I got into the whole fixie thing pretty early on, rode like hell for awhile and loved it. Unfortunately, It didn't seem to take much time before it turned into a bastardization of itself and more of a fashion statement than anything. More and more fixie riders started popping up with their skinny jeans and colored deep v's. Pretty soon "fixie" was synonymous with "hipster". Now, I'm certainly no purist and could generally care less about what people do with their bikes, but eventually something I really loved for its simplicity was now almost like a watch for pair of sunglasses.

I bought myself a nice road bike with gears and a freewheel, then a mountain bike, then another one, and never really looked back. Even the scene in San Francisco (home of mash, macaframa, and the like) seems to have shifted from the trendy fixed gear to the more practical multi-geared road bike.

So, that begs the question: is the fixed gear bicycle really just a slowly dying fad?