over the weekend.
(Photos © J. Maus)
In the bike world, few topics elicit as much heated conversation and interest as fixed gear bicycles (a.k.a. “fixies”).
BikeSnobNYC, one of the most well-known bike blogs in the world, has made a career out of skewering the fad, and my coverage of them — whether it’s about their legality or about their rising popularity in Portland — always garners a lot of comments.
I’ve only tried a fixie once or twice, so I’m no expert on the topic, but I still find this fascination with them rather interesting (if not strange). On that note, I came across two things recently that we can add to the fixie cultural notebook.
The first is a homemade t-shirt I spotted at a bike event in Southeast Portland over the weekend. It read, “Fixies are the new Roller Blades”.
The other came during a conversation with a bike messenger downtown. He said he has taken out all the spokecards from his wheels because they’ve become co-opted by “fixie kids.”
Do these small signals warn of what BikeSnobNYC refers to as the, “fixed-gear apocalypse”?
I’m not sure about that. But, as a spectator to this interesting cultural phenomenon, I hope not.