real bike riders, and especially racers and enthusiasts, don't ride serottas. at least not in a coupla decades. serottas used to be race bikes, and now they are wicked overpriced abortions sold to idiots who have way too much money and way too little experience or taste. for literally half the price, you can find something better, and if you wanna spend what a serotta requires, you can do something insane. but you have understand what is better, and why the price you would pay for a serotta is beyond dear, it's stupid. that's not the funny shit, though; serotta has had about a billion business models in the past 20 years, and they'll probably be out of business soon as this shitty economy washes away the whole shit show like a vermont covered bridge blasted by a ravaging flood.
there's a self-selected group of people who mostly don't know what makes a good bike, a good value or even good sense, and it's called the serotta forum. the bike stuff is easy: many of those people buy bikes instead of riding them. if you watch for a long time--and i have cuz i'm the sort of fella who actually rides a bike and don't own dozens of them i don't ride, as well as the kind of guy who likes to make fun of idiots--you will see some of the most ridiculously expensive bikes, serottas and others, shown off, drooled over and their ride qualities and magic materials extolled breathlessly by the peanut gallery, and then after a few months, these same frames will be sold with 10 miles on them. the jerk that bought them never rode them, and he probably never rides anything at all! all of the nonsense about how much faster they are, how well they ride and the tough racing they've seen is all bullshit. nobody ever brings that up. nobody ever says, 'hey, you've had that bike 6 months and told everybody you rode the shit out of it! how come it's only got 10 miles?' chances are the bike will be sold to another serotta forum member who will also never ride it! it looks like many on that board don't actually ride much if at all; it's a self-congratulation machine, also known as a circle jerk.
a few years back there was a guy who bought a ton of expensive bikes and posted long, wordy reviews of their construction, materials, ride qualities and strengths. this guy had some very rare and expensive bikes: richard sachs, nagasawa, dave kirk, tommasini, pegoretti and even serotta. he shoveled the bullshit long and hard, and they just ate it up. well, it turns out the guy had ridden maybe 50 miles in his life and had a physical condition that prevented him from riding a racing bike at all. none of the usual posters ever called him on it though; some of them were framebuilders who wanted his business and many of the others were just as full of shit as he was.
three years ago, the serotta forum lost many of their actual riders and all of their most famous framebuilders when those rebels acknowledged they were the cool kids and gave up all pretensions that the serotta forum wasn't full of chubby losers, so they formed their own community that was invitation only, mostly to keep the idiots from the serotta forum who dressed in zebra-striped lycra skinsuits but rode very slowly far away from their lunch table. this group was the rockstars and the groupies, leaving the serotta forum with the small fish and obvious bullshitters.
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