Originally Posted by
Stadjer
That's not the case here. it's not considered masculine to show that you care about things like that, and the laid back posture the oma invites is very masculine. There's a company here that leases bikes for 12 euro's a month, and swaps them within a day when there's something broken, and it uses only oma step throughs. It's a huge success among young men, they bike slowly usually.
Yes, but the FR8 is a very sturdy bike. I've ridden step throughs single speed oma's for years and thought they were great, but now I'm heavier, ride faster and mainly in top (3rd) gear I can feel it. I also have a compact bike that is very rigid but has small wheels with wide tyres, it's very nice for short slow errands and feels quick but any further it becomes hard work. I don't mind the effort but it has to be rewarded with speed otherwise pedalling becomes plodding. If it wasn't for the flexing I'd ride an oma.
I'm not saying it's the case for everyone at all time, it's the case for my 6ft 4 on a steel step through in the 15-25 km/h range. Flex is of course more of a problem with the taller frames.
This is fair point. I don't have any experience with taller frames, since they're very hard to find in the US (I had a hard time finding a stepthrough that was large enough for me at 5'7"). Your point about the bike leasing raised an interesting thought. Bike share programs are becoming much more popular here in the U.S. and every program I'm familiar with uses stepthrough frames for a "one size fits all" approach and because the bikes tend to be heavy. I'm wondering if that will help de-gender stepthrough bikes here in the U.S.