Consider these bicycles (both mine). This one:

is the school track star. Lean, sleek, fast, not an extraneous ounce of fat. Guys want to be him, girls want to be with him.

This one:

is the kid in your math class with taped up coke bottle glasses and a pocket protector in his polyester shirt with the top button done up. Smart, practical, will probably have a well-paying job someday, but he ain't dating a cheerleader.

Discuss.

Didn't those guys on Revenge of the Nerds end up with the last laugh? But seriously, a rigid fork with a longer steering tube and a less severely-angled stem would cut down on the nerdiness factor of that Raleigh. Nice Bianchi, BTW!

Nothing nerdy about that Bianchi!

No, but it seems that many around here wouldn't consider it to be a proper commuter bicycle, due to its lack of fenders, rack, lights, reflectors, and 28+mm tires.

Well, I don't get people who think that your bike has to be ugly to commute on it. If I were you I'd just commute on the friggin' Bianchi!

The short kid...

I'm sorry, Sixty Fiver, but somehow that Twenty is just too cool to be considered nerdy.

Weak. Neither bike is nerdy. The green Bianchi screams "check it out retro!" and the other bike says "stealth utility commuter."

Nerdy bikes are the ones that are ridden by nerds. Who would never be caught on either of your two bikes.

Nice rides, though!

Oh but he gets teased a lot... got called a "nice sidewalk bike" yesterday...

tri bikes are far nerdier.. i mean come on, the helmet, the "rpg laucher" water bottles on the back and those aerobars!

The whole thing screams nerd.

PLUS tri bike riders can't ride, so like the nerd stereotype they are un co-ordinated...

Ten years later, the hybrid still goes hiking on the weekends and is generally just concerned with having a good time, even though he's got a good-paying job he actually enjoys. Coincidentally, he ended up getting a lot more chicks in college than that d-bag former track star road bike who kept starting fights whenever he got drunk.

I know both of these bikes... intimately.

The Bianchi is a track star and the Raleigh is the linebacker on the school football team that just rolls through everything.

This is the kid in the math class with the taped up glasses and pocket protector...



Who gets excellent grades and becomes very wealthy and by which is then able to attract the hot chicks who never gave him the time of day while he was in school...

not nerdy (but it does have a rack on again)

Oh, definitely nerdy. But it is the nerd that never gets picked on because he is a head taller than everybody else.

Raleigh: Nerdy.

Twenty: Nerdy.

Schwinn: Not Nerdy.

That being said, Nerdy ≠ Not Cool. The Raleigh is neither nerdy nor cool, the Twenty nerdy but cool, so too the Schwinn.

Also, put me in the camp that believes that commuter needn't be nerdy. It's fender-ed up and such, but I don't think mine's nerdy...is it?

I was that kid and I was dating the head cheerleader until we both went to separate colleges....

Ken

That would be like the nerdy kid getting new glasses. Sure, there's no tape anymore, but he's still a nerd.

'Bents are the special needs kids.

and alt-bikes are the goth chicks (or, back in my day, the Sinead O'Connor wannabes).

I thrive on being different, so it doesn't matter to me. Nerdier bikes get more love around my house.

Still nerdy, but aware of his nerdiness enough to have some deliberate fashion sense.

That's the tall doofy kid that tries too hard to be cool with the clothes and shoes...
but all fashion becomes cartoon when hung on his lanky uncoordinated body.

How's this:

Looks about as nerdy as a Lakers fan decked out in yellow and purple.

I was that kid too, and the only time the head cheerleader talked to me was when she needed help with her computer homework.