Originally Posted by
yellowblack
Could be, but at the heart of it, the snobs are not really prejudice against junk masquerading as bicycle. They are prejudice against poor people who can't afford an $800-$1500 decent bike. The people I know locally who ride Wal-Mart bikes tend to all below the poverty line or young children who are still growing.
My current bikes cost $1,700 and $3,200. As a child, my bikes were $60-$80 each. My family was poor AND I was still growing.
I don't think it is so much a prejudice against the poor, although there might be something there, but against the ignorance of such people who walk into the shop with a bike that they think was a "great bike."
Just because it has shimano stuck on it somewhere or it says schwinn and somewhere they recognize those names, oh and full suspension, thats gotta be good too, right? And then they get angry and offended while you gently try to let them know that their bike was slapped together by the same guy that assembles the grills and playsets and since it was put together wrong in the first place, its now ruined because they rode the bike anyway and had been ignorant to the problems that these bikes already had.