The Fixed Gear Forum have been co-opted.
 

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.

Fixie is an awfully big word

Uncle Wally is dealing carbon now? Where have I been?

Blah, blah, blah,yada yada what ever. Don`t be a hater. Study hard and try to move out of your parents house within 3 years. Fixed gear has been around since before you were born.

a great big blank. Most people haven't the foggiest idea what a fixed gear bicycle is, nor do they care.

Move on to something else not so corporate. How bout pogo sticks?

Make no mistake, after 35 years, I ride because its still fun.

Prolly true for 99% of folks.

You haven't priced high end carbon bikes lately? Try $7,000 carbon bikes..

As for you post. Who cares? As long as everyone rides, it's all good......

"you liked it before it was cool." we get it.

It was worth wading through that steaming pile for this gem. Now you don't have to.

Whatever dude. Haven't you heard? Wookie pube culture is not for sale.

http://paulmccain.worldmagblog.com/p...okie-thumb.jpg

maybe a sticky for the 'cool / co-opting' posts ?

Big Wheels are fixies.

Tricycles are fixies.

Why are you co-opting toddler culture, man?

You are an incredible tool and I bet you stopped listening to Green Day after they "sold out" (read: Put out their other major record release other than Dookie).

I just find it funny that he thinks that track bikes are a "rejection of consumerist culture", when they're just as bad as roadie equipment.

Oh yeah, and 10 speed bike boom fixed gear conversions are for broke college students.

I never knew any of this. If so, I would have worked harder to have the local velodrome closed just so the overwhelmingly large and insidious bike corporations could not home in on this track bike trend and raise their yearly revenue and profit margins.

No they since they lack gears all together it is impossible for them to have a fixed gear.

Yeah, a few months ago I wondered if it is about time someone to sprayed "LOCALS ONLY, DICK!" on Helsinki velodrome wall :D

I are not to brite. tHank you for the elucidation.

I'm just trying to relive my youth!!!!!!!!!!!!!11 :p

Delivering packages on the street using a track bike is "co-opting" them. So is doing anything with a track bike that is not racing them on the velodrome.

In other words, you already fail.

i really think that the image of the urban biker as any kind of rebel, edge, or outlaw is projection, a form of cooption - controling identity not in stripping away meaning, but in ascribing it unnecessarily.

it's just a kind of bike. people have been riding these for how long?

bike communities, on the other hand, should not feel threatened by companies selling bikes, clothing, this and that, articles about alleycats. scenes? maybe. but the thing about scenes is that they're weak and people fall out of them when they fail to provide meaning to them anymore.

communities, on the other hand, make their own meaning, and don't have to rely on oppositional identities (or, for that matter, fear the integration of oppositional identities) in order to have meaning.

but, on the other side, the style is really popular. i mean, i hear even french dudes from the early 1900s are wearing little hats...

Dude, it's so much more punk to call a punk not punk yet not mention punk at all.

Trollz

who cares