Yup, I was in the same boat as you as far as not being able to do any legacy suff in Lion becasue of the lack of HFS support.
Luckily I havea a Mac Mini lying around that I wasn't using. I decided to turn it into a headless vintage suppport machine. It just sits on my desk connected to the network without a keyboard monitor or mouse. I installed 10.5 on it for HFS support. When I need to do some legacy stuff, I just share the screen with my Mac Pro and move files onto it over the network and get the legacy files off on HFS formatted Zip disks. Works like a charm, and it's so small it's not like I have a huge Mac sitting around getting in the way. I also made it that much more useful by connecting my MagicJack to it. (VoIP phone for those that don't know.)
Luckily I havea a Mac Mini lying around that I wasn't using. I decided to turn it into a headless vintage suppport machine. It just sits on my desk connected to the network without a keyboard monitor or mouse. I installed 10.5 on it for HFS support. When I need to do some legacy stuff, I just share the screen with my Mac Pro and move files onto it over the network and get the legacy files off on HFS formatted Zip disks. Works like a charm, and it's so small it's not like I have a huge Mac sitting around getting in the way. I also made it that much more useful by connecting my MagicJack to it. (VoIP phone for those that don't know.)