Dang, if I had to choose a decade for my bikes, I'd be at a loss.

My ride is 33 years old. Bought it new in '85. I don't want a new bike. I like my bike. Never thought about replacing it.
Jon

You mean like this?

Ironically, I think when it rains my DL-1 (steel rims & rod brakes) is safer to ride than my other bikes. Why? Because the brakes are so inefficient that you have to ride very slowly, leaving a lot of front clearance and always having a clear "escape road".

Just gimme my Draisienne and get outa my way. And please note that kickstands go waaaay back.

Yep, this is me too There was one bike that did it all, was horribly abused in retrospect and always got the job done. Skids were possible because tires were huge and robust. Bald spots were inevitable in time nonetheless. Nowadays fully appreciating the awesomeness of proper steel bikes in a way not possible back in the day and maybe still pushing the boundaries just a little but avoiding skids like the plague. I suspect this sort of cycling background is part of the remarkable popularity of vintage bike events like Eroica, nostalgia for a lost cycling childhood, but gentrified.

Man! I had completely forgotten about them!

I toured 10,000 miles in ‘99-‘00 using only paper maps. Had no GPS or cell phone. Still don’t have a GPS unit. I still make paper cue sheets.

Old school is anything made or done previous to the last two generations.

But I'm strange, though I was born in 1950, but I prefer the looks of cars made from mid 1920s through the 30s to the very early 40s, but could never afford the ones I liked, so my car collections I had were from the late 50s to the late 70s. I prefer the older cars to newer ones because they were extremely easy to work on and could do anything on them with just a handful of tools. Once I did just a couple cheap mods to the older cars all the constant tune-ups became a thing of the past. Bright shinny chrome is sorely missing in today's cars.

I like houses built in the very early 1900s, we had one but when my wife could no longer climb stairs, we had to sell it to move to a house built in the early 60s that was a single story, miss the wood working that was in that old house.

Music choices run the gambit but starting in the early 60s going up to present, including certain types of metal music, but no rap.

Most movies I like are from the 1990's till now but there are a few exceptions of movies made in the 60s, mostly those spaghetti westerns.

My bikes range from 1977 to 2013, but I prefer the beauty of lugs and quill stem, with chrome forks and stays era of bikes.

Whenever I go bike camping, or RV camping, I use paper maps and a GPS.

Humans today have forgotten how to do artistry type of work by artisans, they have gone to boring looking industrial looking things that are made cheap and don't last long.

Yes. Nothing makes me happier than a perfectly fitting early '80 race bike and good sewups.

Old school is anything that was new when this zombie thread was started.

I'm old but like new stuff.

Dang! I thought it sounded familiar.

Considering how fast technology changes, anything but the latest and greatest (ie, electronic shifting, carbon and the newly released 13 speed) is old school. In another couple of years, that stuff will be ‘old’.

If we talk old school , then my 1992 Merida Al Bon is old school upgraded with modern transmission, vbrakes and tubeless wheels

and so is my 1995 Giant Bronco upgraded with modern transmission, vbrakes, new supension fork with 100mm travel, crossmax wheels and upgraded cockpit

I’m 65, so most of what’s considered old school is newfangled to me.

You betcha, agree nothing better.
See you and raise you one. Have a ‘73 Takao Ono Panasonic and ‘84 Tesch 100 that were built for me. Exact same position on both. Race tires were Clement Criterium Seta or Seta Extra, Criterium 260 or Strada 66 cotton if it was wet. Trained on Criterium cotton 260 or 280g.

Since this is a “old” thread with old in the title I don’t see a problem replying. The definition is value based.

An old piece of $#!% is just that and is worth the least.

Old School is the next; with an add-on value given for Old Skool.

Vintage commands the highest dollar.

I see a rare and component difference between Old School and Vintage.

Antique is the odd one as the price typically always exceeds its worth regardless of the dollar amount since the person buying it doesn’t care.

John

I first started riding in the early 60's, and a lot of the above applied.

I'll add a few here, just because I can still remember them:

Standing up on that squishy soft sprung saddle on my teen-sized Raleigh (24 x 1-3/8" wheels) and doing no hands for as far as I dared....
King had nothing on us. Bikes clothes pinned on to the seat stays for boys, and Bee's for girls. That sound actually carried quite a ways.
I actually got tired of replacing rear tires that were balded by coaster brake slam and skiddings. I had quit doing that by age 12 when the price of tires jumped.
My first bike was actually a full sized men's bike with 28" wheels, and about a 23" frame. I had to ride it under the top-tube until my legs grew long enough to use the saddle at it's lowest, and most forward point. Some where along the line, the left pedal blew, and no one seemed to know about left hand threads. I rode it on the spindle until that particular part snapped.
I ended up learning to ride it with one pedal by bringing the left pedal arm down with my heel. I actually rode that thing like that for 15 miles to go and fish out of town, and back.
The rear tire blew before I made it back to town. I walked that one-legged bandit a good 7 miles home, and still loved it.
Dad snuck it out of the house one night, and I found the used Raleigh standing in it's spot the next morning.

Old School? I don't know. I think perhaps in this identity/ego-driven society that we live in today, a little too much emphasis is placed on definitions.
Maybe we need to get back to expressing our care for each other, like we did when we were kid terrors on our bikes.
I like riding my recently acquired "Old School" ten speed- not for any identity it gives me, but for the sheer feeling of it.
Having the slightly dangerous feel of those cloth taped skinny drop bars in my hands, and knowing what me and the bike are capable of is a feeling like no other, even just easy pedalling around town.

-D.S.

Old School is when you stop chasing the trends, when you leave that to others, when you are satisfied with what you got because it does the job for you.

I started riding an old, heavy and oversized bike, luckily it didn't have top tube but wasn't really a ladies bike either. It had that braking in the rear drum operated by your legs and on dusty or gravely surface, you could lock the rear wheel into a turn and slide sideways, make a 180 degree turn virtually on a dime. I believe there was a front wheel brake operated by a lever on handlebars and it pressed a rubber tab against the top of the front tire.

Been riding my sorta (2001) old school steel bike of late.

My limits for old school stop at the time before brifters - I want brifters.

I took a good flogging here a while back when I said I wasn't impressed by the high end bike I rented in Europe... and I have some otherwise decent bikes...

Sorry - for me, that old steel frame is simply the best. Call me whatever you want - a geezer, a retro grouch... tell me that I'm not sophisticated enough to know what a real bike should be like...

No matter.

Soft but stiff, zero road noise or buzz, handles like its on rails (and yes, it holds 28's) - and it is proper fast. I've been setting PB's on it all week.

-Simply the best riding frame I've ever been on-

I'm no longer lusting after the latest trend, frame that is x% faster or x% stiffer, the latest gizmo or doohickie - all to go .25 mph faster, maybe - that will be outdated tech once next years bigger better faster dumaflagie hits the market -

Give me the ole tried and true.

Old school doesn’t involve a battery.

I use to do a lot of skidding too, made my dad mad because he was the one buying me my tires, so we found skid slick tires, that had real thick rubber, it took a long time to wear those out, and as a bonus, my flats went way down!

There was school near where I lived that had steps that went up about 14 steps, but there was a pretty good amount of concrete on top to get enough speed to get going and jump the stairs.

We did that sort of crap on those stingray bicycles when I was a pre teen, but later I still did that same stair jumping thing on a 3 speed Schwinn Racer.

I think I mentioned this, but in my late teens and early twenties back in the early to mid 70's we use to take cheap 10 speed bikes and go trail riding in the mountains of Southern Calif, unbeknownst to me at the time that sort of riding was going on all over the US on 10 speed bikes and some custom built bikes by riders. Try doing that with a modern road bike!

You were probably more of an outlier than you think. I doubt that "that sort of riding was going on all over the US on 10-speed bikes" in the early to mid-'70's.

The guys in California were just starting to race their old coaster brake Schwinn klunkers down Mt. Tamilpais then. And Tom Ritchey routinely rode his tubular-tire-equipped road bike on fire trails, but the fact we know that about him suggests that he was probably the only one doing it regularly.

Some friends of mine and I did some riding on the trails through water company property west of New Haven on our road bikes (with tubulars) in 1974 or so (I was on my white first-year Raleigh Professional, and the other guys had a Bottechia, a blue Raleigh Pro, and a PX-10, I think), but we were all scared that we'd break our rims, so we only did it a couple of times.

That said, I believe that a modern road bike would hold up just fine: especially one with 28-mm-wide or wider tires. Why would it not?