I regard bike geeks in this town with great suspicion and disdain. They are lemurs with bad attitudes. But at the same time I love bikes.
I’ve reluctantly found myself bashfully intrigued by this idiotic fixed gear fad that is going on. And in the name of tinkering, I may convert a bike to a fixed gear. Dear god I never thought it would come to this.
To aid me in this quest I found this handy blog post on converting old road bikes to fixies.
Tags: Bike Dickheads, Fixed Gear, How To
yeah the fucking bike geeks. round these parts they banned me pre-emptively because I had a job besides “artist-activist [and waiter/trust fund brat]“. way to take something good and make it awful. I mean, what part of welding torches and hack saws and sleeve tattoos says “vegan whiner?”
And what is it with the fixed gears? That I understand even less. Is it really easier to go up and down hills with a fixed gear? Or is it a “check out my anemic mineral-deprived vegan biking skillz” thing?
ahhhhh… this is music to my ears! seriously, the biggest issue i have with the fixy is that i don’t want to be perceived as part of a movement, especially that movement. “what part of welding torches and hack saws and sleeve tattoos says ‘vegan whiner’?” :))))
to answer your question as far as i can tell… the fix gear bikes originated from bike track racing, stripping the bike down to get as much weight off as absolutely possible. after all a deraileur and the drive train, etc. can get pretty heavy pretty quick. probably due to some cross-over and some posing, the bike messengers picked up on the fixy. from there the hipsters jumped on it.
it’s not meant to make hills easier at all. the idea is a minimalist approach, dropping weight and celebrating the bare-bones sleekness of the operation. in chicago this is pretty practical as you’re hard pressed to find any grade above about 12%. but now i’ve heard of kids riding these things in san francisco. now that is *really* fucking stupid, that’s the kind of insane hills those lower gears are built for.
i don’t know. certainly my tasajara has about 10 gears more than i could ever possibly use, but i do enjoy about 3 of them. if i do go ahead and find an old road bike to convert i’ll give you an update. maybe i can use my fixy as a way to infiltrate these bonehead bike geeks and find out what’s really wrong with these people.
more to come…
yeah fuck those “this bike is a car bomb” morons.
bikes do get a bit to much into new technology - what with full suspension, disc brakes, and 10 speed cassettes - I think a single front gear maybe the way to go though - you could go with a fairly small 44 and a 8spd in back and should have enough range
JHC! You know what’s even more efficient that a “fixie”? A fuckin’ unicycle: cut out the dead weight of handlebars, the extra tire, the frame, etc.
It’s true that in Chicago a single-speed bike is fine. They make real nice single-speeds with coaster brakes. Those seem fine. For the love of God, put some kind of brake on the g.d. thing!
they don’t have brakes? seems imprudent - what with all the cars, cement, and the several million people
I remember hearing about a guy that biked across Minnesota on a unicycle - now thats f-ing cool
no, a lot of these knuckleheads don’t use brakes on their bike. that just seems fucking stupid. i can promise when/if i do my fix gear conversion this fat ass is going to have a brake on his bike.
did you watch that video of those idiots in SF i posted yet?
http://www.thefeedlot.org/vikingyouth/News/2008/07/23/lunatic-boneheads-on-fixed-gear-bikes/