stapfam

Popped into a newsagents today and they had a bike mag I have not heard of. Bought it and I was not happy with my purchase. The content was not up to the usual magazines I read- Ride reports were not there- Bike reports were lacking in content and most of the adverts were for Cars---In a Bike Magazine? It is advertised as the Worlds leading Bike magazine and it is called Bicycling. It is, I presume going by the adverts, a US magazine but all it says is printed in the USA.

Now I don't know if this is a magazine that is rated by your standards but I found it most disappointing. Over here we have a great number of Cycling magazines and the one I prefer at present (For road riding) is one called Cycle Sport. Another is Cycling Plus. Now for mountain bikes There are a couple I could recommend. Singletrack is my favourite and another good one is MBR (Mountain bike rider). MBUK seems to have changed into a "Freeride" form of Mountain bikes so not one I now buy.

Sorry to find fault with one aspect of US riding but I think we have you beat on this side of Cycling enjoyment.

Discuss and pull me to bits but "What is a Good US Bike magazine that is worth reading?"

BluesDawg

Search the forums and you'll see that you are far from the first to criticize Buy-cycling magazine.

BSLeVan

Cycling Plus is probably my favorite cycling magazine. Although it is expensive here in the U.S. I especially like the fact that they give real reviews of products, not just some ad copy inserted pretending to be a review.

SaiKaiTai

Yeah, Bicycling is pretty fluffy. I buy it occasionally for a light read.
Britain also has the best Formula One magazine as well in F1 Racing (though my wife calls it F1 Cosmopolitan. If you know "Cosmo", she has a point). Trouble is they do cost more here and circulation lags but they're worth it.

card

stapfam, you're going to get no argument from me. Velonews is ok, Road is ok. My only objection to the Brit mags is the price they charge over here and all the ads are in Lbs (no pound sign on my computer) and the bike shops are all European.

As far as content about bikes and riding, Cycle Sport is the best.

gear

Brit bike magazines rule and their tabloid photos are pretty good too.

Louis

Bicycling Magazine used to be quite good, back in the 80's and before. My wife bought me a surprise subscription last year, and guess what...I usually throw it away or give it away.

Cycling Plus is my favorite, or should I say favourite, but hard to find over here, and expensive.

tcs

Bicycle Quarterly. Adventure Cyclist. The Rivendell Reader. Down Tube. Dirt Rag can be interesting.

But yeah, +1 on good British cycle rags & the odd odor of Bicycling even before you wrap fish with it.

TCS

maddmaxx 

As a sometime mountain biker you may like Mountain Bike Action but beware, US magazines are more tied to the manufacturers for income and tend to do reviews with the attitude of "Never met a new expensive bike I didn't like".

The sister Magazine "Road Bike Action" started up this year a a bimonthly and is the hardware oriented road bike magazine that you may be looking for. Like some automobile enthusiast magazines, its nice to look at and drool over all the high end bikes.

BluesDawg

Dirt Rag is a good one. Kind of an off-center attitude missing from the mainstream mags. I have not read MBA in years, but it used to be way too in love with the latest, greatest, technology-intensive shiny objects for my taste.
I really miss Bicycle Guide.

Ken Brown

Second vote for Adventure Cyclist. I think you can only get it by joining the association. I only found out about it recently, when I complained on a forum that there are no magazines devoted to cycle touring.

Back in the 70s I joined the Cyclists Touring Club in the UK and still have the publications they sent. Sadly, I never did tour in the UK.

dingster1

Another vote for Cyling Plus, even though it is expensive.I dont plan on renewing Bicycling mag

Jet Travis

Agree on all counts, but this issue has a great article by about a donut race. It's well written and hilarous. Don't miss it.

Hobartlemagne 

The donut race article was funny, and I really liked the one in the previous issue about giving bikes to healthcare workers in africa. When it comes to real information about bikes and components, its all fluff. Nothing ever gets a bad review in that magazine. Good thing I don't pay for it- somehow I got a free subscription.

Road Fan

I agree about Bicycling and Cycling Plus. We have a new one, Road Bike Action, that I think is pretty good for the US.

There's also Bicycling Quarterly, a vintage and science oriented mag.

Road Fan

Fangu

I don't get Cycling+ every month (as said, hard to find & $$) but it's sooo much better than Bicycling.
Love the route trip descriptions and meaningful reviews, and as an ex-pat, really enjoy the view it gives of our passion on the "other side of the pond". Keeps alive my fantasy of buying a bike from somewhere like Wiggle, and leaving it in storage for my occasional trips back to England.
I enjoyed Bicycling when I first started riding years back- was just soaking up everything I could find like a sponge- but realize now it's as vapid as US Magazine or Teen Beat.

stapfam

Plenty of other places better than wiggle- Like most online stores- the attractions are Unsold stock.

No need to leave it in storage- just make certain the bike is Good enough and a 51cm frame weighing about 14lbs- and I'll ensure it doesn't go rusty for you.

And yet another magazine to whet your appetite- Cycling weekly- Got this for the latest news on TDF and it is full of the latest gossip. Besides the international news- which is still big- plenty of national news- such as David Millar won the British Road title and is now eligible for selection for the world championships in Stuttgart in September. Britains Juniors have won 2 golds in two days at the World junior championships in Mexico and once I have reread it this evening, I will be able to tell you allsorts of interesting facts that will bore the pants off you.

gpelpel

+1. The Africa article was excellent. I also liked the Cape Breton article this month.

Bicycling cannot be compared to the above mentioned british mags. Bicycling is not intended for the bike nuts; racers or highly motivated enthusiasts. I think its target is the general public and its goal is to convert more non active people to biking, or to provide a bit of motivation to occasional riders.

I think it serves this purpose pretty well. Some articles are well written and can be fun to read. The Africa articles, I thought, was very intelligent and gave me an incentive to continue my subscription.

Think about it, they made a bike donation to a foreign country and could have just used it as a marketing ploy and forget about how the bikes were used and by whom. That's what most fundraising or donating entities do. Here they proved that their goal was to really make an impact on the well being of the recipients. They sent a representative who tracked the bikes, was not afraid to break local administrative and corruption barriers, found solutions to fix the problems, and laid procedures for future donations. I am looking forward to a follow-up article next year.

True bike reviews are all good and very short with just a bit of negative stuff on each product to make it credible. That's a far cry from European mags that can dedicate several pages for one single bike with very detailed and technical comments. In the US if you want a technical or race oriented mag you need to get VeloNews.

tcs

J'think? A recent Bicycling was talking about $1800 "entry level road bikes".

TCS

Fangu

Ha! - if you can stretch to a 53-54cm & move from Suffolk to Norfolk we might work something out!
cheers,
Andy

lhbernhardt

I remember being starved for real pro bike racing news back in the 1970's. Would have to go down to the European news outlet and find old copies of Miroir du Ciclisme just to look at the fabulous photos (couldn't read French back then). Would buy the occasional copy of International Cycle Sport. Sometimes great photos, especially of Eddy Merck and his nemeses Walter Goodefroot, Roger de Vlaeminck, Frans Verbeeck, etc. Except that the photos all looked like they'd been shot thru a lens smeared with Vaseline. And the writing was pretty inconsistent - some articles well-written, others pretty miserable.

Cycle Sport is pretty good - this is the one that Phil Ligget has a hand in, right?

I stopped reading BuyCycling years ago. I think they're still part of the Rodale Publishing empire. Rodale publishes Prevention, commonly available at supermarket checkouts. They are very much into healthy living, and all their articles are written to a basic, consistent formula. The principals of the e-publishing web site, Road Bike Rider, are BuyCycling alumni, and all their articles are written to the same formula: highly accessible to total beginners, broad interest, not much depth.

If you want to gain a good understanding of any subject, you can generally learn everything worth knowing by subscribing to one or two magazines that cover that subject for about two years. After that, they start to repeat themselves.

- L.