If you are not doing tricks, have a front brake, what is the advantage of having foot retention while riding a fixed gear bike for recreation and commuting?

Not having your ankles broken when the crank speeds up under you is usually considered a plus.

I like the way it feels.

Pretty easy to tell if you ride one without retention.

I feel a lot better with foot retention. Especially going down hills.

If you are only using a front brake with a fixed gear setup, then your rear brake is obtained by back pedalling, which is much easier to do with foot retention. If your feet come off the pedals at high speeds, it is difficult to get them back on the pedals and you can lose control of the bike and get injured in the process. Without foot retention, you lose most of the advantages of FG, and would be better served with a SS freewheel setup and adding a rear brake.

Exactly.
The dreaded Run-away-Cuisinart effect of losing contact w/ the pedals on a downhill is not to be underestimated, avoid w/ proper foot retention.

One compromises the training effect of riding FG on the road w/o proper foot retention.
Developing a smooth efficient pedaling style, max spin intervals and powerful hill climbing are all compromised w/o proper foot retention.

For plootering about w/o foot retention a SS FW w/ two brakes would be good relaxing fun.

-Bandera

i like being able to just pull up with my foot to reset the pedals to a good start position when i'm at a red light or whatever. doing the take foot off, hook under pedal thing is annoying to me. feet don't slip off if the pedals or soles of my shoes get wet. i also just like the way it feels.

to show confidence that you don't even need to put your foot on the ground

You lose a lot of control in my opinion. I've rode to the store just as your suggesting, without my clipless shoes and it just doesn't feel right.

They make it easier to bust sw8 skidzz.

But in all seriousness, aside from the other good reasons already given, I think that foot retention makes me feel more 'connected' to the bike. I love that feeling of having it be an extension of my body rather than a vehicle.

I have only had a fixie for a few weeks before the cold. These answers are really helpful. I never thought about slipping off the pedals and not being able to get back on, but I guess it could happen.
I am going to get some pedal straps the second it is dry enough out there to get on my fixie.

lol if you only ride in good weather

Something to add to this - if you run a rear brake on a fixed gear, without foot retention, it's even more dangerous. I saw a lad use the brake to start a skid, obviously also locking the pedals. When he let off the brake the pedals went from 0 to maybe 100 rpm in a split second. He broke one ankle and came off the bike.

I wouldn't recommend a rear brake on a fixed gear, generally. It's another source of stress for the hub. Myself using the brake to help a skid start blew off the threading for the lockring.

Isn't it funny how much you miss that when you don't have it. Even my SS bikes, which are only used for pottering about, have foot retension solely for that reason.

Now that's just bloody silly and your justification has more to do with poor equipment and/or technique than it does with a brake being involved.

Having a rear brake on a fg increases your control over a wider range of conditions, particularly down long, very steep hills (though even in normal riding), it's just not essential.

You don't HAVE to fit a rear brake, but please don't dream up rubbish reasons for your choice not to.

agreed.
I rode my fixed gear with only a rear brake for quite a while, learn to use the brake properly instead of locking the back tire.

No, your brake didn't cause this; a poorly tightened lockring caused this.

Sheer utter nonsense.

A bicycle hub is not a snowflake.
Brake, sprint or climb a hill your hub can handle your massive efforts.

Tighten your lock ring properly, you do have a track style hub?

"If the sprocket should start to loosen up, it will try to turn the lock ring counter clockwise...but that only tightens the lockring. As a result, the sprocket cannot be unscrewed by the chain, no matter how hard you fight the pedals."

Sheldon Brown: https://sheldonbrown.com/fixed-conversion.html

-Bandera

No kidding. Improperly installed equipment caused that.

If you are applying backpressure to the pedals, you are applying a moment to the hub through the cog threads. If you use a caliper brake to assist in slowing the wheel, this force applied to the rim alleviates the moment applied to the cog threads be applying the moment at the flanges. This does the opposite of blow the threads off.

A bit of a correction here. When you apply a braking force at a bicycle rim with a caliper brake, no moment is applied to the hub. Instead, the force is transmitted directly to the ground. This is why you can have a radially spoked front wheel with a caliper brake, but need some spoke crossing with a hub disc brake.

Ah great point! My mistake

My Statics and Dynamics prof would have scolded me and asked to see my free body diagram.

Cool, it's people who can tell you what caused an accident, without even understanding what the accident was.

Nothing unscrewed from a lack of tightness, the lockring was still attached to that part of the hub. The lockring-threaded section of the hub body physically separated from the rest.

This is a situation where you can take your patronizing "was your lockring tight enough?" nonsense and put it up your bum.

In that case, overtighteing of the lockring (it does not need gorilla-like strength, people) likely weakened the aluminum, causing the threaded portion to eventually separate from the hub body.

Yes, I've seen it happen more than a few times.

Aside from this monumental demonstration of hub-shredding strength ( you do have a pic to share?) did you understand that "tighten your lockring properly includes not over-tightening as well as under? More than 1 way do the job wrong.

-Bandera