General Cycling Discussion - A story of interest

Here's a link to a story that appeared in the Web version of the San Francisco Chronicle in March 1999. It's about bike messengers with track bikes, in San Francisco, and has some good photos.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/1999/03/18/MN47280.DTL

Good article Jon, thanks for posting.

I love my fixed gear. I do run a front brake, mainly for 2 reasons: I would wear out the rear tire real quick skidding to a stop all of the time and some of the hills around my way are so long, steep, and twisty it would probably be a death wish to not run the front brake.

Yeah, Riderx, I admire bike messengers no end--the same way I admire skateboarders. The rest of us need at least one brake.

I was just imagining my commute to work using a bike with no brakes. With several big hills and an interstate overpass, it would be an interesting experience to say the least.

One of the reasons I forgot to put down for using a brake: If you throw a chain on the fixed, you have a back up - luckily it hasn't happen to me yet.

I don't use the front brake much, and you can actually slow down pretty quick on a fixed gear w/o using the brake. It's nice to scrub the speed though when some idiot driver pulls a bonehead move.

Thanks for that post Jon. Working in downtown San Francisco I get to see the bike messanger going down the steep streets out here on their track bikes. It's amazing seeing them skid their way down a steep incline with no brakes.