Originally Posted by endform
I think there's a lot of confusion between what it means to have a practical bike and what it means to have a versatile bike. I am all about versatility and that's why I like the quickbeam (you can do anything on it!).
I love the orange and the angled track ends are a great idea (no adjusting the brake pads, hooray!).
And old thread but I just saw the quickbeam yesterday for the first time and wanted to echo the above comments. I've been riding my ss commuter for a couple months now and I love it. But, when I want to go riding up the steep hills at griffith park I've got to take of the 15t cog and put on the 18t. No big deal, but if I want to ride my ss up those hills there's no other way. The quickbeam is a ss dream machine, to me, as far as practicality goes. Not because I'm on the fence about ss bikes but because I'd like my main bike that I ride all the time to be ss, and sometimes that means I have to change the cog. Having a bike with no derailleurs to f- with and yet 4 choices of gearing in situ is just about perfect.
I love not having derailleurs (or any kind of cable-operated gears), but that means sometimes my ss isn't practicle. If I could afford it the QB would probably be the perfect #1 main bike for me.
Yeah, kind of granpa-ish, but I think utility has it's own aesthetic.