>>1607159i like this a lot for what it is, but a cheap allum frame and a cheap hiten disc fork is just not actually as good as the bikes ITT. Look at the pic. This is a bike and like all bikes it rides, but it's also cheap shit.
Even Marin recognizes that, and sells chromoly bikes for more money. At which point it becomes cost effective to restore something old if you'd enjoy doing so.
And it also remains true that casuals have zero interest in bike nerd values or even vaguely idiosyncratic bike purchases. I've given up recommending bikes like Marins to casuals because in the years of doing so, no one who came to /n/ asking about muh entry level hybrid muh rough roads maybe ill ride a gravel path sometimes ever bought one. Not once.