Being laughed at riding fixed?

Rode 2 years singlespeed and for the last year fixed in London. No jokes. No trouble. I find it hard to believe non cyclists are interested at all in what kind of bikes people ride. All sounds a bit self-congratulatory to me.

Park up a motorbike in good weather and on your return you generally get some old boy telling you all about the bikes he used to have.
I like it. It's a sense of continuity - living history, if you will...

Buy Triumph, ride up the road to the post office to buy road tax, come out of post office and there is the first old boy eager to chat about his old Triumphs and Nortons.

Pretty much every day someone wants to chat about my bike. I love it ;-)

why would riding fixed be ridiculed? I'm new to the no gears thing, converting old Raleigh Flyer to SS, fixed scares me, fine on velodrome but i dont have to stop suddenlyl there!

Things that make me childishly envious but also a bit swollen on the road:
Discs
Spokecards
BMX handlebars
Velocitys
People coming to grief doing tricks etc
White van drivers shouting cnut at anything on 2 wheels
Rich boys on fixed
Dreadlocks
Seeing anyone looking in shop windows at their reflections

.

Sounds like a plan.....I'm kinda thinking of starting up a collection, there's a few down east way that I really really want!
Street furniture removal ride anyone?

http://rbkc.gov.uk/exhibitionroad/

I think you should make it your personal mission to remove all street furniture the entire route between Easts and South Easts. Rotherhithe AND Mile End.

Isn't there a place where you occasionally work on Wednesday and Thursday mornings, as well? ;)

you're right. James, you'd better do the whole of zones 1-3 just to be on the safe side

Isn't there a place where you occasionally work on Wednesday and Thursday mornings, as well? ;)

No one could possibly consume that amount of alcohol and still be able to work......could they?

you're right. James, you'd better do the whole of zones 1-3 just to be on the safe side

Why.....are you gonna be swerving from zone to zone on the way in :p

Yes. 15 mile swerves.

No, I just like to vary my route.

I've been known to travel so fast, that sometimes if I sneeze at full speed, I accidentally swerve into Oxford......

I think you should make it your personal mission to remove all street furniture the entire route between Easts and South Easts. Rotherhithe AND Mile End.

My cousin lives off brick lane. One night we were moving furniture around and rat poo fell out of the bottom of his couch. We decided it had to go but couldnt get it down the stairs. Anyway, we threw it out the second floor window along with a shitty rug and a coffee table. After a while we collected the pile and set up his lounge room across the road and sat in his window with a few beers watching stoners roll spliffs and chill out on his couch.

It was a good thing.

most people dont notice, but recently ive been getting a lot of older guys talking to me about it. i keep my bike in the pub garden where i work, and one of the old locals had a flashback from his youth and ended up getting a fuji track pro. hes lost 3 stone which is great, but all the other locals take the piss and tell us to get real bikes. by real bikes they mean Y-frame MTBs.

had a situation the other day with a guy riding a "crate" bike. ive seen one of these in a LBS and though it was a pile of crap. ive never seen one to be sure, but i think they may be a rebadged unipack. same price, badly made componants all round, brightly colored. i was on my viscount SS at the time, and as i rode past him he said: "to pussy for fixed". i was in a good mood so laughed and told him i use my SS for commuting to work. raced him to the garage and completely wiped him out.

its one thing for someone to question your choice of bike, and ive only discovered bikes in the last couple of years so im no sage, but not some noob on a shit bike they think is amazing.

That's 'create' not 'crate'; though the latter is accurate.

are they re-badged unipacks or somthing completely diffrent?

create? I saw one of those pieces of shit around today, I thought it was just some idiot with a unipack who put a sticker on.

They are Unipaks

No one could possibly consume that amount of alcohol and still be able to work......could they?

You tell me. I don't make it to SEs or Easts often enough. ;)

"Once on my road hybrid a load of schoolkids shouted at me 'Beardy shit-bike!'"

The true test is if, having changed your bike, they still didn't call you Beardy shit-bike!" ;-)

Or whether his missus gets it shouted at her............

"Get off and milk it!" 1970s' memories.
Sometimes accompanied by missiles....

Rode 2 years singlespeed and for the last year fixed in London. No jokes. No trouble. I find it hard to believe non cyclists are interested at all in what kind of bikes people ride. All sounds a bit self-congratulatory to me.

How is it self-congratulatory that people are interested in what I ride. I don't canvas opinion!

In the uk cyclists with any ounce of clue tend to just smile and nod, and move swiftly onto another topic when you mention riding fixed.

Here in .nl, people look at you like you have gone completely mad. Considering the average number of functional gears on a bike in this country seems to be about 1.3, you would think they would be more understanding of the idea of fixed, or atleast single speed. But if you are not riding an old clunker, then you must obvious be in the serious cycling crowd, which means you must have lots of gears. And lycra. Let us not forget the lycra.

This said, there is a small number of fixee people, I haven't seen any outside of amsterdam tho. A friend of mine has just bought her first track bike, having given up on lacing the fixed hub into a wheel for her old bike. So hopefully, when I get my old holdsworth road worthy again, there will be another two Fixed nutters here.

But for all this, there is one thing that is almost guarenteed to get you strange looks in .nl. Cycling with a helmet on...

J

he who laffs last, lafffs longest

He who laughs last, just got the joke.

"Not another hipster twat on a Bianchi Pista!"

What's wrong with a pista?

What's wrong with a pista?

Read the whole post and it should make sense. And also the fact that I ride a Bianchi Pista.

Man this interweb thingy has long memories. Being called out on posts I made last August ;)