Rivendell was an example of the cautionary voices I was talking about above. Grant Pedersen has already spoken about having to buy some good traditional parts while they are still around, so that he will still have stock for customers of his bikes. Once some things are discontinued, they are never coming back.

Sure, you can find a nice old 1990s frame in an attic. But it probably has rim brakes, and in some countries you can no longer find replacement pads from a local bike shop, only special order, and rim-makers are gradually discontinuing high-quality rim-brake rims. It probably only fits an 8 or 9-speed cassette, and both Shimano and many local bike shops want users to upgrade to 10/12/whatever speed. Product churn alone is forcing the industry in a troubling direction regard of we retro-grouches would like.

I think we're still in the middle of the 1x hype cycle and it's not clear to me it will completely dominate the market in the end. For modern MTBs with clutched rear mechs it makes some sense but especially watching the whole 'gravel' thing happen from atop a Univega Viva Sport running 37s where most of the time they're just on dusty fire roads it doesn't seem worth it when pliant steel frames with good tire clearance still abound. In certain cases it may be necessary to spread the rear triangle or other minor adjustments for 9-speed and up but RJ the Bike Guy has us covered on that. STEEL IS REAL!

I'm surprised to hear that in some countries rim brake pads are getting harder to find. What sorts of countries are those? Disc brakes are pretty fancy all things considered, are you talking about high-COLA hilly places like Norway or Switzerland?

I’ll give you an example that is already old: in early 2019, I was in Santiago, Chile while on a long bike tour. I went to Calle San Diego, a street that was famous for having a couple of dozen bike shops in one area. I was unable to find replacement pads of the sort that slid into e.g. Shimano’s LX or XT rim brakes. Some shops only had replacement pads that came with the whole metal apparatus for e.g. Shimano Deore. But most shops had no replacement pads for adult bikes at all. They showed me those blocky rim-brake pads suitable only for children’s bikes and said “This is all we stock now. Everyone’s riding disc brakes now. You’d have to special-order.” FWIW, I had been told the same thing in northern Chile earlier on that journey.

> Disc brakes are pretty fancy all things considered

This hasn’t been true for a while now. I have noticed that many – if not already most – of the Chinese BSOs at hypermarkets have disc brakes installed.

> it probably has rim brakes, and in some countries you can no longer find replacement pads from a local bike shop, only special order

I find it hard to believe, but if you're in one of these countries, you can just order brake pads by the dozen on AliExpress for a few euros and you're set for the rest of your life.

Agreed on all fronts, and I ride similar to you I think (I used to love outracing the spandex-cladders on the steep hills on my shitty racer). I used to spend £350 on old french bikes (I don't remember the brand), just due to the sheer elastic thrill of the cornering, but parts were far and few between and I usually had to ad-hoc some horrible solution to keep them going.

This was in central London half a decade ago, and one piece of mind that I had when going for these types of bikes: no one wanted to steal them. I had yuppie friends who would fork out 1-2k on a new bike that they were too afraid to scratch to actually ride, and it would be stolen within a few months of its purchase. My bikes? I would leave them carelessly chained to some weak fence confident in the knowledge it would still be there when I came back to it.

There is freedom in cheapness.