I'm interested in what people have to say as far as the fast part of upright/townie bikes. I've tried doing a few townie conversions and they were painfully slow to ride (and I don't really consider myself a fast rider anyway).

Here's a conversion I did of a columbus-framed Schwinn Passage touring bike. Built it up with a Deore II group, nitto technomic stem, and the alloy bars have a slight sweep back but it's not as dramatic as north roads or porteur bars. I'm probably going to be converting this back to drops: