Fixed-Gear
Moving on from the impending peak oil catastrophe, it's worth thinking about oil-free transport. Like fixed-gear bikes for example. Can one of my Australian readers tell me if the insipid fixed-gear craze has taken hold there? The Mission in SF is one of the hot spots of this absurd practice. I can't ride a block without having to overtake some tragic hipster struggling along on a fixed-gear bike in black jeans and connies with a bandanna around his neck.
A "fixed gear bike" is really just a pointless hybrid of a track bike and a road bike (too heavy for the track and just too damn stupid for the road). But I can't hate on these monstrosities nearly as well as Bike Snob NYC who has an entire blog devoted to it. It's a surprisingly rich topic and the blog is consistently entertaining.
Check out his Fixed-Gear Bicycle Owners Manual
The highlight, the suggestion that a fixed-gear owner should "do track stands for hours outside of the residence of a person you would like to impress." (Though since I'm prone to doing unnecessary track stands at red lights myself I probably shouldn't laugh.)
2 Comments:
It has caught on, but not to the same extent as over there it seems. My brother in law has one and freely admits he got it because he wanted to be down with the cool bike guys in Fremantle. I still haven't got it straight how you actually ride one ie. more than a few blocks. Also, in the great tradition of truncating words and sticking on 'ie' or 'o', we call them 'fixies'.
Tim
Strangely, they call them 'fixies' here as well - thereby managing to combine the worst of US conformist hispterdom with annoying Australian-style slang.
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