Originally Posted by indigophox

Alright, nobody's said it, so I'll dive in here and tell you you're wrong. Classic bends, specifically ones with flat bottoms, make sense for tall-ish-geared FG/SS bikes.

The reason for this is that the horizontal contact area (and lower point of contact) with your hands gives you more control over the front end of the bike when torquing it in an excessively tall gear, as you would be on a track bike and therefore obviously on a fixie. Consider that every track bike on the planet (that I'm aware of, including those with bullhorns, which are essentially the lower half of a round bar as far as hand position is concerned) follows this principle. Hard acceleration on ergo drops when you can't spin to do so tends to lead to your front end wanting to jump out from under you: The angle of the bar where you're holding it leads to forces (forward and backward and sometimes weird sideways ones too) other than those you're intentionally exerting (vertical) to counter the pedaling forces and ends up screwing around with your front wheel for you.