Pleasing NAHBS Photos
 

I just hijacked this link form a Road Forum post. They made for nice viewing with morning coffee.
http://tinyurl.com/nahbsphotos

Thanks for the link.

I didn't attend this show but have a couple in the past. After talking at length with a friend who was there, reading comments on VS from exhibitors and now looking at these pics, I think that the whole hand built thing has jumped the shark. Who needs a very expensive decorative bicycle? The beauty in a bicycle is its simplicity, not rococo hand cut lugs. Fugly in my opinion.

vjp,

Those are my photos and it really is just a small percentage of bikes at the show that had the fancy cut lugs---I just tried to show the most unusual things in the photos I posted. I thought that showing 30 photos of simple, short point lugs would be too redundant and boring. But the bikes by Sachs, Serotta and other more traditional builders were beautiful too.

Plus the builders who are there probably bring their most exotic items for people to drool over even though the bulk of their framebuilding is tamer. Kind of like a car show, where manufacturers bring their wildest designs even though most never see production.

Wow.

I'm glad there's enough interest in this stuff that those guys can practice their craft at such a high level. But a lot of it strikes me as complete aesthetic failure.

Thanks for the photos, and please don't get me wrong, I am happy to look at them.

My point is , for every Sachs and Kirk who have a refined sense of balance and design combined with function you have so many people who are just decorating. Just my opinion, but so lame.

No offense taken by moi. It was just the first post I opened this morning and enjoy the idea that there are still people welding lugged frames. I do agree that much of it is not my cup of joe either.

FWIW, there was a pretty noticeable drop in the builders who showed the simpler, steel lugged frames from last year. I'm thinking of at least 5 who were not present this year. Plenty of steel, but fatter tubes and tig welding or fillet brazing, or something like that. I still can't get my mind to accept the very fat steel head tubes.

I asked the Cinelli guy about the "hand-built" bikes.
He just pointed to the Super Corsa sitting there, and we both laughed.