cudak888 

It's got 650B's and upright bars. Fight me.



-Kurt

52telecaster

Poor man's gp.

bark_eater 

Yea man...

cudak888 

This one has an IGH and no disc brakes. Therefore, it's better than Grant or Jan's fetish bikes. So there.



Sorry, ran out of box jokes.

-Kurt

gugie 

Grant Petersen.
Guaranteed 10 page thread.

tyrion

Bump.

sheddle

You're even seeing stuff like Rapha's marketing move toward more a "bike riding is nice" when five years ago it'd be all roadie suffering "pain is weakness leaving" aesthetic.


Also, regarding the chainstays length of his bikes, check out this MB2...

tyrion

Rivendell has always struck me as being surprisingly bad at internet marketing. Especially for a Northern California company.

cudak888 

OP has Grant Petersen in an empty box, therefore this entire thread is a troll.

Discuss.

-Kurt

bear_a_bug 

Love Grant's perspective on cycling. Nice, functional bikes for everyday riding. Inspired me to build up a mid-80's Trek MTB into a great around-town bike.

Some things, though, I just don't get (a common feeling if you've followed their business model over the years).

They are selling the most bottom of the barrel derailleur possible, a $10 steel SunRace unit but their most budget-friendly seatpost is $85?

Weird ways to cheap out.

gugie 

I ain't opening it, and you can't make me.

52telecaster

its how we know he is relevant.

Trakhak

The nice, functional bikes for everyday riding are already available in bike stores everywhere: aluminum hybrids. I started on a Helyett track bike in the mid-'60s and rode more than my share of beautiful Reynolds and Columbus steel bikes over the decades, but I use an '87 Cannondale M600 set up with street tires for my city riding.

Steel is fine, but I find it mysterious that those hybrids are invisible as far as Grant and some C&Vers are concerned.

sheddle

I actually get Grant's love for the Atlus M310, beloved by frankenbike builders everywhere, but I'm not quite sure about what looks like another Chinese clone of the 60s Shimano Skylark.

jetboy 

a lot of the alu hybrids are actually pretty decent- Cannondale and trek stand out as better than most. The issue (that your m600 does not have) is so many were given a really ****ty front suspension fork that invariably fails- feels cushy and nice when you pull out of the shop-- but turns to a brick in 3 years and the whole bike gets dumped.

Korina

Not cheaping out. This blog post explains it.

'We are now selling these. They work great on a bike with cogs up to 28t. But I suspect you won't be nervy enough to do that, since you already have a good rear der that shifts to 36t. So buy this as an exectutive desktop doodle-toy, and fiddle with it and learn a ton about rear derailers that you can't learn just shifting them. Ten dollars. Here.'

Salamandrine 

If we do not open the box, it is impossible to know whether or not Grant Petersen is in the box.

cudak888 

Because they duplicate the perfectly serviceable city bicycle that they destroyed in the early 1980's, only less adequately. Hybrids exist as manufacturers' responses to people who bought into the 1980s-90s MTB trend and realized that their fancy new active leisure machine was uncomfortable and slow when they used them around the neighborhood.

As such, because of people using them for fashion rather than their intended purpose, the completely unsuitable MTB had it's headtube shoved into the sky, its effective top tube length abnormally smushed to avoid the granny connotations of the North Road handlebar, and its wheels swapped out for fat 700C's. And so was born the clunky hybrid.

Thus, not only did our choices for a commuter bicycle get relegated to a bicycle reverse-engineered by the marketing department to satisfy a bunch of fad-following dummies, the trend had also convinced people throughout the US that bicycle riding was uncomfortable and difficult.

Not quite the reputation that makes for a bike that's universally liked here at C&V.

And while the hybrid did improve upon the city bicycle in regards to braking, that's all it did. Front rack mounting became impossible on some bikes thanks to clunky suspension forks, others were designed with not a thought for fenders, they tend to come with creaky and bendy adjustable stems, and the short top tubes prevent the most comfortable commuting bar known to humankind - the North Road - from being mounted.

Oh, and most casual riders are still trying to figure out why there are two shifters on the bike, why they do what they do, why they don't shift when stopped, and why they always seem to make noise - all problems caused by throwing out the city bicycle's IGH hub.

Granted, hybrid design of the last 10 years has also morphed back towards the city bicycle (and I think Trek's Electra was the catalyst to convince bicycle manufacturers that the city bicycle still had a healthy potential market), but someone looking towards Rivendell isn't going to be considering these options.

Incidentally, the same exact parallel can be found in car culture. Enthusiasts hate CUVs because they were born out of SUVs - and SUVs exist because trend followers felt the station wagon didn't have enough testosterone for their tastes. Yet, the station wagon remains perfectly acceptable, and in many ways superior to the modern trend-driven replacements.*

EDIT: I just read Grant's post about fronti-techno after writing this. It's interesting how both of our arguments run similar tangents.

That ****ty SunRace RD is the closest thing you can buy today to a Campagnolo Rally 2nd-gen RD with a sprung B-pivot - which alone probably makes it shift better than the oh-so-virginal Campy.

It may not have the cool factor, but it's perfect fodder for C&V luddites (and Grant's user base) who resent modern derailers enough that they'd rather run this instead.

Call him.

-Kurt

*Cargo bikes are even better.

tricky 

You're wrong! ~ everyone on this thread.





Kidding, of course. We keep it respectful here and might even let each other influence our beliefs. I love that. We're able to have productive discourse here unlike the rest of America's conversations. It's so fascinating to me how much conversation GP generates. I wish for his sake it would translate into $$$!

TenGrainBread 

I don't mind Rivendell's marketing, nor their frame design or parts spec. I think both make sense as elements of Grant's philosophy - bicycles should be a part of your everyday life, not just tools for racing. That's why the frames are designed for comfort, traction, and cargo utility. That's also why their social media has just as many pictures of Rivendell customers and employees as it does the bikes.

I personally don't love the aesthetic of the bikes. I don't mind the geometry, but the rococo, faux-vintage lug design irks me. Plop some scrolly, ornate lug onto your frame and you're guaranteed to delight steel bike hipsters who have never heard the word "Nervex" but profess to "love lugs." Perhaps that is a cynical way of describing my issue with it, but what I'm trying to say is that the lug design has no sense of history. There's no sense of aesthetic dialogue with what inspired it. I think this is a problem with modern investment cast lugs generally, but with Rivendell it really shouts it in your face.

noobinsf 

Nice pic, especially with the Columbus dove photobomb.

sheddle

IIRC the Bianchi Milano was also a really successful modern city bike, one of quite a few forward thinking Sky Yeager Bianchi USA designs.

​​​​​​​I generally agree with this, and I think it's the history of Bridgestone that does it for me. Maybe it isn't compatible with a handmade custom frame company, but I love the "clean", no nonsense look of Japanese road and city bikes, another country which has a history of cycling descending from everyday riding, rather than bikes which were made to emulate racing machines like the US, and always wished he had carried on that tradition rather than his gallic-flavored ornate look.

SurferRosa

If Bogie were around today, he would ride this. I wouldn't fight him.

beicster 

I love the look of lugs. I have for quite some time but until I started reading threads here, I never knew the name nervex, or, any lugs for that matter. It did not stop me from delighting in the looks of the various ones.

cudak888 

Here's looking at you, kid.

-Kurt