LL Bean .....hip?........yea i guess if its the early 1980's and I was back at the University of Illinois.... if one considers preppy as being hip...maybe...

Maybe Axciom told LL Bean that you bought bike gear and now LL Bean is sending you the cyclist cover instead of the car camping cover.

I work with a lot of hipsters. They all drive Priuses. But lately I've noticed a lot more bike commuting. I think they think they are hipper then the other hipsters because they are even more eco friendly then the Prius crowd. I don't know. I just like riding.

Quoting a Kyrgyz guy that I'm working with at the moment:

"It is easy to be cool when you are cool."

Exactly what i was thinking, if you are the skinny fixie guy in SF or Portland maybe it'll get you some friends. The Clyde drenched in sweat with frizzy hair on a Fredified MTB maybe not so much.......

Makes me think of HS days when the 'punkers' had to wear leather jackets and combat boots so that you could tell who the 'nonconformists' were.

Re: the new commuting fad -
1) I am glad that more cyclists on the road will bring better infrastructure for the rest of us, who will still be riding long after the flash in the pan has burned off and the crowd has moved on to go-karts or segueways or whatever.

2) There will be a few people from the trendy crowd who will be true converts and stick with it.

It's worth enduring the fad just for those reasons.

It's hip to be different and currently bike commuting in the US is pretty uncommon in most areas. That's my take on it, but not my reason for it. I just love riding and spending calories instead of petrol.

People think I'm weird for bike commuting, and my boss really encourages me to buy a car. Also, most everyone else I know.

Also, what is this "Fred" thing? Just now encountered the term...

M.

I deleted the last few posts that were going in a political direction. Global warming, Republicans, and any other political-type stuff belongs in the P&R forum. Thanks for your cooperation with this.

Fun is the part the "others" don't seem to get. The "others" seem to think we have ulterior motives; saving the planet, reducing our carbon footprint, saving money, don't have a car, can't afford a car, don't have a license, saving gas, a political statement, lose weight, exercise...whatever. Fun is the one thing they never think of, I started commuting just to work a little recreation into a very busy schedule. Nobody ever guesses that.

Marc

I don't care if it's hip or not, I just hope more people do it.

If something becomes popular and that is reason for you to give it up, then you my friend are even more concerned with what others think than those trying to be "hip"...oh the irony...you hipster, you

I for one won't stop doing what I enjoy just because more people find a reason to enjoy the same thing.

I used to enjoy driving to work in my car...now so many people are car commuting, it's no longer hip. I now enjoy riding my bike to work. Hopefully bike commuting won't become hip.

The urban areas in the US are becoming, in this sense, more European. That has long been true on the coastal cities but I live in the midwest and you see it here even in smaller cities.

I agree with you. I like the northeast costal cities very much. What I'd really like to see is more pedestrian zones with reasonable international shopping options.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedestrian_zone

I think it's particularly hip if you're fat and don't have stylish clothing, because you're smart enough to see why it makes so much sense. You also want to give it a try and maybe lose weight and enjoy yourself at the same time.

Bike commuting is exploding in NYC now. I'm heartened to see so many people riding who are clearly not cyclophiles or athletes. My dreams are coming true. In the minds of Joe and Jane Average, bike commuting is starting to make more sense than all other ways of getting around.

Well, I tried it out for size on today's commute just to test. Rode out past the kids at the bus stop thinking hipster, ironical thoughts. I oozed hip on the mean streets, then switched to the Greenway to hip around there. I gotta say, none of that worked - it just felt like self-consciously trying to be pretentious. So I don't think it's hip yet.

But isn't that what's hip now?

Nonesense. That's true hip. The others are poseurs.

Edit: ^ Beat me to it...

lol you are the only one that got the answer right lol lol

Fred is somebody other cyclists mock due to snobbery and/or envy. The original use is one of grudging respect - there may have been a real Fred who was an experienced utility or touring cyclist who could ride fast and far without spandex or a racing bike. So a racing club cyclist out training for a race dressed like a Tour de France rider would be mortified if some "Fred" on a commuter bike wearing non-racing clothes kept up or passed him.

Of course, many of us here embrace our Fredliness.

More recently the term has also been used to describe people who are seemingly over-equipped but under-skilled - maybe they bought a $5000 racing bike and putter along at 10 km per hour on the sidewalk with their bike set up all wrong, and have no idea other riders ridicule them, perhaps partly due to resentment.

I love the "Priceless Collection" sticker cuz that is a priceless photo.

Dude, my daughter has "sweaty-head syndrome," at 5! She's not alone! LOL!

I don't sweat too bad (unless its particularly warm out and I'm particularly slow...), but I will confess to being fatter than normal, particularly uncool in my attire selection, and just patently unhip... I guess I'm not ironic enough... lol