iansmash

that's where you call the police and tell them that he verbally threatened you and tried to hit you

Dion Rides

It's funny.

When I'm on my $$$$ CF road bike, I get tons of love from the suburb roadies in my area. They all dress like "freds" but I don't care - I say do what you like as long as you're happy. However, when I ride my fixed gear, which is decked out with brakes and doesn't have a "fashion" item whatsoever on it, I get NO LOVE. I also am decked out in my normal cycling clothing + helmet, so I'm even futher detached from the fashion side of fixed gear riding. It's just a personal preference I don't care if people choose that route.

But it made me realize that the fixed gear has brought about SUCH a fashion/poser crowd with it, many being obnoxious critical mass, beer drinking, ill-fitted bikes, zero safety equipment, lack of respect for the law (via web vids and forums) - it's no wonder why the fixed gear bike and fixed gear riders are in such a "black sheep" section of the cycling community.

Fixed gear riders are not the only ones breaking the laws, etc. we are the ones promoting it.

I take the example of the sportbike stunt riders in the motorcycle community - they are generally despised among the motorcycle sportbike community. They are obnoxious and many are trying to mimmick what they saw in "Biker Boyz": they pose, break laws, speed, remove safety equipment, etc.

It's the attitude that is associated with the bike that gets the hate. The hate goes even further if you choose to not "look" like a serious cyclist.

I know it sucks that this is the way things are, but if you're concerned about the hate, then do something about it. If you like being the "black sheep" of the cycling community, then ride on and let this stuff roll off.

flam

Yeah i go to school at drexel in philadelphia and coming home to ride in the jersey suburbs is so weird now. Cars around here just aren't used to seeing many bikes, let alone fixed gears.

Geordi Laforge

the end of suburbia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3uvzcY2Xug

elTwitcho

It's just the backlash from the fact that everyone hates suburbanites

Adam G.

I live in the suburbs and generally people are extremely closed minded and are trapped in their little world. To the OP i understand where you are coming from. You know what I say f**ck them all! Suburban people are very strange and anything different or out of the ordinary it ruins there day. I find people who live in the city are more open minded and down for anything.

rrooster

I guess it just matters where you are. I wouldn't dream of riding around where I grew up in Florida, I'm pretty sure I'd become someone's hood ornament. On the other hand, when I've ridden through my girlfriend's gated neighborhood, people were totally cool about giving cyclists (all 2 of us) room on the road.

dayvan cowboy

last time I rode in the suburb of Dayton, Ohio my parents live, a dude in an SUV held down his horn as soon as he saw us and continued holding it down until he passed us, even though we were riding on the shoulder.

I have an uncle who lives out in the country and he hates nothing more than the roadies who ride around out by his house with their support cars and large numbers of them taking up entire lanes. He doesn't mind seeing a person riding a bike for transportation, he just hates roadies.

ManlyDude69

god, its so hard being oppressed.

tryfuhl

I dunno I get honked at even when I'm on the sidewalk. This one idiot that works at an auto-service place yells "Do a wheelie!" everytime I ride by, like I haven't heard that from him once a week for months now.

tryfuhl

yeah I'm so over that word already

haha, see what I did there? :-/

tryfuhl

o cool we're being elitist about that now too?

stephenhatesyou

before brooklyn, i lived in western massachusetts - amherst & northampton. "liberal" college towns. it was a rare thing for me to go a day without being called any number of names, mostly "***" or "pus.sy" -- or the "get a car!" or "on the sidewalk!" thing. this was before average joe college kid knew what a track bike/fixed gear was, so on occasion i'd get the befuddled, "what the fu.ck kind of bike is that?!" or "how do you stop that thing?" ... the worst of it was the sort of frustration that would come along with being older-than-college-aged while living in a college town anyway, regardless of being a cyclist or not: dealing with idiotic frat boys four to six years younger than me trying to play the whole puffed-up-chest proving-you're-a-tuff-guy game. yawn.

last time i was up there with my bike, about a year ago, there were way more folks riding and, surprisingly, cars seemed to be a little more aware of and a little less perturbed by my existence. though an 18-year-old-lookin' khaki-wearer did yell at me from the sidewalk: "how do your nuts breath in those pants?" my response: "what?" him: "how do your nuts breathe?" me: "oh. through their nose, sh.ithead" he went on to talk about all the women he gets in his pleated khakis, but - as engaging as the dialogue was - i had to split.

Badbalance

I live in the burbs north of Boston and frequently have similar situations of tough guy kids who just got their license and their new polo hat yelling **** at me out the window.

Jabba Degrassi

What, "fixie?"

I'm not, I think it's a stupid thing to get your nuts in a knot about. Some people just feel this need to rail against new language, as if language were meant to be static. As if English as we speak it today has always been and will always remain unchanged.

On a related note, some people need to grow/lighten the **** up.

Patricky

i thought this thread was about why do people hate suburbs

Jabba Degrassi

It's about two things now.

smurfy

In my neighborhood most bikes are fixies (at least the ones I see)!

Geordi Laforge

and how many "fixes" are in dayton ohio? 4?

smurfy

Alot more than you (and I ) think. There are probably at least four fixies living within a two or three block radius of me and I'm seeing new ones all the time I haven't seen before.

There are a concentration of them in my neighborhood (University of Dayton area) but rarely I have seen them elsewhere. In my club (Dayton Cycling Club, mainly a touring club) I think I'm the only one who rides fixed.

Geordi Laforge

ah ok.
college town
(a step above a suburb)

dayvan cowboy

Dayton Ohio IS NOT a college town. University of Dayton is a rich people Catholic college that is in the city of Dayton. Dayton is a city that has been dead since WWII and is nothing but a hotbed of drugs and urban decay. It's not a huge city, but it's not the suburbs.

I grew up in Centerville(new money suburb of Dayton) and I spent tons of time downtown when I was in high school. Every time I've been down there recently(3 times in the last year) i always see a bunch of ugly "fixies" with arrospokes and ugly as balls "hip" paint jobs chained up outside the Pachia coffee shop in the Oregon district.

happytruck

I live in Allston MA. Usually if anyone yells it's a bro or college driver/passenger. Sometimes when I ride down Harvard I hear things from the Brookline crowd too. Never anything horrible though, really.
I've ridden in Freeport/Baldwin NY (about as suburban as it gets) and no one said anything. I've also ridden in White Plains NY, nothing.

ManlyDude69

The real problem with the suburbs is the cops at night. They see someone on a bike and you're automatically suspect.

Scotland Yard

Ha yea, I've gotten stopped before because we go out and ride on the main street in my town really late at night in the summer.

but regarding people with stupid reactions to bikes, if you're having fun I say f uck it, I could care less at the rude gestures I get, its my legal right to be in a lane, SHARE THE ROAD *****