There is a bit of a retro cult out there. And good steel bikes still being made.
Check out Columbine cycles for some truly beautiful work.
My favorite all time favorite steel racing bike from the 1970s is called a Strawberry. It was made by a craftsman who lived in Portland Oregon. When I looked Strawberry bicycles just now, I found that the name has an interesting origin. The stories I heard about the guy in the 1970s turned out to be inaccurate.
” In 1970 after graduating from engineering school, I lived in the Cotswolds near Bulls Cross, Stroud, a few miles from Gloucester. Once a week I rode in a massed start road race in the Bristol area and during one of the train trips down to Bristol I learned of a road race across the English/Scottish border held the week before the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh. This sounded like an adventure, so I headed north on the train with my new Bob Jackson bicycle. The road race included national team members and it was no sooner apparent that I was out of my depth than I was desperately off the back of the pack touring the highlands of Scotland. A week later the weather was still abysmal but the scenery cycling down Loch Ness was beautiful. Returning south, I spent a few days in London and ordered a Hetchins cycle frame for a girlfriend. My interest in cycle frame construction was piqued by the Hetchins shop visit. Fast forward, I returned to Portland and thought to attempt to fabricate cycle frames, but under what moniker? My father, Lawrence Fraser Newlands, Scottish on both sides, suggested the Fraser crest. Research into the Fraser name in Scotland shows Norman roots from the mid - 12th. century and that it is derived from the French word fraise, meaning Strawberry. However, the origin of the name Fraser is disputed, and indeed, the name may be a pun on the strawberry flowers on the Fraser heraldic crest. All in good humor, the name “Strawberry Bicycle” was trademarked in 1971.”