Fixed Bicycle Gear

Submitted by Mike Locker

I love riding fixed gear. I love the control, the connection, the aesthetic, and the history of Velodrome racing. I love that I can confidently fix anything on my bike. I first went fixed because I needed a light and responsive bike but I was very poor. At the time I was racing at the San Diego Velodrome weekly. One day I borrowed a Bianchi Pista Concept and rode it around San Diego. It was wonderful; it felt pure in the way that my first bike felt to me.

I found a frame at a swap meet and put some wheels and a crank set on it. The bike was beautiful and only set me back a couple hundred dollars. It weighed sixteen pounds. The frame was a fetish custom track frame. I was planning to use the bike to race on the track and on the street but I could never afford regulation track drops. I chopped and flipped some old road handlebars into bullhorns. I never raced this bike on the track but I loved going up and down the hilly streets in San Diego.

To me, the fixed gear bike is a very empowering thing. I had built my own bike for very little money and it kicked ass. Recently I have built nice bikes for nearly no cost. I feel like everyone should have a right to transportation and the fixed gear bike is such a feasible mode. The learning curve was fairly intense. I learned to gauge the terrain and traffic, which soon became almost subconscious. The thought behind using the bike in the streets is fascinating. Fixed gear technology was not meant for street riding. Track bikes are built for the track. The bikes are designed to go very fast for a short period of time and never stop. I find the vision of earlier messengers very inspiring. They started using these bikes on the streets because they needed to go very fast with the least amount of stopping. It inspires me when people use technology in ways that the inventors never intended. Now fixed gear bikes are an integral part of the bike culture amongst people who may never even see a Velodrome in their lives.