>Or at a minimum, having its derailleur tab brutally hacked off in
>conversion to some hipster's fixie ride.
"It hurts me too" as the blues lyric goes, but for the sake of fair play
, I have to state that I am seeing many fixed-gear conversions around NY
C that are retaining the brazeons and dropout detail--naked derailleur h
angers hanging on down. If that is the trend, and it may well be, there'
s little or less to complain about. Let it all hang out.
Certainly being hip in itself is not a problem. The term "hipster" is a
bit debased; used to be it meant someone like Mose Allison, perhaps. Or
someone who'd read Mezz Mezrow. On some level, you had to dig (modern) j
azz and its blues side to be a hipster. I'd rather keep it there if I co
uld, but if possible, the term is used now with either an overload of ir
ony, or nearly none at all. Don't fall into the trap of using it as code
to mean "young fool". If you mean young fool, say young fool. "Fashion
victim" might be more apt, sometimes.
We run the risk nowadays of saying hipster when we mean square. They've
always been shape-shifting words, referencing fashion; some say "square"
was used to denote not having moved with the times away from square-toe
d shoes--back in the late 19th Century. Cutting up a good road frame to
me is square. Like, ignorant. But that doesn't mean that fixed-gear acti
on isn't hip. It's when fools do something square in the pursuit of bein
g hip that you get bummed, you dig?
Anyway, the fashion seems to be running toward showing your vestigial wh
at-nots with pride. That's good news for old frames, of course.
There's never any accounting for young fools, but some of them are just
young. Some of them were never fools; some get themselves unfooled as th
ey go; some will remain fools until the end. Let us see them (ourselves)
as individuals, and try not to cast the first derailleur.
Lamenting as I do, however, the term "fixie," I propose a new term: fixe
tte. This aligns with "randonneuse", and the custom (espoused by John Pe
rgolizzi, among others) of referring to a bike as "she."
I think I may have a go with either my fixette or my randonneuse later t
oday for an afternoon's fun.
Tom "April in Paris" Ward
Brooklyn, NY (USA) -- where everything is coming up roses.