Go Home Already: Shouts and Murmurs
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Fire at 17th and L NW Forces Evacuations
New trends and fads follow a predictable path in the Washington area. First there are pioneers, next come early adopters, then the general public and eventually, some time after that, the Washington Post. Once the Post gets around to publishing an article on the new trend or fad, you can bet that it's only a matter of months before it's completely over.
So it has gone for the fixed-gear bicycle. Today the Post dedicated over 1,700 words and a frontpage billing in the Style section to the fixie, tracking the single-gear bike's roots as a tool of the urban messenger to its growth into a hipster necessity. Reporter David Montgomery speaks to the folks who swear by fixies, and delves into the internal divisions within the ranks of their adherents. (Front brake or not? Flip-flop hub, yay or nay?)
I'm personally not a fixed-gear convert. (Why? One word -- performance.) After today, though, I feel downright rebellious with my 10-speed rear cassette. And now that the Post has all but announced the slow death of the fixed-gear fad amongst cycling pioneers, what's next?
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The only thing more depressing than dead media's declaration of something as a trend long after it's run its course, is the blogosphere's need to remind us of the declining relevance of dead media. Or maybe I'm just misunderstanding your question. Can you please rephrase it in terms of DC voting rights or the Second Amendment? Thank you.
It's all about the Bicycle Rifle!
The only thing more depressing than dead media's declaration of something as a trend long after it's run its course, is the blogosphere's need to remind us of the declining relevance of dead media.
+ 1,000,000.
Same goes for the tendency of bloggers to not realize that their readership is vastly different than that of old media. Sure, I thought the fixie piece was laughably out of touch. But this stuff isn't written for you and me. It's written for middle-aged exurb-dwellers for whom the trend is in fact novel.
Perhaps, but what does that say about the reading demographic of the 100 or so newspapers that wrote this article 3 years ago? Is the Washington Post readership really that much more out of touch than that of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette?
Martin should have a 2A tidbit tomorrow.
Can they do anything about the flicted people wearing flip flops?
I think the only thing lamer than a fixietool is a Lycratool.
Also, the social phenomenon technically jumped the shark when Urban Outfitters started selling them as a fashion accessory for unhip-hipster who is perennially a day late to the party. The Washington Post is even later than that, which is impressive.
I can't believe Urban Outfitters is still in business - now that even dorks know that funny t-shirts aren't funny.
Fixies are just another example of Darwinism in action.
Like cigarette smoking and driving without a seatbelt, riding a bike that forsakes a hundred years of advancements in gearing and braking technology tends to have a steadily decreasing number of interested parties.
And now that the Post has all but announced the slow death of the fixed-gear fad amongst cycling pioneers, what's next?
Publishing rules on tweeting?
i'm just going to go sit in a corner and cry now.
not because i ride a fixie (oh HELL no), but because i feel sad for my hipster cousins...
Perhaps I should add the caveat that there is nothing at all wrong with preferring a particular type of gearing. I was dogging the post-mortem embrace of a tired subculture.
Nothing wrong with the gearing..its the lack of brakes that is idiotic.
Oh, and I was a hipster bike messenger back in the hay day. There is no way in hell a messenger on one of these things could come close to making what a biker on a "real" bike could.
Well.... they do have breaks. They're called legs, although I support the notion that they should be required to have a front brake.
Meh. It depends on the topography. In Manhattan or Chicago they make sense. In a city as hilly as D.C., I think they're arguably impractical. In San Fran, they're flat out retarded. San Franciscans on Fixies should be impaled.
"arguably"? Even in flat areas I still maintain there is not way they could do it. I used to put in 20-30 miles a day riding all out. I'd like to see how long it takes these guys to just one Cap. Hill-Rosslyn run.
Faster than you.
I will bet my over the hill knees that I could beat you on a fixie any day. Bring it on, bring it on. The course is from Rayburn to USA Today towers (or whatever they call them now). out-back, out-back.
Huh. I guess we were both at GW and bike couriers at roughly the same time.
Universal North to Cap Hill or Universal North to LeEnfant Plaza was my hell.
I hated anything to do with LeBeouf Lamb. MFs once gave me bad instructions on the POD and got me called into a conference room to explain why a certain signature on a serving document didn't get signed.
I bet I was before your time. My messenger company was located in the building underneath the Aeroflot office. If you say you remember that, you are dating yourself.
I was mid 90's. Before cell phones were common, after the fax started dismantling the biz. Our base was Morgan Lewis @ 1800 M. During winter it was nice to be able to throw my socks into the dryer during lunch.
I was late 80s early 90s
You're not a hipster. You're someone whose whole purpose in life is to post inane comments on blogs.
hey, phucker, did i say i was a hipster? nope. just pouring a little liquor out for my homies.
thanks for noticing!
I was the first white person to live in mt pleasant.
And the first white person to walk through shaw.
And the first white person to go the target in columbia heights.
That's all.
Perhaps you are mistaken, Theodore Brown was the first white person to walk through shaw.
can you COAST on a fixed gear?
Perhaps you should read the article, as that question is answered in the fourth paragraph.
Pffth: Hipsters on fixies. Don't they nkow it's all about "performance"?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn29DvMITu4
Friction shifting rules.
Honestly, I feel torn about this type of thing (both the fixie thing and the in's and out's of trends/trendsetters). I've ridden a bike as a means of transportation since I was 6 or 7 years old. I've never been dedicated to performance/race cycling nor to trick/trail cycling, though I've dabbled in both, and even now I'm still learning about bike mechanics and the basic maintenance of owning a decent bike. I wasn't aware of the fixie thing until I moved to NYC 4 years ago (college in the middle of nowhere PA and childhood on the Jersey shore, both very far from hipsterdom), but still didn't jump in because I already had a bike and had no budget to get a 2nd just for the heck of it.
While I prefer the piece of mind and the convenience of brakes and gears, I have to admit I've wanted to play around with a fixed gear for awhile. It's kinda like being used to the convenience of an auto-trans car with cruise control vs physical engagement of driving a manual-trans car. For some people, the physical engagement with the vehicle, once control is learned, beats the ease of automatic everything any day.
At this point, though, between the cost and the multiple layers of clique bs, it's questionable whether it's even worth it.
Isn't having gears that you can shift kinda more like the manual transmission, and not having gears kinda more like the automatic transmission?
I mean, I kinda get where you're coming from, but the difference is, there's really nothing about a bike WITH gears and brakes that gives you less control over one without them, unlike the car situation. I mean, you could just leave your geared bike in one gear all the time and not use the brakes, if you wanted.
I admit the analogy is a little bit of a stretch, but it has less to do with a direct comparison of parts and more with the experience of letting the vehicle do a lot of the work for you versus physically engaging the vehicle to make it work.
A bike with many gears does a lot to ease the experience of variable terrain and traffic situations, but at the cost of a more complicated system with way more moving parts, making it relatively (arguably) more expensive and difficult to fix and maintain (perhaps an overlooked reason for the bike messenger crowd's adoption of fixies). It also puts a layer between the operator of the machine and the object of the machine's work - this is to most people's benefit, but a minority of people actually do like to be more directly involved with the operation of the machine. As the people quoted said, there's a "flow" involved with riding a fixed gear, once control is learned.
Back when I actually owned a car and drove it regularly, I had a manual transmission and to me the experience is similar in that way.
I mean, I kinda get where you're coming from, but the difference is, there's really nothing about a bike WITH gears and brakes that gives you less control over one without them, unlike the car situation. I mean, you could just leave your geared bike in one gear all the time and not use the brakes, if you wanted.
Actually, there is less control with a bike WITH gears because you necessarily have a freewheel...that allows you to coast. If you stop pedaling, you simply keep going. You can't stop pedaling on a fixed-gear (well, without getting thrown off the bike), you can only start to provide resistance which in turn, slows the bike down. Hence more control with the fixed-gear.
By the way, a fixed-gear bike does not mean a bike with no brakes. Lots of fixed-gear bikes have brakes. Usually only on the front - but many bikes equipped with the flip-flop hub have both front and back because if you flip the rear wheel around to go single-speed (with the freewheel), you'd have a hard time stopping even with just the front brake.
Aren't the new hip bike those ones with the car tires on them?
Next week in WaPo "Razor Scooters: Is the Thrill Gone?"
This conversation is INSANE! There is NOTHING about a fixie that offers more control over ANY OTHER BIKE! Furthermore, the amount that most people spend on these fixies far exceeds the "high" cost of maintenance on a bike with gears and brakes.
Fixies, AKA track bikes, evolved to their current form for racing on tracks. They are optimized for the velodrome, and outperform any other bike in that venue. Anywhere else, they lose, and they are dangerous. I have always thought that the fixie was a ridiculous trend until I actually rode one a few months ago. Then I discovered that ridiculous is a very generous term for these bikes.
I have a friend who spent in excess of $2k for his fixie. I am currently riding a 20-year old bike (yay me!) with 18 gears and two brakes. I can accelerate really really fast if I want to, I can rocket up a hill, and if I want to blow through a red light at the bottom of a hill and I see a car going through the intersection at the last minute, I can stop my bike. And I probably spend about 20 minutes a year (and as many $) maintaining my bike. Like Jamie implies, there is a reason that the vast majority of modern bikes have brakes and gears.
If I wanted fixie performance, I'd ride a unicycle. Derailleurs FTW. Better yet, motorcycle FTMFW.
coaster brake internal-gear hubs.
and dynamo hubs.
chromed fenders/chaincase?
baskets?
One advantage to the fixed-gear is that they can be built with thicker, more durable cogs, chainrings, and chains than geared bicycles. For a messenger, this may mean not having to replace worn and expensive cassettes every few months.
As geared bikes evolve (or devolve) they have tended to use decreasingly durable components, such as 9 and 10 speed cassettes and thinner chains, which will wear out faster than older seven and eight speed cassettes and freewheels.
But realistically, this is probably only a concern for a professional messenger riding in mixed conditions. The fixie makes little to no sense for your everyday hipster.
The discussion is missing a area: what was hip and new last year that is already on its way out due to oversaturation- cut of bull horn handlebars (with no grip tape of course) and now the uberpresent, BMX handles on a road bike.
Oh - and if you think there are a lot of hipsters and an over-saturation of fixies here, you should visit Philly.
Knarrs - Viking Ships
Wow, is there anything more banal than people who are probably hipsters themselves complaining about hipsters?
That Post article is pretty terrible. Late to party, and they still got it all wrong.
Almost all of the justifications for fixies are rationalizations. Yes, a derailleur system is more complicated, but on a good one you'll almost never notice the complications so it's not really an issue (and a biker worth their salt knows how to deal with it when it comes up).
As Urban Outfitters recognized, it's first and foremost a fashion/culture statement.