Crappy = Self-Sufficient!

Cheap stuff. If you have a limited supply of cash, buying cheap stuff is essential. And there is a coolness factor when it comes to cheap stuff. Sometimes buying other people's discards can lead to some distinctive, cool, counter-mainstream, choices.

There are guitarists who have made a career, collecting and playing really crappy, and cheap guitars. It turns out lots of those instruments have very unique and interesting voices. Paying lots of dollars doesn't necessarily mean a better sound. I have a pretty cheap Mexican-Made Telecaster, that has lots of gritty personality. It's a guitar that I have modded, and fiddled with, and it is very much a "custom" guitar. Cheap, but custom. And I use it often!

Same with bicycles. I have excelled at finding really cheap bikes, discarded and refurbished. There is a whole sub-culture of crappy, vintage bikes that exists on the margins.  It's funny, the front tire of my pretty crappy bike was recently stolen. I, for some reason, not really thinking, wheeled it into a fancy bike shop to see if they could outfit me with a new tire and rim.  It was like I was a visitor from another planet. They looked at the bike like it was some ancient, rare, animal that they had never seen before.

And I guess it would be like driving a Model T into a car dealer today.  So, anyway, they told me that they would need to "special order" a new rim and tire, and that said rim and tire were rare and expensive parts, and they quoted me a price about 5 times what I originally paid for the bike. Very funny.

It was only then that I remembered I had another really crappy bike down in the basement at home, it was a bike that had served me well, but had basically disintegrated, and for some reason, I didn't get rid of it, but put it in storage. Turns out the front tire and rim were in good shape.  And they were exactly what I needed! Presto Change-O! I installed the tire and rim from the disintegrated bike and I was back in business.  If you specialize in "crappy," you can be pretty self-sufficient!