What are your thoughts on the brass knuckle frame as a first bike

carlitos imo, the frame you start with will always be just that - a starting point. there are many schools of thought on where to go / how to begin, almost all of which ive been through or thought about;

1) buy a beater road frame of decent quality and build, and learn the old fashioned way on how to convert / build a fixed;

2) get the brass knuckle / langster / plug / off-the-shelf-fixed (OTSF), and learn vicariously, perhaps accumulating bits n bobs till you have enough to build an entire separate bicycle of all solid parts;

3) get the OTSF, and be happy with it forever. (this last option, sadly, requires not really looking into why certain metals and composites might be best for this and that, or why certain vintages of frames are better than others, or why blah blah blah blah - basically it requires you to be satiated by your initial purchase and not to get geeky about things. that said - and based on the self evident fact that youve registered on this forum - your probly going to head into 'prime-geek' territory, which means you may "out grow" your OTSF sooner than expected. for nearly a year, my ex's langster did her well - until she started really looking into fixedgeargallery, noticing lug work, admiring paint jobs, etc, and now she's pining away about her next frame...)

hope that helps a bit...

thats it, spot on!