One thing that bike messengers do in cities is to wrap their frames with inner tubes, to make the bike ugly. I am not convinced that this fools the trained eye. It certainly doesn't fool me, but luckily for bike owners, I don't steal or cannibalize bikes.

You might be able to ride a 54cm frame if you outfitted the bike with upright, swept back handlebars like I have on my commuter bike. This is a 54cm frame which is about 2cm too small for me. It put me in a position that was too stooped over for a city bike, so I put these bars on. Now it has my hands too far back, so I'm going to try straight bars next.

In the C&V section, there is a sticky topic called "Are you looking for one of these?" We post bikes that we consider to be good values. Some of them are high-end, which you don't want, but sometimes, we post "pedestrian" type bikes that represent a solid value for things like commuting or whatever.

It will take patience, but you WILL find a bike that suits you and is the right size. Half of my home was furnished the patient way, using garage sales, rummage sales, craigslist, estate sales, freecycle, etc. It's all very tasteful and functional. No compromises, really, except that it took longer than it would have if we had bought everything retail. It's a time/money tradeoff, and you can do it with bikes, too.