Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Fetish for fixies

This week we explore the mystique and magic of the fixed gear bicycle. Meet some san francisco messengers as they tell us why they ride these edgy and sexy bikes.

Listen to the podcast here
or go straight to bikescape in Itunes

Rob mentioned Bay Area master frame builder Bernie Mikkelsen

During bikesummer '04 in NY I went for a ride with some guys from Old Skool Track. I'm the second from the left in this picture from Orchard Beach in Da Bronx

Photo credit: Old Skool Track

Sheldon Brown's site has some good pages on fixies

Vive la Revolution!

The San Francisco Grand Prix is this Sunday! You can ride the course before the race too!

My new friend Kyle (who I met through this podcast) and I will be showing the film Still we Ride after the next critical mass at Station 40 at 3030-B 16th at Mission at 9 pm. $4-10 donation. If you miss it here you can still catch it at The Bicycle Film Festival maybe in your town

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jon,

Your podcast rocks, and is very informative, and inspirative.

But with this show on "fixies", I have a question. I thought a "fixie" was different then a track bike? Where you and the messengers seemed to switch back and forth between the names.

While a track bike has a fixed gear and no brakes, a "fixie" gear bike was more of a road bike converted to having a fixed gear, and with or without brakes on the riders preference.

While track bike the name is kind of self explanitory, a "fixie" or fixed gear bike, has been used by road cyclists(Euro and US) for years(way before the 80's) as a training tool in the off season to keep or work on your "spin".

Fixed gear bikes seem to have come in and out of vogue over years, but I remember using then in the mid-70's.

Once again thanks for the GREAT shows. You do a great great job every episode.

Thanks,

John

jon said...

Hi,

Thanks for the positve strokes!!

What I should have made clearer is that all track bikes are fixies ( which to me means any bike without a freeewheel) even if not all fixies are track bikes.

One of these days soon, I hope to do a podcast on track racing at which time i guess I'll talk about the difference between track bikes and fixed gear conversions. Better yet, if I rememmber, I'll try to issue a clarification in the next show.

Anonymous said...

I just viewed the "Still we Ride" trailer you linked to... very insightful. By the way, here are San Francisco Grand Prix video and photos posted to my blog.

Anonymous said...

Just wanted to inform you that prowheelbuilder.com is now offering custom built wheels for both track and fixie bikes. They also sell colored spokes (hard to find). Its a cool sight, check it out!

Erik Sandblom said...

I recently started listening to your podcast. I started with the interview with Grant Petersen. Your podcasts are addictive! You project a nice mood.

However! I just listened to the fixie podcast and couldn't hear what the messengers were saying over the din. It's a shame when the content becomes inaccessible! It's just as frustrating as when you can't use a website because of all the bells and whistles getting in the way of the content.

I heard that the girl messenger doesn't use a fixie because of the hills in San Francisco, and the boy messenger has bad knees because of basketball. But it would have been nice to hear the rest.

Having said that, thanks for the podcast, it's appreciated.