Gabriel wrote: Bikes are just stuff, riders riding them give them soul.
I say: Wow, there's a statement that has no actual meaning but yet irritates me considerably. I see plenty of soul in the hand of the maker. It may be "just stuff" but it comes from us. Humans thought it up, made it evolve, and produced each and every bike, and the tools to make it... and the tools to make those tools. The rider and the riding can add or take away from this. A lovely bike abused and badly set up is just sad. A lovely bike well used and looking "right" is a wonderful thing. You can look at a bike and know in a second what sort of use it has been getting, and it can go either way.
Gabriel wrote: If riding (fixed) bikes is a fashion statement, cool. Fashion undermines homogeneity.
I say: By the time it reaches the mainstream, fashion is just old-fashioned conformity, to say nothing of it being the domain to of the elite prior to that. Not big deal, until the conformity is something really stupid, like inexperienced riders zipping around without brakes. Fixed was edgy among couriers 15 years ago. Now it is, in part, a silly fad. That doesn't mean that fixed is bad, or people who ride fixed are bad, or that everyone who rides fixed is tattoed, pierced, and high. It doesn't preclude some portion of the newest crop of trendsters from eventually becoming afficionados of classic bikes, or winning the Tour, or eradicating HIV, or ending up in prison. You can say exactly the same about guys who ride $10K CF bikes too, but they are villans here, with no hope of redemption. The newly-minted fixed gear rider is somehow embraced as the future of classic bikes, however.
Obviously fixed gear bikes are here to stay, because they have been around since the beginning and never went away. In part they have experienced a resurgenced among devoted cyslists, and that a different matter from that of the fixed wheel as hipster trend. Walking around in Philadelphia lately I was stunned by the number of conversions. I have no problem with this, other finding it beyond annoying that some of these bikes had no brakes.
Gabriel wrote: Couldn't think of a better resource for pulling fashion. in this case it is undermining of a rampant commodification/consumerism in fashion.
I say: I think this is pure nonsense. I think this gives way too much credit where it is obviously not due. Several people have commented how these are bikes that are cobbled together from available parts, are reuse and recycling at their best. This is not quite on the mark. For one, many of these bikes sport all kinds of new parts, many of them conspicuous and flash, rather expensive, and of limited utility. A lot of original wheels, chains, handlebars etc that are quite suitable for the low performance application are bing tossed to make way for nifty-but-pointless, if not downright counterproductive, modifications. Once Specialized, Bianchi and all are making mass produced "track" bikes obviously targeted at the trend followers, the arguments about anticonsumerism fall flat. Once the fixed bike is highlighted as in mens magazines with names like "Stuff" it's clearly all over for the fixed wheel as an anticonsumer fashion statement. Not that there aren't plenty of folks out there doing a good thing by keeping old bikes going, but plenty of new bikes are now being made to feed the trend, and many will be collecting dust, or landfilled, in the coming years.
Gabriel wrote:
Another reason, eluded to by Bob in the statement below, is that riding fixed is just plain FUN! I would be really interested in how many people on this list disparaging it has ever done it.
I say: Done it, enjoyed it, found it helpful for VERY specific reasons. That said, it was nowhere near as efficient as riding a multigeared freewheeler. I find modern STI drivetrains a hell of a lot more transcendental than a fixed gear. Keeping my body closer to an ideal rythym the bike comes a lot closer to going away. Obviously those who don't yet have the skills to use this kind of equipment might find it oppressive, and a one-speed liberating. The part about being unble to freewheel is just novel to many people, and that novelty goes away.
Gabriel wrote: this conversion thing imbues quite a bit of the 'personal' to the object, I find this specificity and customization FAR more interesting than the homogeneous quest for a questionable authenticity that permeates this list
I say: For every 10,000 taggers, one urban artist ends up in a gallery. The vast majority of conversions are just disasters. I guess I'm just too encumbered by the context of over 100 years of bicycle evolution to see the value in some cheezy paintjob on an MTB with 700c deep section wheels. They all look "different" in the same sad, ungainly way. Of course, I'm not talking here about fixed gear bikes used by actual cyclists, I'm talking about the urban assult rigs that populate the city sidewalks. Most folk art is thrown away for a good reason.
Gabriel wrote: A fixie develops certain skillsets (like mtn and ccross) that compliment road riding in general.
I say: Properly used, yes. In the here and now, for most riders of a fixed gear, the fixed gear nothing to do with enhancing cycling. To some it IS cycling. Their loss, but at least they are riding.
Gabriel wrote: A post colonial critique in cultural anthropology that has been developing for the past 20 years has pretty much undermined any sort of cultural homogeneity and has asserted that stereotyping is an inaccurate and a rather stupid approach to describing a culture. even a bicycling sub culture. find the uniqueness in everyone.
I say: Exactly, though sterotyping is exactly what we're all doing, including you when you say that the fixdgear trend is about anticonsumerism, and that conversions are a means of self expression. That's hardly evident in what I've seen. $600 Campy track hubs? Nitto, MKS, Hatta, and Sugino churning out color anodized parts?
There's consumerism and anticonsumerism, depending on which fixed gear rider you consider. There's devotion to the historical and total, deliberate rejection. There is effective and safe riding and there is mayhem. There are a few lovely bikes, and plenty to make me cringe. There are intersting personal statements and a godwful amount of me-tooing. It's a big thing, the fixie thing, and it seems to involve as many types of rider as cycling as a whole.
Tom Dalton Bethlehem, PA USA
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