Pseuds Corner

From
http://www.citycycling.co.uk/issue46/issue46page12.html

On fixed gear/single speed:

This is directly reflected in the anarchic views prevalent amongst the attendees of Critical Mass - the machine does not control the cyclist; it is the cyclist who has power. The increased popularity in recent years of single speed and fixed wheel bicycles signifies a further push towards autonomy. Removal of the derailleur, gears and even the brakes demonstrates an increased emphasis on man over machine.
(The above quote is from page 13.)

The return to the single speed and then to the fixed gear signifies the increasing need for cyclists to redefine themselves as separate from the masses of cycling commuters now occupying the bus lane. With the appropriation even of these to the mainstream arena of ‘courier-chic’, cyclists are now looking for even more extreme and exclusive ways of riding, for example in the form of ‘tall bikes’, where the outcome is a truly wacky and difficult to ride piece of engineering that still legitimately signifies subversion.

(The above quote is from page 14.)

So now that's you told why you do these things.

On 'courier style':

Further, with its increased popularity, the Critical Mass is in danger of having its signs re-appropriated and absorbed back into mainstream ideology. Indeed, this has already begun to occur within courier culture in London, which has become romanticised and commodified.

The development of courier style has been repackaged as a trendy ‘look’ similar to the 1960s ‘Beats’, who took on romanticised of black down-and-out jazz poets, therefore degrading them.. The autonomy that might once have been associated with this cycle culture is being eroded as it become part of a fashionable set of signifiers for people to subscribe to.
(The above quote is from page 14.)

I could quote the entire article, but I don't want to ...

"Just what is it that holds Critical Mass together? Is it really anarchy in operation? Here Jessica Blake from Goldsmiths College, London looks at the subculture and just how disorganised it really is"

Anarchy? Disorganised? Whatever next?!

Well done Jessica. I didn't spot any spelling mistakes and your use of English was really very good. For your next essay, perhaps a piece on "What I did in my holidays".

cringe

The cyclist, then, qua cyclist, is not l'homme machine, but l'homme et la machine non plus - not a seamless melding but an easily disengaged interdigitation of flesh and metal, a tango, if you will, on tarmac. And it is the very delicacy of the relationship between cycle and (wo)man that undergirds the new ideology of the fixed gear - fixisme. The continuously turning motion of the pedal-feet complex is the antithesis of phallogocentric put-put-put of the internal combustion engine and the late capitalist crisis that it has come to represent.

I dont understand those sentences.

It's quite clear - Communism is dead, long live Fixisme!

Fixistes of the World Unite!

You don't get it do you? It's all about tall bikes nowadays.

what a contemptible pile of wank

The continuously turning motion of the pedal-feet complex is the antithesis of phallogocentric put-put-put of the internal combustion engine and the late capitalist crisis that it has come to represent.

This is, of course, nonsense. The saddle and with it the forwardly projecting toptube are but an extension of or substitute for the phallus which the rider guides forwards along the road, up hills and which (s)he nurtures gently in the trackstand.

It's quite clear - Communism is dead, long live Fixisme!

Fixistes of the World Unite!

You have nothing to lose but your gears.

"Globalisation of such a culture seems to pander to corporate and conservative viewpoints. To globalise is to depersonalise, and the very crux of what distinguishes the bicycle from other modes of transport, as previously discussed, is its propensity to be autonomous."

Ummm...sorry...but if the goal is to get more people riding bikes then how can you complain about what happens when you have more people riding bikes? You can't be sumultanously elitist and all embracing at the same time. Or did I misread something here....

What the fuck are you guys talking about?

Aren't journalists supposed to debunk cliches?

What the fuck are you guys talking about?

What we're saying, basically, is that fixed gear cycling - fixisme - is a newly discovered lemma that provides a logical bridge between the ur-premises of the pre-industrial condition humaine, and what amounts to a fatal riposte to the crumbling narratives of postmodernity.

Aren't journalists supposed to debunk cliches?

Journos just need to file xhundred words by 5pm

What happened to getting on your bike a) because you like it; and b) it gets you where you want to?

the best bit on this thread is Balki's "confusion".

Aren't journalists supposed to debunk cliches?

Reads more like a 6th form anth/soc student than a journalist.

best bit on this thread is Balki's "confusion".

True.

@Balki - lazy writer writes crap article on cycling. Forum angrered by bad writing.

Help?

I'm glad someone thought about this properly! One could be mistaken for thinking that it's just people on bikes.

I'm glad someone thought about this properly! One could be mistaken for thinking that it's just people on bikes.

Or are they bikes under people?

*Jessica Blake from Goldsmiths College*

Hegel put it succintcly in terms of dialectic.

First the thesis: the nodder bike
Secondly the antithesis: the road bike or the bmx
Finally the synthesis: the fixed wheel bike.

An alternative dialectic proposed by Marx viewed the thesis as the pedestrian stage, the antithesis, the motor car and the synthesis the bicycle. This latter view ingnored the subtle differences within the classes of cyclists and fell apart in internectine squabbles with Trotskyists who believed in the universal and perpetual revolution that is fixed wheel cycling (that is apart from the WRP who believed whatever they felt that other people didn't believe.)

Lazy bit of student writing. Trying to hide lack of ideas behind a smokescreen of pointlessly complex words.

Me or the originally quoted piece?

should have been the point at which to stop reading as well.