I stopped by the Rapha Store in San Francisco. I'm not sure I understand this part of the business model, but Rapha opens these temporary storefronts as little cafe-boutiques and then shuts them down. It's in San Francisco through July. It's cute, and it's nice for me at least to be able to touch the products. They have the Tour de France on bigscreens all day and have a lot of informal seating. It's a cool vibe, if you don't mind pricey clothes boutiques.
Anyway, they had a very small Chris King display upstairs. The highlight of the display for me was a gorgeous white Cielo Sportif. It's essentially a Roadeo ie a fat tired road bike. It takes 57mm brakes, comes with fender braze-ons, steel fork, etc. The key differences are it has a more muted monochrome look, no fancy lugs, but it had a couple really cool little reveal accents showing the stainless underneath (around the seat cluster, cute little headtube rings). It appears to have a dead level top tube and not quite as much BB drop as a Roadeo, and it has a 1-1/8" threadless steerer. It's basically the same price as a Roadeo frameset ($1895 f/f no headset). The bike had a decidedly modern vibe to it (nobody is going to ask "nice bike! how old is it?"), while still having a timeless classy steel look. Very very appealing. So, the point of my post is twofold: 1. check out the Rapha boutique in SF if you care about such foppery. 2. Two of you should step up and buy me a Roadeo and a Cielo Sportif so I can ride them both. ha ha. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rbw-owners-bunch/-/XXDt1fd_sUMJ. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
