A longtime customer walked into the bike shop this morning and asked, "I'm looking for an $1800 mountain bike, but I don't want disc brakes." I'll see what I can find, was my answer. I checked the catalogs, I searched the internet and I called my experts in the nearest college town...guess what?...there is no such animal, in fact, between $600 and $3,000 you will not find a new mountain bicycle that does not come outfitted with disc brakes. I was shocked.
I've been in the bicycle business for forty years as a columnist/publisher/author and mechanic. I've owned and operated my own bicycle shop for over twenty years. I never saw this coming...the industry has been swarmed and inundated with disc brake technology. It's not as if rim braking was a problem. I've only seen a handful of worn-through rims in four decades of fixing bicycles. What's going on here?
I have the same question about front suspension. Most people riding mountain bikes are not riding aggressively downhill, which is the only time suspension is really necessary (assuming you have fat tires and they are not overinflated), just as disk brakes are only really necessary when riding in sticky mud and few do that. Don't complain though, disk brakes and suspension mean more repair business. People want to buy dreams of adventure, not the reality of a device for riding around in the woods with no cellphone connectivity and hence no facebook.
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