Road bike revival

I've been amazed by the number of people getting around with road
bikes in Berkeley and San Francisco. A lot of them are old but in good
working order. The funny thing with the newer road bikes is the crazy
stem angles required to get the bars higher than the saddle for
"normal" people (so there should be a lot of radical negative rise
stems available for track bikes by flipping the over). Also, most of
the track bikes I saw in Berkeley had real brakes, some even front and
rear caliper brakes, maybe all the non-brake guys have finally gone
extinct. Pretty impressive because 15 years ago there were no road
bikes anywhere around here except the real hard core road racers. I
saw one guy who had a Ritchey road bike which had the original 1970's
lettering, that is, ordinary typeface before Ritchey got marketing
people to design logo's for him, apparently the rider was just barely
older than the bike. It's nice to see that, for once, reason is in
synch with fashion.

-ilan

wrote:
I've been amazed by the number of people getting around with road
bikes in Berkeley and San Francisco. A lot of them are old but in good
working order. The funny thing with the newer road bikes is the crazy
stem angles required to get the bars higher than the saddle for
"normal" people (so there should be a lot of radical negative rise
stems available for track bikes by flipping the over). Also, most of
the track bikes I saw in Berkeley had real brakes, some even front and
rear caliper brakes, maybe all the non-brake guys have finally gone
extinct. Pretty impressive because 15 years ago there were no road
bikes anywhere around here except the real hard core road racers. I
saw one guy who had a Ritchey road bike which had the original 1970's
lettering, that is, ordinary typeface before Ritchey got marketing
people to design logo's for him, apparently the rider was just barely
older than the bike. It's nice to see that, for once, reason is in
synch with fashion.

-ilan


Are you visiting, or are you living there now? I think of almost any
city as more bicycle-friendly than NY.

Steve

--
Mark & Steven Bornfeld DDS
http://www.dentaltwins.com
Brooklyn, NY
718-258-5001

On Aug 25, 11:41 am, Mark & Steven Bornfeld
wrote:
wrote:
I've been amazed by the number of people getting around with road
bikes in Berkeley and San Francisco. A lot of them are old but in good
working order. The funny thing with the newer road bikes is the crazy
stem angles required to get the bars higher than the saddle for
"normal" people (so there should be a lot of radical negative rise
stems available for track bikes by flipping the over). Also, most of
the track bikes I saw in Berkeley had real brakes, some even front and
rear caliper brakes, maybe all the non-brake guys have finally gone
extinct. Pretty impressive because 15 years ago there were no road
bikes anywhere around here except the real hard core road racers. I
saw one guy who had a Ritchey road bike which had the original 1970's
lettering, that is, ordinary typeface before Ritchey got marketing
people to design logo's for him, apparently the rider was just barely
older than the bike. It's nice to see that, for once, reason is in
synch with fashion.

-ilan

Are you visiting, or are you living there now? I think of almost any
city as more bicycle-friendly than NY.

Steve

--
Mark & Steven Bornfeld DDShttp://www.dentaltwins.com
Brooklyn, NY718-258-5001

I'm visiting for a month. I live in Paris where there has been an
influx of track bikes in the last year, but all of them without brakes
and with stupid gearing. The bicycles in Paris are either expensive
heavy and stupid Dutch bikes favored by pretentious upper middle class
women or else ancient very poorly maintained city bikes, as on my
website: http://cf.geocities.com/ilanpi/bicycles.html

-ilan

On Aug 25, 8:58*pm, wrote:
On Aug 25, 11:41 am, Mark & Steven Bornfeld



wrote:
wrote:
I've been amazed by the number of people getting around with road
bikes in Berkeley and San Francisco. A lot of them are old but in good
working order. The funny thing with the newer road bikes is the crazy
stem angles required to get the bars higher than the saddle for
"normal" people (so there should be a lot of radical negative rise
stems available for track bikes by flipping the over). Also, most of
the track bikes I saw in Berkeley had real brakes, some even front and
rear caliper brakes, maybe all the non-brake guys have finally gone
extinct. Pretty impressive because 15 years ago there were no road
bikes anywhere around here except the real hard core road racers. I
saw one guy who had a Ritchey road bike which had the original 1970's
lettering, that is, ordinary typeface before Ritchey got marketing
people to design logo's for him, apparently the rider was just barely
older than the bike. It's nice to see that, for once, reason is in
synch with fashion.

-ilan

* * * * Are you visiting, or are you living there now? *I think of almost any
city as more bicycle-friendly than NY.

Steve

--
Mark & Steven Bornfeld DDShttp://www.dentaltwins.com
Brooklyn, NY718-258-5001

I'm visiting for a month. I live in Paris where there has been an
influx of track bikes in the last year, but all of them without brakes
and with stupid gearing. The bicycles in Paris are either expensive
heavy and stupid Dutch bikes favored by pretentious upper middle class
women or else ancient very poorly maintained city bikes, as on my
website:http://cf.geocities.com/ilanpi/bicycles.html

-ilan

I saw a nice-looking fixed-gear yesterday. Front brake. Locked with a
kinda marginal lock at the St. Paul metro.

"Robert Chung" wrote in message
...

I saw a nice-looking fixed-gear yesterday. Front brake. Locked with a
kinda marginal lock at the St. Paul metro.

Do you work around that area? I sort of liked the southeast quadrant of
Paris. It reminded me a bit of San Francisco.

wrote in message
...

I'm visiting for a month. I live in Paris where there has been an
influx of track bikes in the last year, but all of them without brakes
and with stupid gearing. The bicycles in Paris are either expensive
heavy and stupid Dutch bikes favored by pretentious upper middle class
women or else ancient very poorly maintained city bikes, as on my
website: http://cf.geocities.com/ilanpi/bicycles.html

-ilan

San Francisco is an amazing place for bike riding, which otherwise if you
looked at a city map, you would think its nuts. What makes it great is not
just the cool temps, but the ocean breeze comes in a lot and blows the smog
out, so you often get a nice breeze of fresh clean ocean air, nice smell of
salt in the air, not too strong, but its very refreshing to ride in traffic,
and instead of getting overcome by exhaust, you get cool clean air! Also
there are so many side streets you can take down to the Cliffhouse or other
sections of the city to with such great views and scenery like the little
climb up to the old lookout tower on telegraph hill. Its got to be one of
the coolest cities to ride a bike! Often when I see bike rides both road and
mountain bikes, I get more of a sense of wonder and the excitement of riding
there, instead of a duty to fitness, of just drowning everything out with a
walkman CD head set. The natural acoustics of riding by the Cliffhouse offer
better sounds then the usual drumbeat from the headset.



Guess you are going by Stanford. I wonder if you remember that old bike shop
right across the street, I used to buy frames there when I went to Palo
Alto. Just a block down, the chinese joint on the corner, I used to eat
there for lunch often. Can't remember the street offhand now. Its been
years, things have changed, but the two bike shops were close together.
That's where I bought my Advocet.

"GoneBeforeMyTime" wrote in message
...

wrote in message
...

I'm visiting for a month. I live in Paris where there has been an
influx of track bikes in the last year, but all of them without brakes
and with stupid gearing. The bicycles in Paris are either expensive
heavy and stupid Dutch bikes favored by pretentious upper middle class
women or else ancient very poorly maintained city bikes, as on my
website: http://cf.geocities.com/ilanpi/bicycles.html

-ilan

Oh, if you didn't know, they rebuilt the Nickelodeon area behind the
Cliffhouse. That's an awesome place to visit! Sights and sounds from there
go well with the nickel and dime arcade.

http://www.sanfranciscomemories.com/cliff/house.html

GoneBeforeMyTime wrote:
San Francisco is an amazing place for bike riding... snip

Have you seen this, re bikes and bike lanes in SF?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121919354756955249.html

Guess you are going by Stanford. I wonder if you remember that old bike
shop right across the street, I used to buy frames there when I went to
Palo Alto. Just a block down, the chinese joint on the corner, I used to
eat there for lunch often. Can't remember the street offhand now. Its been
years, things have changed, but the two bike shops were close together.
That's where I bought my Advocet.

Palo Alto Bicycles on University Ave? That's where Avocet originated as I
recall.

Mark
http://marcofanelli.blogspot.com

Off The Back wrote:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121919354756955249.html

What a sad state of affairs that such a loon can convince a judge and
hold an entire city hostage.

wrote:
On Aug 25, 11:41 am, Mark & Steven Bornfeld
wrote:
wrote:
I've been amazed by the number of people getting around with road
bikes in Berkeley and San Francisco. A lot of them are old but in good
working order. The funny thing with the newer road bikes is the crazy
stem angles required to get the bars higher than the saddle for
"normal" people (so there should be a lot of radical negative rise
stems available for track bikes by flipping the over). Also, most of
the track bikes I saw in Berkeley had real brakes, some even front and
rear caliper brakes, maybe all the non-brake guys have finally gone
extinct. Pretty impressive because 15 years ago there were no road
bikes anywhere around here except the real hard core road racers. I
saw one guy who had a Ritchey road bike which had the original 1970's
lettering, that is, ordinary typeface before Ritchey got marketing
people to design logo's for him, apparently the rider was just barely
older than the bike. It's nice to see that, for once, reason is in
synch with fashion.
-ilan
Are you visiting, or are you living there now? I think of almost any
city as more bicycle-friendly than NY.

Steve

--
Mark & Steven Bornfeld DDShttp://www.dentaltwins.com
Brooklyn, NY718-258-5001

I'm visiting for a month. I live in Paris where there has been an
influx of track bikes in the last year, but all of them without brakes
and with stupid gearing. The bicycles in Paris are either expensive
heavy and stupid Dutch bikes favored by pretentious upper middle class
women or else ancient very poorly maintained city bikes, as on my
website: http://cf.geocities.com/ilanpi/bicycles.html

-ilan


That's pretty funny! What are the Dutch bikes like? You seem to imply
that they're some kind of status symbol.

Steve

--
Mark & Steven Bornfeld DDS
http://www.dentaltwins.com
Brooklyn, NY
718-258-5001