Our comments below about the unveiling of the Pegoretti Responsorium at the 2006 Interbike encompassed our thoughts at the time about the frame itself and about the disposition of the man who built it -- Dario Pegoretti. Dario is a beloved man in this tiny industry of ours, which is likely why the comments set off such a firestorm. Select customers and friends asked us to scrap the write-up completely out of respect for Dario. Perhaps as a final check-and-balance before doing so, we sent Dario an email asking him if he thought we should remove it. Interestingly, he said "No." Rather, his preference was for the opportunity to reply on the same page. So our Responsorium comments remain intact here, and below it in blue is Dario's reply.

The Responsorium is Dario Pegoretti's solitary new introduction for 2007. His marquee models like the Big Leg Emma, the Marcelo, and the Love #3 carry through from 2006. And some of his time-honored workhorses like the Fina Estampa and the Palosanto make an exit. From the standpoint of understanding how the line goes together, it's an easy-to-digest year for Pegoretti connoisseurs since so little changes to it.

Let us back up a bit: Our mission here at Competitive Cyclist is a simple one -- we strive to serve as your jungle guide amidst the thick-and-often-disorienting forest of hoopla that defines the bike industry. But we've gotta admit we’ve never been as challenged to convey the authentic message of any product as we find ourselves with the Responsorium. Why? Because if we pass along nothing but technical info, we're not telling the full story. The Responsorium is a bike made with intriguing materials, yes. But it's a bike best bought for the right reasons, and materials technology doesn't seem to be it…That being said, we're aware that we'd be derelict in our duties if we didn't provide a technical summary, so here goes --

The Responsorium is Pegoretti's one-and-only steel bike that isn't made from Columbus Niobium Spirit tubing. Rather, it's built from Columbus XCr tubeset -- a new-for-2007 stainless steel. Why stainless? The obvious virtue is its rust-proofness. But Dario expressed his keenest interest in the attractive mechanical properties in XCr. It's 20% stronger in all the right ways in comparison to Niobium Spirit, allowing him to build the Responsorium with thinner walls and more substantial butting than what you get on his Niobium Spirit bikes. The thinner wall thicknesses and enhanced butting profiles on the Responsorium are complemented by 16mm seatstays (vs. the 18mm seatstays you get on the Marcelo). These changes to the tubeset have two net effects: First and foremost is that it gives, according to Dario, the most comfortable ride of any steel Pegoretti (which, in our minds, means it's the most comfortable ride of any Pegoretti). Secondly, it weighs 100g less than the Marcelo. Yeah, you don't buy steel to get a flyweight bike. But shedding weight is always a plus when you're not sacrificing ride quality or durability, so we're all for it.

The other bit of technical info we should pass along pertains to the name of the frame itself. "Responsorium" is the name of an album by a bandoneon musician named Dino Saluzzi. We dig jazz in a big way here, but our taste runs more along the lines of Bill Evans. Dario took the better part of 5 minutes explaining to us what a bandoneon looks like (our impression is that it's an accordion on HGH) -- a sufficiently exhausting exchange thanks to his thick Italian accent and his near-perfect-but-unequivocally-imperfect English that we neglected to segue into a discussion of what it sounds like. Our loss, yes, but we were worn out by then.

Like all Pegorettis, the Responsorium comes equipped with a Reynolds Ouzo Pro full carbon fiber fork. It requires a 1-1/8" threadless headset, a 35.0mm front derailleur, a 30.0mm (no, that is not a typo) seatpost and an Italian BB.

At the unveiling of the Responsorium at the '06 Interbike, you would've expected all the buzz to be about the techy stuff -- tubing materials, tubing dimensions, etc, etc. But, intriguingly, it wasn't. Rather, everyone was fixated on one item: Paint. Dario's paint schemes have long been the boldest in the business, but with the Responsorium he shed his varied comfort zones: The Mischievous ('05 Marcelo & the WWGTB), the Ludic ('06 Marcelo), and the Beautiful (the Luigino & the final rendition of the CCKMP). Rather, he took a long and frightful leap into the emotional darkness he first manifested in 2006 with the Love #3.

The debates we heard about the paint were loud and widespread. Folks argued at the show, and folks argued even more vigorously on the 'net shortly in the weeks after the show. The Responsorium might've well as been a metaphor for the last 50 years of art since the language we heard traced the battle lines of freshman-level art history class debates about the worth of modern art. Whether folks liked it or not, most everyone focused on its painterly aspects -- "My 6-year old can paint like that" vs. "Inherent, radiant beauty" and so on. Meaning was never a topic of discussion. It was always about appearance. It was the Pepsi Painterly Challenge: The Responsorium -- attractive or no?

Our bias here at Competitive Cyclist is for words over pictures, and perhaps that's why we recused ourselves from the heated discussions. We were most intrigued by the content of Dario's art on the Responsorium. The message itself is what interested us most, not the visual means of the expression. And we use "art" in all seriousness here because Dario literally hand-painted the frame. It wasn't sprayed and stenciled like you usually get from him. So we asked him to give us a tour of the paint -- Tell us what it means, we asked.

In proof of the statement "Be careful what you ask for…", he answered us honestly: "Violence," he said. He mumbled the word. It was hardly an utterance."Violence."

We've known Dario a long time, and we know enough people who know him better than us that we're aware that the last year of his life hasn't been a good one. His family situation has been sad -- details omitted -- and his work life has all the appearances of being neither productive nor joyful. He was a man who once exuded an irrepressible joie de vivre. In fact, it was after our annual meeting with him 2 years ago that we wrote the following:

"Not only will he take your simmering love for truly handmade bikes and make it boil, but he'll set alight your passion for life and all of its possibilities since he's living proof that following your muse brings a heightened fulfillment unobtained by life's other accomplishments. His warmth and lack of pretension define him -- this, even though the artistry he had on display screamed for your complete attention."

2006 was a different scene altogether. He was slumped over as we talked. His gauntness suggested too little sleep, too little food, too many Marlboros and 12-round slugfests with one set of shitty circumstances after another.

"Jean-Michel Basquiat," he continued. "Basquiat was my inspiration." Perhaps you already know it, but Jean-Michel Basquiat was a celebrated artist in New York throughout the 80's. He was a gritty immigrant kid with a penchant for graffiti and attention. His flamboyance and his street cred made him an ideal protégé for artists no less celebrated than Andy Warhol and Keith Haring, and he worked alongside them to refine his style to become one of the most celebrated painters of the decade.

In an earlier time Dario might've celebrated one uniquely noteworthy detail of Basquiat's life: He banged Madonna with famous regularity when she was in her early 20's. But Dario's eye has become attuned to darkness now -- and it's Basquiat's anger and violence that he co-opted. His embrace of Basquiat's aesthetic in the paint scheme of the Responsorium is frightfully true to form. We say frightful because for all of Basquiat's well-documented dandyism, the last years of his life were in fact a grim blur of depression and heroin abuse. Then in 1988 he did what countless artists choose to do: Kurt Cobain deep-throated a shotgun. Mark Rothko butchered open his wrists. Basquiat jacked himself up on enough heroin to kill a sizeable zoo animal. In time-honored fashion he exited with a bang, not a whimper. In the process he achieved the one productive accomplishment of suicide: It became the act that defined him.

What does it mean that Dario pays explicit tribute to the anger and violence of an artist who died by his own hand? And what does it mean that he does so during the peak of a period when his life -- at least to us -- has all the signs of being rudderless and bereft?

Maybe it means nothing, just nothing at all. Let's make that answer Option A: Nothing at all.

But what if it does mean something? What might it mean? Is Option B a suicide watch? It's not easy to think that, much less write it down -- but it's no less hard than having seen the man who was vibrancy writ large look so lifeless and hollow. The only conceivable distance further from where Dario is now to where he was two years ago is the distance from where he is now to not being here at all. It's a horrible, almost-unthinkable thought, and it stems from that one word: Violence, and that one name: Basquiat.

And then there's Option C, the middle ground. It's one where he's still with us, but he's not. He's alive as a man. He's alive as a father and as a friend. But as a framebuilder? We must admit we've beaten our heads against the wall in the last 18 months as his custom frames took longer and longer to arrive at our doorstep. We heard the culprit was a lack of available tubing. We heard it was because his painter quit. We heard about how his source for lugs dried up and how damn hard it is to produce a technically perfect BLE or Luigino anyways. What we should've asked about, maybe, was his state of inspiration as an artist. The muse, we wonder now, has it left him? Trying to conjure up fumes of inspiration where it used to overflow -- has he had enough of that fight? Maybe that's his Basquiat-like grand finale. Not suicide as a whole, but rather a permanent release from the expectations the world puts on people who've shown flamboyance and creativity? Might giving up the torch for good liberate him as a man? Option C: Retirement from his burdensome celebrity as a framebuilder. Perhaps that's the omen intrinsic to his embrace of Basquiat.

So why should you think about buying a Responsorium? For the same reason you should equally consider a BLE or a Marcelo or a Love #3. The materials of each serve as a nice point of discussion -- but any of them will do, really. We love the man even more than we admire his technical skill. Riding his bikes -- and we do that in droves here at Competitive Cyclist -- is an expression of those feelings. We worry about him very much. And late 2006 is duly noted as the time when we became intensely aware that he won't be with us forever.