>>1171853we had a flowchart that everyone argued about but then nobody ever made anything better.
basically you want either:
an old steel "ten-speed" (except they're usually at least 12 speeds, actually) that has a decal for chromoly (cr-mo) steel usually on the seat-tube and /doesn't/ have the tells of cheap department store crap: no "turkey lever" brakes, no centerpull calipers, no stemshifters. these and bad "gaspipe" steel aren't the end of the world especially for a noob but the point is you can usually get quality stuff from the same era for the same price i.e. people sell the really good old bikes for the same price as the shitty ones, so get a good one. there are late 80s and 90s alu frames that fit this cheap-entry-level-but-good category as well.
or a 90s rigid MTB with slicks. it is a meme here and a good one. Rigid=no suspension
>b-b-but SUSPENSION!shut up. fat tires are all the suspension a city rider needs and even for slow/medium paced trail riding. when you're bombing down rocky hills, then you need to spend several hundred on sus alone and then a frame for them. until then, sus less than that will be heavy and shitty, robbing energy from your pedal-stroke. Slick or semi-slick tires unless you're actually going off-road all the time.
these bikes can be modded into different flavors to suit your riding (touring, commuting, long recreational rides, fire-roads/gravel) relatively easily and cheaply.
If you really are going to be offroad and want to go fast, you're going to want a more recent MTB, prob new or within the last 10ish years but that's not really my area.
If you're really going to be riding with an eye for racing then that's when you deviate from the old steel ten-speed meme and get a newish alu or carbon machine.
as a noob, use the /bbg/ before you pull the trigger on anything
