because he loved them. Integrated racks,locks and lights. Somewhere there's photos of Sheldon Brown's interpretation of an upgraded Superbe built around a Raleigh pro frame. Classy.
I think the Sachs is definitely better without the fenders. Let's not get cared away here.
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