Don't ride bikes without brakes folks, it does funny things to your brain. Exception apply on a velodrome.
well this guy is using shoes as brakes so you must think shoes are bourgeois decadence
pedals without shoes hurts like a motherfucker though. Also good chance of deleting your toes. You cannot possibly proclaim toes to be burgeiouse decadence, checkmate!
look at lord fancy with the InTaCt ToEs, just use your foot stumps like a real proletarian smh
The idea of having my bare toes that close to gearwork and moving bike chains made me curl them in under my feet
The only piece of clothing the proletariat needs is a barrel on suspenders
Why ware down cheap brake pads when you can damage your tread AND your soles.
no self-respecting fixie-rider would ever be seen with any tread on their tyres
Because you can't coast you are forced to keep spinning as long as the bike is in motion, no matter how tired you are. They're not ideal if all you want to do is get from point A to point B as efficiently as possible, but the journey is more rewarding after you complete it. I guess it's kinda like shaving with a straight razor, driving a manual car, or taking photos with an analog camera (not coincidentally all mocked as hipster affectations); superior technologies have long since rendered them obsolete, but the privileged manchild that resides within us wants to cultivate these skills to stroke our own egos.
Coasting is continuing to go forward after you’ve stopped peddling.
On most bikes if you stop peddling the peddles will stop spinning and you’ll keep going forward. On a fixed bike the peddles are directly connected to the back wheel, so if the wheel’s spinning the peddles are spinning. There’s no letting go and just drifting forward.
I've not ridden one because no freewheel seems dumb to me but considering how different a derailleur feels to internal gearing I am forced to admit they're probably onto something with the vibes of riding one.
I can also admit I ride much more with the flow on a singlespeed and they got that going for them.
I dunno why you'd ride a brakeless one. That one seems like dumb macho stuff
In some contexts, I would ask why not? It's a simpler machine. Your metaphysical connection to it is also greater than a regular bike, it becomes more a part of your body.
This trend will eventually result in a society where people are just jogging around on top of barrels.
This one doesn't. Fixed Gear just means there's no freewheel, i.e. the rear wheel is directly connected to the pedals via the chain. You pedal backwards, you go slower (or skid, or go backwards).
You can absolutely have a fixed gear bicycle with brakes.
But there is quite some popularity around running a fixed gear bicycles with no brakes because, as mentioned above, it kind of has a coaster brake type deal built into it. The dutch do fine with nothing else, but then the general riding style there is a lot more relaxed, slower and also they have actual bike infrastructure.
It got kind of popularized by bike messengers in NYC as far as I can tell who, legend has it, adopted it from caribbean immigrants forced into shit jobs who just took the bicycle they knew for it - one from a velodrome (large circley bike track for racing fast). I dunno how true this is.
There is some merits to a fixed gear. It's the least complicated bicycle you can think of, basically, and seeing how bike messengers are exploited and forced to use their personal bikes for the job, less shit to break has some advantages. It's also undeniably more dangerous, no matter what advocates for it say. And then it spawned it's own culture and people do it because it's the cool thing to do.
thank you for this explanation
one of my friends is very into bikes and works at a bike shop but I have never known anything about them because I can't keep one for longer than three months without it getting stolen
if you want my advice; there's 3 categories of bike locks: sham, okay, safe but too much weight
First one is the one you can break open by hand, second one is the one you can't break open by hand and the one you want, third one is sort of safe but also weighs 4kg and feels awful
Until the world changes, my suggestion is to make your bike look shit to the average person but have it be mechanically sound and use an okay lock.
the roads around here aren't really conducive to bikes, honestly. potholes, no bike lanes, asshole drivers, and everything is two miles away from everything else with multiple large hills in between, meaning every ride has to be a commitment instead of a quick jaunt
I solve this issue by simply never leaving the house
I solve this issue by simply never leaving the house
literally, unironically, this is what the capitalists took from you :deeper-sadness:
so a fixie doesn't have the backpedal brakes. but it can still have the handle brakes. is that right?
Fixie just refers to it having the chain connected directly from the cranks to the backwheel, nothing else. By doing this, you basically have some sort of backpedal brakes. Pedal backwards (or slower), go slower, basically.
You know how on a usual bicycle if you turn the pedals backwards, nothing happens? On a fixie, that'd also turn the wheel.
You can have brakes on a fixie, many people do. Allthough the term has become sort of synonymous with having none, truth be told. But on the base level the question is whether you can just roll along (freewheel) or have to pedal at all times because your rear wheel is connected directly to your cranks
But on the base level the question is whether you can just roll along (freewheel) or have to pedal at all times because your rear wheel is connected directly to your cranks
well the fixie means pedaling at all times, right?
my bike lets me "roll along" freely without pedaling. But it also brakes if I pedal backwards.
well the fixie means pedaling at all times, right?
Correct!
my bike lets me “roll along” freely without pedaling. But it also brakes if I pedal backwards.
Yeah that's just a coaster brake. Fixies basically never have these, but you get kind of a similar effect on one where you can bleed speed by pedaling backwards or skidding or something
You know how on a usual bicycle if you turn the pedals backwards, nothing happens?
uhhh if I pedal backwards on my bike, it literally brakes. It doesn't go slower, it stops immediately
is it a fixie?
Ah okay.
There's also coaster brakes, which are also applied by pedaling backwards. These are let's say an "add on" to a bicycle which through a combination of levers and gears engages a braking pad to a surface if you pedal backwards.
If you go down a hill and keep your pedals still, do you keep rolling? I'm assuming yes and that'd mean you have a freewheel but also a coaster brake, it's not an usual combination.
If you were on a fixie, going downhill your pedals would rotate like mad because there's no freewheel. You get direct feedback from the rear wheel turning to the cranks and vice versa, because there is no mechanism in there to just let it spin.
It doesn’t go slower, it stops immediately
this would also point to a coaster brake unless you have some really mad watt bazookas sticking on your torso
Ride fixed. It fixed knee prob problems and I do love feeling fully connected to the bike. With that said, I have a front brake and use it regularly. I'll use resistance to slow down and for track stands but I'm too lazy to lock my legs and slam a skid every time I need to slow down. Plus I know too many dumb kids who rode brakeless and blew a stop sign and got concussed
Imagine having a carabiner keychain and not using it to self-arrest on your fixie
Did you get locked out of your acct mid thread?
anyway, that looks like a nice bike, shame about the rider
who taught this man to ride a bike, also if this was how I rode a bike I'd wear a helmet
large tire fixies are supposedly good in the winter/icy conditions
other than that it's mostly a personal style kinda thing
