Originally Posted by sjanzeir

I don't know if it's just me or that it's actually become a thing to crap all over aluminum recently, but if these great forums of ours are anything to go by, most everyone seems to be riding aluminum not because they want to, but because they feel like they have to.

Everywhere you look around the forums, people seem to be pining for something other than aluminum: there are the fanatical steel purists who talk down to you because... nostalgia and this whole "nothing rides better" business.

There are the cost-no-object carbon bros who seem to believe that the fact that they could afford, bought, and paid for carbon fiber somehow gives them the right - nay, the obligation - to crap on the "lesser beings" around here as their second favorite pastime.

Then there are the titanium elitists, whose other favorite sport seems to be crapping on other titanium elitists because... only they have the birthright to ride titanium? Or something - whatever.

And the bamboo people? There seems to be too few of them around here to cause any major controversy, aside from the possibly occasional you're-killing-the-planet-and-we're-saving-it mantra.

So, where are the aluminum fans in all of this? Are there any of them actually left? It's been a long time since I've seen anyone (dare to) say that they actually prefer aluminum to any other material, even though they could easily afford to ride carbon, steel or titanium. After having been dubbed "the material of the future" at some point in the history of cycling, how did aluminum fall from grace like this, to the point where it almost became "the material of the dumb?"