"Good bikes aint cheap anyway!"
They can be, you just gotta be able to identify what is good and what isn't, sometimes quality can be found for surprising deals. When you pay a lot of money for stuff you are paying for somebody else's work, to achieve your desired goal. There are many different approaches to be taken, and throwing money at it can be one of them. Another approach is to look outside the box, find parts from other types of bikes and motorcycles, and make things on your own. The motorized bicycle part industry is on of convenience, but if you can get past the kit mentality there are a lot of options, really endless. I think build offs are kinda pointless because its basically creating a subforum for infighting, rather than just creating an sharing what you have made, if somebody doesn't like it, then they can get stuffed because it has nothing to do with them. Each person has their own preference of what they like, and how you would judge a wide range of styles and tastes of bikes will be colored by the bias of the person or people judging. I, myself wouldn't notice if cruiser bicycles disappeared from the earth, I broke a Schwinn as a 6 year old who liked to rip on my bicycles, and haven't looked back since.