Black tights, fixed gear bikes and ‘bout to explode thighs!

Cyclists' communities, wether officially or unofficially established, are surrounded by criticism usually accompanied with equivalent vitriolic attacks or complimentary comments. At the dawning of the new decade the reemergence of what can not be described as a new phenomenon - but surely the scope of its manifestation is a new one - made cyclists expand not only their vocabulary with a bunch of new 'adjectives' but also their cultural horizons. This is fixed gear-bike culture.  

Just a bike.. or more than this?

Bikes are considered to be one of mankind’s most important inventions that rapidly evolved during the last century. For the majority who still prefer to sit on a leather seat of a hybrid pushing its horn during heavy rush hour a bike is... just a bike. But for those who take the risk to strike a pedal and cut through the unbearable New York, London or Tokyo traffic, a bike that follows minimalistic principles is something more. It is a statement of individuality, a form of self-expression and self-representation that progressively morphs into a complex 'life project'.

A 'life project' in which the individual perceives him/herself as a 'demigod' overcoming human physical limits, denying and resisting at the same time to comply to a world that accepts conformity as its main principle, preferring to be part of what is unanimously perceived as a margin. Every aspect of it, from the very big to the very small, requires elaborate 'ordering' work, adjustment, change and transformation with the aim to obtain the indexical 'projections' that will trigger recognizable identity features that will ensure his/her ratification by others.

A deeply-rooted, strictly oriental affair https://www.facebook.com/KEIRIN.MAGAZINE/ @KeirinMagazine

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Purchasing it means buying those features of personality that are contained, buying an identity, and when you ride it you express that identity. 

No spectators at the start of the men's team time trial at the World Championships in Doha, Qatar in 2016 Will Goodan

"A suicidal response to urban conditioning"

Takuya Sakamoto

It was in early 1970s when this thoroughbred machine made its appearance in the streets of New York. Back then the presence of a track bike on the public road was something absolutely extravagant for the locals' perceptions of cycling. 

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Fairly enough, as only Caribbean immigrants were the ones accustomed with that trend!

Caribbean immigrants were those who introduced and pioneered fixed-gear riding in the U.S., bringing their bikes with them to New York from their islands. For them, bike messengering was the main source of income.

Jamaicans and Trinidadians in their majority, these riders displayed and embodied a strong sense of group membership. One that was not replacing their traditional "thick" identities such as nationality, gender, social class, ethnicity and so forth, but one that was complementing or, in some circumstances , even accentuating and intensifying these "thick" community identities. Coming from what was seen as a peripherial zone of the world,, they were taking pride in having an edge over the locals dabbling in messengering. After all, they grew up racing bikes to impress local girls back in their homeland. This shared pride of being  at the same time a newcomer and the fastest man on the block, as an aspect of their individual life projects, became the matrix of many diverse 'light groups' of fixed-gear cyclists who were proudly bringing the identity of 'messengers'. Living in a city that is perpetually moving and where there always something in demand, their hobby soon became a career, allowing them to boast the status of elevated 'professionals'. 
During the last decade many other similar 'light' groups emerged and shaped the US urban cycling scene. Zealots who grasped the potential that cities offer, share a common demeanor which basically, along with intense pedaling, consists of neglecting red traffic lights, passing by intersections without making sure that SUVs or buses are not coming straight into them and shouting or clapping their hands to deliver a sharp warning to hapless pedestrians. For them, these are signs of freedom, disobedience and nonconformity; they are signs of insanity, recklessness and irresponsibility for their critics. Perceived as troublesome anarchist punks who happen to ride bikes, they are occasionally insulted, but they are also the subject of curiosity and interest as they achieved to put their own piece to the mosaic constituing the identity of fixed-gear bike culture in the U.S.

Takuya Sakamoto

Aesthetics and criticism

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Many may expect that most of the fixie owners in European cities are skinny-jean design students and inked-up tech kids. However, this is far from true as superdiversity is the characteristic of European fixed-gear bike culture. Prominent directors, architects, elegantly suited-up lawyers, adventuresome retirees, pleasant men and women of all sorts, some of them pierced and tattooed while others not, constitute an uncommonly inclusive community overtly dismissing the culture of big capital. The superdiversity that characterizes them is also manifested through their bikes, as one can meet from modest home-built and fluorescent factory fixies to bohemian fixies displayed on apartment walls. 
The scene, comprising members that are coming from various backgrounds and ages, is convivial. Nevertheless, as always happens with anything that rises from the underground, bittersweet feelings are constantly expressed by its acolytes. The vivid enthusiasm of newcomers riding with Ray-Bans and several days of stubble beneath a close-shaved head, being worshipers of 'vintage' aesthetics and expressing a yearning for an era of French 'insousiance', clashes fiercely with the exasperation of the old messengers who are nostalgic for the time that the beauty of track bikes still was a secret shared by a close circle of initiates.
This perpetual conflict that characterizes identity practices and creates stratified distinctions between 'experts' and 'novices', 'teachers' and 'learners', 'wannabes' and 'fakes' and 'degrees' of authenticity, is responsible for the application of the benchmark of 'enoughness'. According to it one has to 'have' enough of the emblematic features and to fill specific criteria in order to be ratified as an authentic member of an identity category. 
However, "enoughness" is a slippery terrain for presumptive members because 'enough' is manifestly a judgment, often a compromise, and rarely a black and white well-defined set of criteria. Being "enough" but not "too much" of a fixie requires the capacity to make adequate judgement calls, to encounter what is defined as authentic and to acquire a bundle of features that will help an individual promote his/her identity mostly as a heritage and not that much as a creation. After all, the trend is considered an "old school" one, even more a ' hardcore' one. To put it into simple words: make the right judgements, 'cause tarring and feathering is always at the corner!

The need to keep the right pace

Hence, apprentices who made the right judgments on "enoughness" rose to higher, more authoritative ranks, baptized as "fully authentic", and started building their own restricted versions.
However, in the era of globalization that we live in, the imperative need for re-identification makes even self-proclaimed 'hardcore' members to rethink about the accuracy of their statements, because the configurations of features are perpetually changing, and one's fluency of yesterday does not guarantee the same degree of fluency tomorrow. Therefore, the need to constantly satisfy the rules of recognizability is inextricably connected with the shaping of the 'life project' of an individual whether he is confined in a velodrome somewhere in Japan or cruising the streets of Europe or the dense traffic of urban US.

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