jblon

Fixed gear bikes are obviously super popular in many bigger cities, and gaining popularity like crazy. One of the biggest reasons for our population's collective fascination with fixies is the romanticized association with what it sees as a punk, DIY messenger culture. The bikes represent a rejection of the trend and profit-seeking bike industry, which will push $2,000 carbon race bikes on middle-aged doctors who ride the bike path on weekends. The fixed-gear image for most people, is the individual, exotic, stripped-down thoroughbred conversion. The impossible conglomeration of parts-bin cast-offs and goodwill finds into an indestructible 17-lb comet. Combine that with a few well-worn internet videos of daring NYC messengers and you've created a monster. A marketer's wet dream. A largely fictional idea of a subculture ready-made for corporate co-opting. It happened to skate-boarding, and now it's happening to fixed-gear bikes. Pre-built steamrollers? Kona Paddy-wagon? All they need now is to come factory-direct with race cards in the spokes.

To be clear though, I have absolutely nothing against people who buy and ride factory fixies like the ones I just mentioned--there's already way too much snobbishness in the bike world to get caught up in that. Just as most people will never deliver a package on them, most people on road racers will never enter a crit. Hell, most people on a 7-inch freeride bike will never take a drop big enough to use half their travel. My point is only that this gradual corporate takeover is happening right now, and it is somewhat sad to see what used to be a rejection of bland consumerist values subsumed by them. It seems to me to be against the spirit of what fixed gear bikes used to be.

So ride your fixie for all the other reasons you got it, but not because it's edgy and cool--make no mistake, fixed-gear bikes are on their way to being as mainstream as any other kind of bike. I would hope Wal-Mart never starts selling one, but they have gotten into carbon fiber, so who knows.