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.