You are reading a single comment by @Velocio and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
@Velocio
There's nothing wrong with a langster. At all.
There's something wrong with the colour scheme that was put on the "London" langster and that is part of the global marketing campaign from Specialized, but nearly everyone on this site agrees that in the price range the langster provides a great starter bike.
Why starter? Because a lot of people here customise bikes, build bikes, and want a bike to match them and reflect them. And it's felt that by building and maintaining your own bike that you really have created self-sufficient transport and will have an understanding and appreciation of the machine you ride.
Why's the paint job so bad? Well mostly it's because it's hard to connect it to London (or even England or the UK or GB), and it looks like a cheap cash-in attempt on Specialized's part. As if just slapping a union jack on the top tube would make it 'cool'. It was cool enough before, now it just looks tacky. They should've gone for racing green, brooks-esque saddle and things that nodded towards the heritage of british racing and manufacturing.
But the bike itself, it's good... for the price and utility.
If you have just enough cash to buy a langster, and you are a bit intimidated by building your own bike at this point and just want to try riding fixed/singlespeed... then the langster remains one of the best introductions to it all.