FIXIES TRACKIE BICYLIES TAKIE OVERIE (not ovaries)

by Griffin S.

Have you noticed thin framed, simple and sometimes flashy bicycles cruising around your city? As you may or may not know these bikes are known as fixed gears, fixies, or track bikes and are part of recent worldwide trend. Be a rider myself, I am curious to know why they have become so popular.

I began riding fixed gears completely unaware of the fact they were considered “Hip”, but because I fell in love with their sleek stylish geometry and the way they rode. I have owned many bikes before my first fixie and I started riding “big-boy” bikes when I was three years old. I began to research them, obsess over them, and beg my parents for one. Unfortunately Christmas was months away. After I began riding my fixie with skill I started noticing more and more people riding them. Of course I considered myself a better rider and decided everyone else was a poser, a common mindset of fixed geared riders. Then this sense of superiority shifted into a curiosity as to why so many people began riding them. So to begin it started out with what exactly they are and their history.

Fixed geared, track, and fixies are all different names for a basic type of bicycle. Fixed geared bikes are exactly what they sound like; meaning they have one, yes only one, gear that is fixed to the rear hub. This means that when the rear wheel is in rotation so is the cog, chain, chain ring, cranks, and the riders legs are in motion. Because the cog is fixed to the hub and is not a freewheel, the rider cannot coast. Fixed geared bicycles also traditionally have no brakes, the rider will use his leg muscle to resist the pedals to stop them from moving, then the wheel will skid slowing the rider.

Fixed gear bicycle are the first bicycles!! They were initially invited out of the need of a safer bicycle than the non-pneumatic tired ones. Pneumatic means that both of the wheels are the same size. When the pneumatic bicycles hit the scene they took the athletic world by storm. Shortly after creation, people began to race them on wooden oval tracks called velodromes, hence the name track bikes. Soon the British created the 6-day race, where a single rider would race for six days until he won or fatigue over took him. This practice was soon abandoned in the UK, but was embraced in such United States venues like Madison Square Garden. With the growth of the urban environment and businesses, bike messengers came on the scene. This is because bike messengers could deliver packages, money, disks, data, and other business related items to different offices faster than a car could. Guess what type of bicycle they preferred? The fixed geared. This is because fixed geared bikes are the bicycle in the simple form, no brakes, no gears, and no derailleur. Because they are the simplest bikes they also have the lowest up keep and therefore the lowest cost. Modern day, fixed geared bikes are not only rode by messengers but also the common population.

To me this trend came from bike messengers, my thought is at some point in the last 5 years someone decided that bike messengers were trendy. So their cut off jeans, unshaven faces, tattoos, and bags became fashion accessories to a certain look. Once people emulated this style they felt that one key aspect was missing from their appearance, the messenger’s bikes. After fixies conquered the trendy and those pretending to be trendy, they broadened their reach to impact populations of commuters, danger junkies, restoration specialist, and eco-trendy urbanities. The commuter population chooses to ride fixies for the same reason the messenger’s do: low cost, simplicity, and function. If they ride their bikes to work every day and they need something that they can beat around not have to worry about a derailleur bending. Fixed gears traditionally have no brakes, so they attract a population of non-helmet-sporting-red-light-running-traffic-weaving-show-offers, who I like to label “danger junkies”. Since track bikes are the earliest form of bicycle there is a high percentage of people who want to buy rusted old bikes, repaint them, replace their old stock parts, and shine ‘em up, and they will continue to do so until they have a hefty collection, these people I call restorationist. Since driving a car would be the environmental equivalent of killing the entire population of monarch butterflies, a genocide of sorts; the eco-trendy urbanities cruise around their city’s farmers markets on the “earthiest” form of cycle, the fixie. These groups of people today make up the larger group of fixie riders that contribute to the global sensation.