dayvan cowboy

every quarter this year the number of fixed/ss bikes has grown exponentially. When i started riding one a little over a year ago, i had only seen 5 in the whole town but now there is at least one on each rack on campus.

juggleaddict

They're all over the place in Atlanta . . . obviously. . . even more so on campus.

mickey_

I see plenty of them at my school, especially outside my art history building.

elTwitcho

Around the city here I'd say fully half the bikes I come across fall into the "rusted out pieces of crap" category, and I'd say these people make up an integral part of our bike culture here. There are really two types of people who ride bikes and we seem to fall into one category, and those people seem to fall into the other. We're the type of people who are into bikes and riding them, while the people on the rusty crappy bikes are generally purely interested in only riding a bike, not so much the bikes themselves. These people ride slow to get around the city, they don't care that their chain is rusted, their shifters don't work and their saddle could usually stand to be a little bit higher, but this is absolutely a valid approach to riding a bike and there's nothing wrong with that.

When I consider myself and how I ride, I can see some distinct differences. For starters, when I ride it's almost always pretty fast. I don't know if that's a personality defect of mine, the fact that my bike is more comfortable pushing hard than just cruising, a joy of going fast or something else entirely, but I generally don't enjoy riding really slowly. As a result, whenever I ride I'm focussed 100% on the cars around me, the road surface, the parked cars, the god damn trolley tracks, pedestrians who might dart in front of me, traffic signals, pretty much anything that might pose a threat to me on the road. My rides are fun, I get great exercise, and I get around quicker than any other form of transportation.

That said though, if you look at the other half of the bike riders and they're riding with a coffee, putzing along at 6 miles per hour, looking at stores on the side of the road and taking in the scenery, waving to their friends and having a relaxing time on their bike, you have to question now and again if you're missing something. I can't take much in if I'm dodging cabs at a full sprint. I can't say my bike ride is necessarily "relaxing". I'm enjoying my bike in a different way but absolutely not in what is necessarily a better way.

And that's just it. You'll find that alot of these people love riding as much as you do, they just approach it differently. Theirs is a more laid back approach, and while they may not be "cyclists" they certainly are people who like to ride a bike.

Eventually I want to maybe pick up a rusted out coaster brake single speed and see what I'm missing. It might actually be nice...

mchesna

mines the blue saxon with white deep v's. columbia has a ****ton of fixed riders.

sp00ki

post of the week.

PunctualAlex

The "fixie" scene on my campus has seriously driven me to riding a road bike to school, to avoid being associated with all the kids on brakeless Leaders skidding through crowds of pedestrians and posing in front of the student union. I feel like campus is ground zero for some seriously jackass behavior. Also, it makes me feel super old and crotchety.

Absolutely. I just got back visiting some friends out of town, borrowed an old rigid steel CyclePro mountain bike with two broken shifters, stuck in the granny gear. I putzed around town all week, doing about 6 mph and taking in the California sunshine. I would trade my fixed-gear for that broken POS any day... well, not any day, but certainly on my crankier days.

4Ring Jelly

many, many fixed gear bikes here at UNM. I actually started riding fixed because a quite lot of my friends do and I found it was pretty fun.

sp00ki

i bet there's a correlation between the number of brakeless trackbikes on a given campus and the average gre score achieved by students there.

(you can probably guess which direction i'd bet the correlation goes...)

i wonder if having a track bike makes me stupider.
(also, does ice cream cause people to commit crimes?)

Geordi Laforge

there's an ice-cream truck that drives around and sells dope. does that count?

tFUnK

i wouldn't expect stanfurd (cal alum here) to have much of a fixie scene, simply due to the small student population there. berkeley had some while i was there but there are some hills in the east bay. i'm hearing that fixies are getting really popular at places like uc davis and sj state, as they are here at usc (and also ucla).

clo_iam

come to anywhere in socal and you'll find tons! haha

gelbaugh

I live in Seattle and go to UW and they are everywhere. I cant go anywhere without seeing someone on a fixed gear. Including me there were 4 people were I worked that had them although it was the apple store still everywhere.

cc700

you can lock up, beat on, go anywhere, fix easily, have fun with a workhorse MTB/ATB.

it's harder to go places but then you work your muscles more... you can bash curbs and not worry about missing the hop... you can not worry about it getting stolen...

i'm pretty sure all the fixed gear riders are sleeping off last night's binge drinking and have their bikes leaning against the bed.

cc700

i saw a masi on burke gilman and the jimmy johns at UW ... well... they like bikes. btw i work at gap in the village.

sunburst

I guess what I mean by "bike culture" is a certain appreciation of road frames and how they ride, the speed, agility, etc. I did not choose my words well. Got nothing against utility bikes, and I appreciate everyone on a bike rather than in a car. I even have four bikes with racks (omg!) and do close to 100% of all my shopping and errands on them.

So yeah, a few years ago, I could not even understand a bike without a rack. I made a slow conversion to road bikes and even bought a few of those ridiculous looking jerseys with pockets in the back. Then I converted a few good road frames into fixies (for my son) and singlespeeds (for myself) and really saw the light. It was like a revelation, riding these simple efficient beautiful machines. I totally get it.

Guess I just expected more people to have discovered the same thing, especially among such a large number of young cyclists.

cc700

well that's just dumb/childish. you know bike culture incorporates more styles of biking in addition to road but you use the term as if the definition precludes them?

sunburst

Jeezus! how many people are going to pick apart my word choice ... "dumb/childish"!?!

Just talking about bikes and trying to describe a certain part of the culture. I wasn't insulting those stanford students. I clearly said, "I appreciate everyone on a bike."

I did pick the right forum, didn't I. You guys/girls are into fixies, right? That's what I was exploring.

Btw, I'm into: road cycling, touring, mt. biking, utility cycling, fixies, riding around town for fun, carrying books and groceries in my panniers. I even wave to other cyclists - routinely. Yeah, I'm a real elitist bike snob.

atlascomplete

I think we took a left turn instead of the right turn several posts ago...

homEsick

ya i think basically every bike at the school i used to go to were mtb with knobbies, and yes, a lot of them never moved. usually NEXT brand from wal mart. *shudder* given that was in arkansas. now i live in santa monica and imagine ill see a lot more fixed here

cc700

everyone's studying and their nice bikes are inside.

i kept this inside during college:


and had I not moved across the country, I most likely would have had this locked up outside:


but the idea that there aren't nice bikes (or bikes of any certain type) locked up outside means there is a lack of bike culture, well... that's just silly.


but hey, maybe you're right. maybe that particular college hates bikes and never uses their "hundreds" of bikes.

there was more of a bike culture at my college than anywhere else i've been excluding bike shops meets and group rides.

shelato12771

No, silly, it's not that simple. We're into *being into* fixies and doing so better than you.

Haagenize

It's growing exponentially here at Purdue also

First semester I swore there were only about 5 fixies on campus, then this semester I don't even know how many, possibly 40+

JacoKierkegaard

+1

I don't ever leave my bike outside overnight or if I'm at home during the day. If I'm in my apartment, so is my bike. A lot of other people I know with nice bikes do the same.

Falcon3

Here in the middle of BFE (Iowa State), fixed is making a big jump. In the last year, I've seen probably 10x as many fixed bikes on campus. Happily, I haven't ever seen someone on one acting like a jackass, skidding around, endangering peds, cutting off cars, or doing anything that is routinely attributed to the "fixed gear scene." We pretty much just all love to ride, and do so without much thought to what people think of us.

However, I gotta mention- there's this kid that rides a new Windsor Hour, he's always in the drops, rides about 6mph at a ridiculously slow cadence, and swerves around like his dad should be running behind him keeping him from falling down. I appreciate that he's on a bike instead of driving, but I laugh every time I see him. Maybe I'm jealous I'm on an old Raleigh convert and he's on a track frame?