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@h2o
I spent an hour or two browsing the Paris crew's Pignon Fixe site and it really brought out some of the contrasts to me.
The French are much more into their old road bikes (they have much more of a bike culture after all) and from what I could tell conversions and vintage track frames had a lot more tell there.
Over here in the UK, which had more of a BMX infection, arrospoks and powdercoating are much more popular, hence the HHSB - but we're torn (being a mongrel nation ;-) ) and some are more continental in their tastes.
We're also more puritan I think - in the French bike porn thread they had nice old geared bikes, whereas here we'd pour scorn on such posts (wrong forum!) but we love our old path racers and grass track frames built for 27 inch wheels. Oh, and Nervex lugs.
Welding is more of an issue here too - in the US I think people overlook shitty lugs on a cheap stiff frame (Leader), but here we'd pour additional scorn on the shitty welds. Puritanism? I dunno.
We also have a bit of a bling/anti-bling thing going on. Like, HHSBs are cool because they're ironic even if they're bling, whereas crass shininess - Bianchi Pista anyone? - is frowned upon.
In a nutshell - we're screwed up and schizo :-)