I find interesting that what appears to initiate the responses about the pricey bikes and the NY Times article is the high price and the perception that it is misspent money, or at least, money that could be better spent toward, for example, the seven-thousand dollar Hetchins. Regardless of whether I could afford it or not, there's lots that I would not spend my money on in bicycling, but that others do, I think, in the end is their business. Some freak out about a two-dollar cup of coffee from Starbucks, but I buy it. Spending other people's money, like raising other people's children, is very easily and wisely done. Spending and raising one's own, that's another story.
I do think, however, that the boutique bikes bring up bicycling as a whole and raise the price of those we cherish. Many of us, or at least I do, remember the days in the sixties and early seventies when we couldn't afford the "next step up" bike, for me it was a Mondia, for others it might have been a Cinelli, and now that I can afford at least the Mondia, but still not the Cinelli, I find that others buying ten thousand bikes makes me feel good--please note, not smug--good. In so many ways, the more bikes sold and ridden the better off all bikes and bicyclists are. I note in the summer an increasing frequency of five or six bicyclists in a pace line shooting past my house, and regardless of what they are riding, that makes me feel good about what I am doing with bikes from the past.
For whatever it is worth,
Tom Hayes
Chagrin Falls, Ohio USA