i am thinking about leaving nyc next summer (probably to portland, or) and was wondering what do you think the best city for fixed is and why. here's what's good about nyc 1)lots of riders and shops 2)flat 3)its fun to ride in traffic. what's bad? 1)thieves 2)attitude/hipsters 3)its not fun to get hit by cars.

I likey boston. Flat, etc.

S.F. lots of bueatiful views, challenging hills, fun to ride in traffic and not to ride in traffic (you have a choice) Fewer thieves, still have hipsters, fewer cars then NY.


Oh yeah... lots of bike freindly routes, Zeitgeist, cool LBS', nice weather for riding (you can decided how you want to ride, cool and foggy or nice and sunny, sometimes you dont get a choice) T-mobile international once a year,

great burrritos, hmm

The greater PDX area is not all THAT hilly. For cycling in general PDX is considered a premier city.

Then again....people out on the East Coast call the Appalachians "mountains"....then they see the Rockies and the Cascades and are like "Oh....."

when i lived in chicago i didn't ride fixed, but i do miss riding my singlespeed around there. lots of cars, but it's extremely flat, has lots of great shops/bike culture, and seemed pretty unpretentious. seems like i did get in lots of shouting matches with suvs while riding from pilsen to the loop on my way to school, but i sort of chalk that up to me dealing with a lot of personal demons at the time...

and, you know, suv drivers tend to be kind of daft.

The Twin Cities aren't too hilly, nor are they too flat. Not too big, not too small. While there are thieves and hipsters, they're not too abundant. You get the opportunity to bike in all seasons, from hot summer days so thick with humidity that you can chew 'em to winters so cold your spit will freeze before it hits the ground, and everything in between.

i think the pros and cons are pretty much the same in any city, aside from weather and geography. Go somewhere for the food.

i've lived in Boston, NYC, and SF.
hands down my fave is Boston for riding.

so... many... options... to get anywhere and everywhere in Boston/Cambridge. the layout of the city is so messed up that you always have advantage over cars. public alleys. flatness. dick drivers that don't give a **** about you (as opposed to SF, if you ride in between lanes these drivers don't know what the hell to do with themselves). riding along the river. over the bridges.. etc etc etc...

I take in you're not in Corvallis for the food though.....I spent 5 years in that town.....can't say I'd go back for the food. Have they even gotten an Olive Garden yet?

i just moved from portland to brooklyn a year or so ago. i would say that you pretty much have all of the "good" things you are looking for in portland, and most of the bad too. some really cool bike shops, and lots of fixie riders. at least as many hipsters, just as many thieves...drivers are much less aggressive, though. all in all it's cool. i'll be back in a few years, probably. there are a lot of people who have done the new york-portland thing, or vice-versa. it's a cool city. go to vincente's pizza and tell em jonathan sent ya.

I was a courier in boston for a few months: excellent city to ride in. I live in chicago now which is still a great biking city, but overall, not as good. The streets here are wider, the cars are bigger, and the traffic is faster. Being on a bike in boston rules because your advantage over cars is so extreme that you can fly around the city while laughing at the poor suckers stuck in traffic. In chicago you have to be more careful about not becoming roadkill.

Ive been to most large cities in the states. NYC is hands down the best for track bikes. Ive been to Boston,DC,LA,Miami . It test your skills to the "T".

S/F,
CEYA!

I'm biased of course but Chicago's nice. It's big enough that you can still get lost or see new neighbourhoods even after 6 years and yet you can get a good grip on the city. Living in the city itself is affordable and you can survive on a decent slave wage. It's a working class city.

Plus Mayor Daley is behind the biking and there's a lot of that here.

Never been to Boston so I can't compare but I don't find Chicago traffic all that bad.

I like it right here in the hub of the Universe. The city doesn't give a damn about cyclists which is unfortunate (and I'm not talking about bike lanes or sidepaths because I hate those--we're talking things like bike racks or posts) and Bicycling Magazine awarded Boston 1999's worst place to cycle title. The IFBMA also bestowed its inaugural Hall of Shame award as the worst city to mess in. Not much has changed since then.

Boston was also #6 a few years back (I don't know what it is now) for bike theft right behind NYC, Chi, MIA, SF & DC. There are hipsters. It still sucks to get hit by cars. It's also an expensive place to live, #2 behind NYC in fact. It's a pretty small city sometimes too. I love riding in NY because you can spend so much time just swallowed up in Manhattan.

However, had said all that, I'll say what everyone else has said: it's a nice compact East Coast city. The streets are so messed up that it's always fun to try and figure out how to get from A to B. If you're anywhere near downtown you're going to be able to make better time than anybody parking...err...driving. So if your thing is to tear it up in traffic, it's a great place to ride.

What you should do is buy yourself a Greyhound ticket some weekend. You can bring your bike for free, you don't even need to box it if you don't want to. Maybe some of us Bostonians could get together and ride with you or some junk.

San Francisco has the best weather of any of the more popular cities; although when it rains it really fooking rains. The funny thing is Californias turn into sugar when it's wet; instant pudding, total wussies, so if you don't mind rain you have a big advantage, and the rainy season is only 1 to 2 months long. Portland is the emerging hipster/artist/vegetarian capitalist/trendy/progressive city and there are scores of fixies, sspeeds and just bicycles on the road. There is no traffic anywhere compared to NYC, Oregon may put you to sleep. If you are riding for a living don't look to the west coast, I don't know about Seattle but most messengers don't make much compared to Chicago, Boston or NYC messengers. I don't know about Minneapolis. In SF I made 100 a day on average and that's lousy pay when rent is 500 plus bills and temps make 15 an hour under the table. Although if you dedicate 5 years to one company you are bound to make twice that a day. And Portland messengers make hourly, yeesh.

what's all this talk about hipsters and how in the world do they affect your fixed gear cycling? seriously.

gainesville is dinky and there are a lot of kids in SUVs but we also have 4 bike shops within a mile and half of each other and decent culture.

They got nothing to do with my cycling, everything to do with my loser upstairs neighbors and calling 911 at 1am because there's caustic white powder filling the front hallway and everyone claiming to know nothing about it. Except the guy who ran off drunk and high.

Oh, and the same neighbor wondering if I need all those bikes (one track frame, one road frame which shares a wheelset, and a single speed mtb) because he'd like to buy one off me. Now keep in mind I gave the guy an old Raleigh this Summer and he lost it...

Boston Trevor, i will do that. It will be cool. Just like we did with DC couriers we started going there and vice versa.

S/F,
CEYA!

Another vote for Minneapolis. Same reasons as Gilby, but she forgot to mention the Saturday Night Rides. They're enough of a reason to move out here on their own...

i gotta put in a good word for Philly. Flat, City Environment (more like a lot of small towns though), and not as dangerous as NYC. Its like NYC with half the calories!

for real, man i went to new york for a summer and damn they have a **** load of cars everywhere!!!! but man i've seen some of the most creative and magnificent fixies of all time there!!! nice place

Scranton, PA. Every other place can go to hell.

Another plus for Minneapolis is that it takes nothing to ride out into the country. Chicago there is no escaping.

playing in traffic is what boston is for. i love blasting past people stuck in their metal boxes. i haven't ridden much in any other cities though, but still, boston is a good time.

I second what bostontrevor said: Boston is weird (crooked streets) and fun (heavy traffic) and relatively small and full of stuff to see. But my native New York is huge and inviting and every time you go ride you're bound to see something new and wild and there's always another place or route or who-knows-what to discover.