Me? Down tube shifters on all my geared bikes. The rest are fix gears. One of the fix gears is a custom road bike, modern ti but designed around a long road dropout so flipping the wheel is easy and fast, like it would be on a bike designed to road race as a fix gear. So it is what we might have raced in the '80s had gears and freewheels never been invented. (And it rides like a true racing bike.) My 1979 Peter Mooney is now also set up fix gear with a setup that probably was never done 100 years ago but could have been. 3 chain rings. A double cog on one side of the hub and a small single on the other. Each cog lines up with its respective chainring so I have 3 very different gears. (46-13, 44-17 and 38-21 for example.) So the routine for shifting is a little different from flipping the wheel, but I think stopping and pulling out a wrench to change gears qualifies as old school even if the details are a little different.

I'm riding clinchers now but rode sewups to '95 on the Mooney and 2000 on the fix gear. I may well go back for my good bikes (the security after high speed flats being a pretty convincing argument). All but one bike has quill stems. (And that bike will get one when the current threadless HS dies.)

I don't do this just to be "classic". My second custom has the rear brake flipped to in front of the seatstays because I always think it looks better. I have started using V-brake levers with first dual pivots, then the old Mooney's cantilevers because I find the braking better/more predictable/less exciting. (And my hands love the huge hoods which look a little prehistoric.) I ride titanium because it feels to me like a "better steel". I think I have a carbon part on one of my bikes, but I forget what. (Spacer? Bar plug?)

Oh, I learned to race reading the CONI manual and from the teachings of John Allis, the father and mentor of modern racing in New England. I still follow some of his rules. (Never got his teachings first hand, that went to the members of the Raleigh team but I raced against him and was coached on his "rules" by club vets. I always felt I was a lucky beneficiary, not just for what I learned but also that everyone in our district learned the same rules. Made close quarters racing very safe.)

Ben