That's funny. You didn't strike me as a Budweiser kind of person.

The real Budweiser ... hell yes ... it's been around since the 1200s!

someone living in england knocking craft beers... somehow it doesn't make me doubt the quality of craft beers.

Anyways, I can't wait to try a new tasty English beer!

I also lived (drank) extensively in Germany. Warm cask ale is great. Is there English "beer?"

I'm suspicious of the word beer in general.

You must never have ridden the two different head angles or you can't detect large differences in frame's handling charactoristics. Not a problem, it's the internet, volume/quantity over quality!

That's just ignorant. England has a very large number of well-crafted ales; I know this from (a) being somewhat of a beer snob, (b) having access to great craft beer in San Diego (including two friends who founded microbreweries) (c) having lived in England for two years, and (d) continuing to occasionally buy imported english beers. A few I can think of off the top of my head: Theakston's Old Peculier (my favorite); Wychwood Hobgoblin; Young's Double Chocolate Stout

I enjoy this joke tremendously and I'm pretty unimpressed by anything other than locally-brewed craft beer when I visit europe. It's sad that Germany and England allowed their formerly robust local brewing industries to be largely swalloed up by large corporate producers of carbonated urine.

edited: to stop contributing to derailment.

You need to travel more if you consider anything produced by a "Brauerei/Brauhaus" a "craft beer." That's American terminology for a hipster microbrew.

I agree with you, but those last two are atrocious.

as a youngster you clearly don't know and don't care about what has been lost. germany once had thousands of small breweries...

they still do. you just need to know locals.

a few hundred...and i know plenty of locals.

great ... I'm heading to Schwaben in a few hours and I assure you that I'll sample locally brewed/distilled stuff (hopefully more Pálinka than bier, actually!).

see you there soon

So you like your bikes made locally but your beer made in some vat halfway around the world, makes sense.

??

A 73 degree headtube will make a bike have faster handling than a 72, all being equal. But that's the thing - all is NOT equal, and the handling feel of a bike is determined by much more than just the HTA. I have a 72 deg HTA bike now that feels more nimble than the 73 HTA bike it replaced. Claiming that you can predict how a bike will handle just by seeing that it has a 73 degree HTA is absurd.

Five pages so far, with thoughts from fans of the bike, critics of the bike, beer, and random arguments . Not sure what IT IS about the Surly Cross Check, but there's definitely something.

Surely about Surly!

Thanks for the link, but it looks like they only sell complete bikes, and even none of them come close to being what I'm looking for.

No ... they sell frames also.

Downloads

Look through the catalogues and price lists within the aforementioned link.

I've been riding a cross check for about ten months, but so far pretty much just as a commuter (4-odd miles each way, 3-4 times a week).

My opinion pretty much echoes that of most of the more-serious posters here; it's sensible but not flashy, versatile as heck, fairly heavy, probably a little overpriced, and the whole Surly "like punk! except it's a bike!" cult gets annoying. It's great for my needs because I like riding bikes with drop bars, but the streets around my office are basically Fallujah-level and I was tired of getting a flat a week. I also dig the bar-end shifters since their friction functionality is great for my OCD; any kind of chain rub tends to drive me mental.

As an aside, my previous bike (got stolen from my house) was a 2011 Raleigh Clubman, and if anything I think I liked it a little more than the cross check; sort of the same concept, but leaning more toward road-iness. Looks like the 2015 model comes with disc brakes, might be worth checking out. Raleigh Bicycles - Clubman Disc

I'm not going to bother reading the whole thread but I think its popularity is mostly due to the fact that it found a niche in the US market that the most of the major manufactures had abandoned, - a steel drop bar road bike with lots of tire clearance. The fact that it uses bar ends rather than STIs helps its utilitarian image.

I understand their appeal but there are now quite a few choices in that space. I'd like a similar bike with an aluminum frame and a belt drive but I'm too cheap to spend much on it. I have a bike that's close enough.

not a Surly owner just tempted by some of their bikes. I find this comment a bit odd. I think very few get into surlys as a cult of personality bike. It's not a rivendell .

Seems like an appropriate place to mention that "Surly" is the name of a local brewery as well being the name of a local bike company. "Surly Brewing" approached Surly the bike company about using the name and the bike company was OK with it as long as the brewery agreed not to sell bike jerseys and sponsor cycling events.

Having met a few of the Surly bike people, I highly suspect that free beer was part of the deal. That would get them to agree to pretty much anything.