When commuting by bike becomes hip nationwide, we will know that we have entered the end times.

Skinny jeans and flannel look ridiculous, yet a full kit is perfectly acceptable. Just ride and don't worry about what everyone else is wearing.

Memo to hipsters: no one outside your small group of friends actually cares what you wear while riding a bike.

I'm not sure how this turned into an "anti hipster" thread

but...

Personally *I* don't think the video in the OP does much to promote long term commuting. It seems more of a promo for bike to work day.

All this poser talk is silly...more people riding bikes is a good thing. Who cares what they look like?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vn29DvMITu4

I went to art school just as the hipster thing was taking hold. The things I have seen cannot be unseen.

(Also, as much fun as I make of hipsters, I make more fun of myself, and acknowledge how ridiculous my sausage-esque physique looks when I squeeze it into spandex.)

ETA: Is anyone else having trouble posting YouTube vids?

People, in general, dislike what they don't understand.

Heck if you're riding a bike to work you're commuting, you're not posing. Lots of people off bikes dress differently from me I'm not surprised to see people on bikes not wearing the same outfit as me either.


Also, the more people biking, the closer we get to that mythical 'critical mass' where drivers actually recognize us as fellow street users not as obstacles.

Look, we may have our differences but I think we can all agree that those people who dress up in seersucker/tweed and tool around on social rides are the worst.

I used to live with a bunch of hipsters, they're not so bad... As long as you stay in your bedroom.

I like the video. What I don't know is how "hip" is it really? Is that a subculture that a lot of 20 somethings relate to or do the majority of people in that age group find the clothes, the bikes, and the lifestyle as unappealing to them as it is apparently to some of us?

Again I liked it. Anything that promotes bike use over cars among a younger crowd is a good thing. When I was that age people were more into cramming thousands of dollars worth of audio equipment into a $200 car.

HEY, THEM'S FIGHTIN' WORDS!

The only thing I didn't like about the video was some of the camera work; I kept wanting to shout, "Pan over, you idiot!" when the cyclist was drifting out of the frame. But maybe that's a hip new filming style that I don't understand.

But no, it's not a bad thing when commuting is hip. As long as un-hip guys like me are still welcome! And really, most of the people I see riding their bikes to work are dressed a lot like me anyway. The video seems like it was aimed at a particular demographic, and I'm okay with that.

bikes are cool.

by association, people who ride bikes are also cool.



ride it if you got it!

Makes it difficult to ride when you are that aroused?

IME as a 27 year old, bikes are not, in the larger non-hipster young-adult culture, becoming more cool. Cars are, however, becoming less cool. There are still people who have their identity bound up in how hot/big/noisy their car is, but they're a minority, and it's viewed as an eccentric quirk rather than the default. Transportation choices are evaluated on an economic/utilitarian scale, rather than a "how can I show off my earning power/virility" scale, and thus cycling is gaining in popularity.

YMMV, and all that. This is just what I've observed among my peers.

I'm not going to gripe about the commuter in the tight miniskirt and high heels I occasionally encounter. Riders like that can do a lot for our cause!
But I also see a lot of folks so inappropriately equipped that I know they got into it because it's the hot new thing, and unfortunately they won't stay with it for more than a couple weeks unless they get more practical.

I live in a pretty bike friendly city.

Hip or not ... I rather see more people riding than less.

And I use Kysirium Elites on my commuter. IMO there is a difference between good wheels, and commuter overkill. S80s would be murder in crosswinds. If it is your only bike then I understand. One thing is that anyone who has deep-dish [carbon] rims should probably have a second set of shallow wheels.

But that is just my rant for the day since I had to work on a TT bike with S80s the other day and I was ready to beat the bike to death (Aero TT bikes are horrendous to re-cable, they take the simplest parts of the bike and then "aero" them which makes them damn near impossible to work with, then the S80 wheels didn
t even have the valve extenders installed properly, ughhh)

One thing that kills me is when ive got "poseurs" who come into the shop, who have got the total "wannabe" bike messenger thing going, in order to get a flat fixed. Hell, real messengers come into the shop all the time, I was a messenger at one time, and while there is an okay number who actually fit the stereotype the real thing that makes a messenger a messenger is that their bikes are scratched, dirty, most of the time broken in some way and considered disposable.

But in general I would answer the over-arching question by saying: no. There was this one girl who came into the shop who didn't even know how to fix a flat, she asked for a lesson and then a month later she comes in, she has fixed her flat tires multiple times and is doing a 13 mile 1-way commute every day on her hybrid. I was truly impressed, if bike commuting being "hip" brings out more people like her then I say bring it on.

What annoys me is when bike commuters don't want to spend ANYTHING on their bikes, they wont buy a pump, a lock, a half-way decent bike, lubricant, or anything. Then they act with outrage when you tell them that; yes, bike commuting does indeed take maintenance and money, less then a car, but it is not an eternally free transportation mode.

Who cares? The more people riding, the better. Hipsters to grandmas and everyone in between, get them all on a bike!

I must be unhip, for I have no idea what APC is...

I don't know APC either Nor, do I know BK ... but, NYC seems to do their own thing (fashion-wise), mostly.

Where in Coastal Maine? I grew up in Wells.

Do those pants have batteries in them or something?

The only thing I can really compare hipsters to from my generation are yuppies. Equally lambasted. Different set of values. I think the hipsters are an improvement.