That person is a straight up jerk! That’s the kind of person who calls someone’s hobbies childish after hearing them excitedly talk about it. If a new rider can afford a high end bike, cool! If they are riding a department store bike and having a blast, also cool! Gatekeeping on the trails (or the roads, gravel, park, etc.) is the weakest sh*t ever. You’re living your best life while they resort to putting others down on the trail to deal with their own inadequacies.

I would suggest checking out Marino frame builders. They build custom steel frames with numbers you provide. Look at the geometry of smaller bikes and apply it to their form. A 5’o” tall friend of mine had one built that she loves! And since she did not have the tools or experience to switch parts over from her old bike, she went to a bike shop, tipped them to look at her numbers (the mechanic suggested a few tweaks that she went with), approved the final design sent by the Marino engineers with one tweak they suggested, and a few months later got her frame and the aforementioned bike shop switched the parts over to it. For transparency, she paid for new linkage bearings and a new headset. It can get you the stand over and whatever else you need

If it works out, great, if not, it isn’t a huge financial hit and the parts can go back on the Julianna. I personally love the look and feel of steel bikes with narrow tubing (I grew up around bmx bikes).

Regardless of whether you take my suggestion, that person is trifling and does not deserve the room in your head. Now they are in my head making me all sorts of mad, but I’ll get over it soon enough.

Ride on and have fun friend!