Older Riders Try 'Fixie' Bikes
With One Gear, Many Risks;
A Surgeon Goes Over the Top

By HANNAH KARP
July 7, 2006

Forget about 28-speed mountain bikes, cruisers with huge seats or $3,500 bicycles that shift gears automatically. Cyclists seeking an adrenaline boost on their commute are increasingly climbing onto a model straight out of the 19th century: a bike that has just one gear, can't coast and often lacks a feature prized by most cyclists and law-enforcement officials -- brakes.

Taking a cue from velodrome racers and city bike messengers, a growing number of riders are buying so-called fixed-gear bikes. Unlike standard 18- or 21-speeds, fixed-gear models have pedals chained directly to the rear wheel so that whenever the wheel spins, so do the pedals. To stop, the rider has to slow down well in advance, or stand on the pedals with enough force to skid to a stop. Removing brakes and gears makes the bikes lighter and cheaper than feature-packed versions, and purists say they like these models -- also known as "fixies" -- for their simplicity and direct connection to the pavement.

"Fixie" bikes are becoming more popular.
While many riders used to build their own stripped-down models -- and some boutique makers have long sold them for track racing -- now major bike manufacturers are circling the market. Giant introduced its first fixed-gear model for the streets, the $500 Bowery, earlier this year. Last year, Trek introduced its T-1 track bike, a $1,100 model that comes without brakes, while Raleigh rolled out its $600 Rush Hour, its first fixed-gear model since 1980. And Specialized last year sold 5,000 of its fixed-gear Langsters, up from 600 when it introduced the line in 2001. Next year, Specialized plans to bring out a new version of its single-speed bike that transforms into a fixie by simply adding a cog.

But for all of their hipster appeal, the bikes can be difficult to operate, if not outright dangerous. Because coasting isn't an option, stopping takes strength and concentration. A common mistake for novices who forget they're on a fixed-gear model is to stop pumping -- and go flying over the handlebars as the pedals keep spinning, a Specialized representative says. For men, the bikes present another challenge: Because riders can't stand up in the saddle to coast, long rides can result in reduced blood flow to the reproductive organs, which studies suggest may lead to impotence.

Chris Dawson noticed fixed-gear bikes all over the street, and after checking a few pro-fixie Web sites, the 39-year-old lawyer in Sacramento, Calif., bought one earlier this year. "There's a perception that fixed-gear riders are these crazy guys," he says. "But here I am in my button-down shirt and tie." Now, the father of two rides it to work each day -- his is equipped with brakes, and he wears a helmet -- and says he loves showing off his new skills. That made it all the more embarrassing when he lost his balance recently in front of a line of cars at an intersection and toppled over.

The danger doesn't stop when the bike does. Fixed-gear owners can injure themselves when the bike is elevated on a repair stand. In contrast with standard models, with chains that stop spinning if something is caught in them, the chains and pedals on fixies keep moving as long as the wheel is turning, even if something gets stuck in the works. Sites including fixedgeargallery.com, cyclelicio.us and Sheldonbrown.com contain tales of stuck digits, even pictures of severed fingers.

Fans say they're unfazed. Riders say the bikes provide a killer workout because one can set the gear at a low level for added resistance. Macho types, meanwhile, revel at riding a bike they can stop only with their own brute strength. And experienced riders say plenty of rewards come with mastering the bikes -- with bragging rights conferred upon those who can execute moves like the "skip stop," in which a rider shifts his weight forward to unweight the rear wheel, locks his legs to hold the pedals in a horizontal position and skids to a stop.

Another move is the "track stand," a technique pioneered on tracks and passed down to bike messengers, in which the rider balances in one spot by standing on the pedals. Tyler Cannon says he did his first track stand to make way for a biker approaching the other way on a narrow road. "It really made me feel like the man," says the 23-year-old from Lake Forest, Calif. His thrill was short-lived. "I crashed about 10 feet later when I smacked a pedal on a rock," he says. "Luckily, the other person didn't see."

Newer devotees represent a milieu far from the bike-world fringes -- including doctors, teachers and Wall Street traders. This summer, hundreds of fanatics will descend on Traverse City, Mich., for the second annual Fixed Gear Symposium, organized by a 60-year-old real-estate broker. Bailey Fidler, a sales associate at Boston's Wheelworks bike store, says it used to be unusual to see anyone over age 40 shopping for a fixed-gear bike; now, he says, about half the bikes go to those in that age range. One popular pick: new models such as Cannondale's '07 Capo, which can be quickly converted to a single-speed bike that can coast and has brakes.

High Margins

While the U.S. bike business is booming overall -- it hit $6 billion last year, up more than 10% since 2003 -- these bikes remain a tiny niche. Of the three million specialty bikes sold this year, roughly 15,000 will be fixed-gear models, estimates bike-industry analyst Jay Townley of Wisconsin's Jay Townley & Associates LLC. While these basic bikes are typically cheaper than loaded-down bikes, they're still profitable. Margins on most fixed-gear bikes are about five percentage points higher than the 25% to 30% margins on a typical bike, says Mr. Townley.

In regulatory terms, the bikes fall in a gray area. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission says track bicycles are "designed and intended for use in a competition." They are exempt from federal requirements for standard bicycles, which call for bikes to have brakes at least in the rear. Fixed-gear sidewalk bikes -- the commission's term for one with a seat height of no more than 25 inches adjusted to its highest position, and no free wheel -- aren't required to have brakes if they bear a permanent label visible from 10 feet displaying the words "No Brakes." The same label must be displayed prominently on promotional display material and shipping cartons.

The bikes have long been used by racers.

They're illegal in many places. Laws in most states where fixed-gear riding is popular -- including New York, California, Maryland and Oregon -- require that bicycles be equipped with a brake that enables the operator to make the braked wheels skid on clean, dry pavement. Still, fixed-gear cyclists and lawyers in those states argue, often successfully, that the rider should count as the "brake" if he or she is able to achieve the same effect.

To be on the safer side, bike shops generally advise customers to add hand brakes to models that come without them, and many riders do. Giant, for one, sells its fixed-gear model with brakes in the front and back. And in any case, makers say they don't recommend the bikes for novice riders, with many marketing their fixed-gear models as track bikes. "We think the people buying these bikes are savvy enough to know they're meant for one thing and one thing only. If a customer seems like they don't understand that, it's up to the shop to say, 'Don't go ride it in traffic.' That would be suicidal," says Andy Jacques-Maynes, road-bike product manager at Specialized.

Ken Heike has a brake on his fixed-gear bike, though he tries to avoid using it. He was considering taking the brake off, he says, until a recent spill changed his mind. The 53-year-old hand surgeon in Oklahoma City, who started riding it to train for a triathlon, says he was "booking" through a parking lot recently when a car lurched backward. He says he froze, locked his legs -- and "went over the top" of the car. He broke his wrist and couldn't operate for two weeks, he says. "All my friends said, 'I told you it was dangerous.' I do wonder if it would have been a different situation on another bike," he says. As for the hand brake, he adds: "I think I'm going to keep it."

Bike Spills

There are no statistics on how many bike accidents involve fixed-gear cycles, and typically bike spills of all kinds go underreported. But overall, bike-accident fatalities are on the rise, especially in urban areas. In 2004, 725 cyclists were killed in traffic crashes, according to the latest data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, up from 629 the previous year. Anecdotally, dealers say they see a higher proportion of fixed-gear bikes come back to the shop banged up.

The bikes are providing extra work for lawyers. Mark Ginsberg, who has represented eight fixed-gear riders this year and serves as chairman of the bicycle-advisory committee of Portland, Ore., says he's seen the number of traffic citations soar recently, though he has yet to see the court hold up a single one. "A fixed-gear is a braked bike under the law," he says. "You just must be able to skid the wheel on dry, level, clean pavement."

But David White-Lief, a personal-injury lawyer in Boston who specializes in bike accidents, says he's relieved that one of his current clients had brakes on his fixie -- even though that probably didn't help when a car took a left turn and knocked him down while he was riding on the side of the road. "It's just harder for a lawyer to explain to a jury or insurance company why someone didn't have brakes," Mr. White-Lief says.

No brakes? No problem, says Daniel Gonzales. The 29-year-old bike messenger in New York, who's fighting his second ticket for riding brakeless, says he got the first in November when an officer stepped suddenly into the bike lane, raised his arms and ordered him to stop. "I thought I had demonstrated the fixed-gear stopped quite well," says Mr. Gonzales, who locked his wheel and skidded to a halt in front of the officer. "I didn't run into him."

SAN FRANCISCO
ONE GEAR, WILL TRAVEL
Lacking brakes and shifters, 'fixies' keep cyclists intimate with their pedals

Vanessa Hua,
September 11, 2006
 

Flying down San Francisco's hills on his flashy pink track bike, Ben Hawkins rises from the seat a couple of inches, leans forward, pulls up with one leg and pushes down with the other.

He's slowing down the only way he can without brakes, by torquing into the back wheel.

For urbanites in the Bay Area, the trendiest bikes right now are also the simplest. With one fixed gear and no cables or brakes, they're called fixies.

Once popular only among bike messengers and hard-core cyclists, fixed-gear bikes have a place among the hipster icons of trucker hats and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. Their urban cool is attracting the attention of mainstream marketers: Multinational sportswear company Puma has created online guides to fixies, and Ford features them in Lincoln Navigator ads.

Much of the appeal lies in the clean aesthetics and the challenge the bikes offer, say enthusiasts from San Francisco to Los Angeles to New York. Plus there's less to steal or damage.

Fixies also satisfy a desire to be different -- though on sunny afternoons in San Francisco's Mission District or the Lower Haight a veritable fleet floods the streets and the sidewalks outside cafes and bars.

Track bikes have a retro appeal because they hark back to the turn of the last century, when bike riders couldn't coast because their cycles lacked a freewheel (invented in 1897). Fixie riders' feet have to keep up with the spinning pedals, going downhill and up.

"I like how it feels where the pedals push you back. You push them, and they push you back," said Hawkins, 31, a freelance computer animator who lives in the Mission. Bearded and gregarious, he wore funky glasses and rolled-up jeans with dark red knee socks on a recent ride. "You have no options. It takes more strength to ride it. You have to develop the muscles to brake."

Earlier this year, the longtime cyclist discovered a MySpace group devoted to fixies and is now part of a community that races, takes long rides into Marin and throws house parties.

"You can always tell how fast you are going by how fast your legs are going. There's something really nice about it," said Judah Mendez, 28, an environmental architecture and design student at San Francisco State University.

"There's a connection with bike and the road that is almost mystical. Almost Zen-like," said Joe Cosgrove, 45, a Davis psychiatrist who began riding a fixed-gear bike two years ago. "You're locked into the bicycle. It's almost like the bicycle rides you."

Geared bikes seem to slow down when riders switch gears, fixie riders say.

Cosgrove organized a cross-country fixed-gear ride this summer that raised $310,000 to fight histiocytosis, a rare blood disease his daughter has. People were generous with donations once they recognized the difficulty of the task, he said.

Fixies are a response to mountain bikes and road bikes loaded with gears and gizmos, said Robbin Alfred, a manager at Montano Velo in Oakland.

"Within the last year, we've noticed a huge increase in the popularity," Alfred said. "It's a simple machine, with no brakes or gears to worry about. You go only as fast as you pedal."

To get a fixie, riders can spend under $100 converting a geared bicycle, stripping away derailleurs and brakes and scrounging replacement parts. Or they can drop several thousands dollars on imported frames, special equipment and customizations.

"Instead of hot-rodding a car or buying fancy clothes, they're using their bikes to display who they are," said Bradley Wohl, owner of American Cyclery in San Francisco, founded in 1941.

Jenny Oh, 32, of San Francisco, rides a pastel blue fixie with bunny stickers on it.

"It's about the style; it's more unique and distinct than geared bikes," said Oh, who began riding two months ago and works in documentary film production. She wore checkered slip-on shoes, denim shorts and dangly earrings on a recent ride. "I love the simplicity. It's very pure, clean and lightweight -- and easy to maintain."

For now, Oh plans to keep a front brake until she becomes a better rider. But others aren't waiting. If you've seen a cyclist have trouble obeying a stoplight or tumble over to avoid hitting a pedestrian, you may have spotted a fixie-newbie.

"There's a lot of people riding bikes they shouldn't be riding," said Shawn Hatfield, 33, a San Francisco music mastering engineer. "They lack the skills. They want the aesthetic of the trend going on, but these are dangerous bikes. I've seen a lot of people get into sketchy situations."

Police have ticketed fixie cyclists in Milwaukee and Portland for lacking brakes. San Francisco ordinances require all bikes to have one braked wheel. That said, San Francisco police Lt. Dominic Celaya of the Mission station said he can't recall officers ticketing fixie riders there.

Joel Young, 26, a San Francisco computer programmer, sees brakes as a crutch. Without them, he's more attuned to traffic, he said. He's had one accident wholly attributable to the bike being a fixie: His chain popped off and he used his gloved hand to grab the front tire to stop. The tire burned through his glove, but he says he didn't crash.

"It's kind of a vanity thing, if you want to be honest about it," he said. "You don't stop for anything."

Ashley Neese, 26, who does have one brake, admits her knees "aren't what they used to be" because of the strain of riding up hills without the assistance of gears.

"This is a bike made to be ridden in a circle, not on the street," said Neese, an Upper Market artist trying to lessen the sport's domination by men by working on a calendar featuring female fixed-gear riders.

Despite the physical toll, the fixie remains her only bike because it's fun and it seems to give her more control than a geared bike.

"It's interesting how mainstream this tiny subculture has gotten. I'm questioning how long it can sustain its hipness," Neese mused. "But San Francisco is such a big biking city."

"I actually feel a lot more confident riding a fixed-gear because your control over the bike is so much stronger," said Holland, 24.

But a Multnomah County judge has thrown fans of "fixies" for a loop by ruling that the Portland police were correct in giving Holland a traffic ticket last month for riding downtown without a brake.

In one of the most bike-friendly cities in the country, the ruling cast a new legal cloud over the increasing number of hard-core bicyclists who are eschewing mechanical brakes for the balletic challenge of riding a fixie.

The bike blogs and Internet discussion groups are full of debate about whether the judge's ruling made any sense -- and just how safe fixies are without conventional brakes.

The bikes, once largely restricted to track racing but now popular in many cities, have just one speed and the simplest of drivetrains. You can't coast. When the wheels are turning, you're forced to pedal, just like little kids on a tricycle.

Fixies aren't for the faint of heart. Jonathan Maus, who writes the BikePortland.org blog, admires the skill of the fixie riders but has tried one himself just a couple of times.

"It was really disconcerting," he said. "I was like, 'Holy cow, I could get in trouble here.' "

Oregon law says that bicycles "must be equipped with a brake that enables the operator to make the braked wheels skid on dry, level, clean pavement."

Mark Ginsberg, a local attorney and bike activist, argued in court Thursday that Holland and other skilled fixie riders meet the letter of that law because they have the skill to bring their bikes to a skidded stop on dry pavement.

The law doesn't define what a brake is, he said, only how it works.

Circuit Court Judge Pro Tem Gregg Lowe wasn't impressed by that.

"It seemed to me it was a relatively simple issue," Lowe said Friday in an interview. "A rose is a rose is a rose. A brake is a brake is a brake. And feet or musculature aren't brakes."

Ginsberg said he may appeal the decision, which gives the police the green light to continue handing out tickets to fixed-gear riders who don't have a mechanical brake. In the absence of an appeal, Holland has to either pay a $73 fine or install a brake on her front wheel.

In fact, many fixies do have such a brake. One of Holland's fellow messengers, watching as Holland was interviewed, said she relies on the front brake on her bike because she feels less competent in using only her pedals to bring her bike to a stop.

Sam Adams, the Portland commissioner in charge of the city's Office of Transportation, said he has asked the city attorney to review the law to see whether Portland police are properly applying it.

As it happens, Adams said his chief of staff, Tom Miller, has also been ticketed for not having a brake on his fixie. Adams said Miller relented and put a brake on his front wheel -- although he demonstrated for the commissioner that he can stop as quickly as a conventional bike.

But Adams said he's still not convinced. "My advice to people is to get handbrakes," he said. "I think it's an added margin of safety."

By Ryan Singel
Apr, 07, 2005

Jim Wirtanen spent 12 years as a bike messenger dodging buses and cabs on the streets of Boston. He earned the name "Deadguy" after being hit by a speeding Lincoln Continental on the third week of the job. The collision threw him 40 feet across an intersection and he hit his head on a light pole.

Wirtanen recovered, returned to messaging and for the last 6 years of his career, delivered packages and legal documents using a brakeless, single-speed bike known as a track bike.

Though a bike with no brakes sounds insane to many, Wirtanen swears by it.

"Basically, a track bike is the perfect invention," said Wirtanen, who now works as a mechanic at Harris Cyclery. "You can't make it any better."

Wirtanen is far from alone in embracing the most basic bicycle technology in an age where major bicycle companies focus on the latest in high-tech gear, including full-suspension mountain bikes with SUV-strength disc brakes and ultra-lightweight titanium road bikes with carbon-fiber everything.

Long a favorite of fearless bike couriers, the "fixie" is growing in popularity among young urban American cyclists, who love the bike's pure lines, low price and street cred.

"Now all the college kids want them because they have had courier bags for the last five years and now they want the bike to go with it," said Wirtanen.

The bikes are also popular with racers wanting to work on their form, commuters who ride in rain and snow, and, increasingly, with those taking up track racing on banked velodromes.

Some who ride them on the street simply buy production track bikes from companies like Bianchi and Fuji Bicycles, while others retrofit old steel road bikes into the "fixies" now often seen parked outside hip city bars.

Fixie is short for "fixed gear," meaning the rear wheel and the pedals are connected through a single gear anchored to the rear wheel.

Unlike standard road bikes, there is no way to coast, there is only one gear and brakes are optional.
Simply put, when the wheels are moving, the rider's legs are moving.

As with a child's Big Wheel, if you want to stop, you have to use your leg muscles to slow the bike.

Many riders, but not all, add a front brake, but the pure and brave (or foolish) of heart scoff at the notion.

Oddly, when this configuration was first introduced in the late 19th century, it was known as a "safety bicycle," since it replaced the "high wheel," whose enormous front wheel made for an unstable ride.

Though hand brakes and free wheels were invented soon after, the fixed gear remained a popular bike for decades, including during the early years of the Tour de France.

One modern-day devotee, a former mechanic at San Francisco's Pedal Revolution who goes by the name Moon, compares the simplicity of his current fixie to the BMX dirt bike he rode as a teenager.

"Learning how to ride a fixie was like drinking decaf your whole life and then suddenly having the real thing," Moon said.

Learning to slow a bike with your legs and cornering while pedaling makes one a better cyclist, according to Wirtanen.
Though Wirtanen's shop tries to make sure all nonexperts install brakes, he waxes poetic about the thrill of a pure track bike.

"You take the brake off and you can't get any crazier for field testing your skill level than playing in traffic on a track bike," Wirtanen said. "If you are an intelligent cyclist, it makes you far more aware. Instead of looking a car or two ahead of you, you have to look three to four blocks down the road and have to scan left to right constantly to look for escape routes."

"It's a Zen thing. Once you get used to traffic, then you can float through the chaos," he said.

Sam Murphy, a San Francisco-based photographer who has been riding her brake-equipped fixie for two years, is surprised at how many brakeless fixies she sees parked in San Francisco's bohemian Mission district.

Though she loves the feeling of "total control over everything" she has on her fixie, she worries that many are ridden by inexperienced female riders whose boyfriends convinced them it was cool.

"The trend is a little scary in some ways, but I'm just glad to see more butts on bikes," Murphy said.

WHEN is a bicycle not like other bicycles? To begin with, when it has no brakes, or at least no visible brakes, or possibly just a front brake. That means you can’t ride this bike very well on your first try, and certainly not very gracefully, easily or safely.

The rear cog is bolted directly to the hub, so that whenever the vehicle is in motion, the pedals go around, making coasting impossible. This bike doesn’t have a shift lever or extra sprockets, and the chain is shorter and wider than on traditional bikes.

There are no fenders, and the rear wheels are probably bolted onto the frame to deter theft. You slow down by reversing the pedals, or skidding, or doing a skip stop. And that’s just the beginning of the differences between your run-of-the-mill 10-speed and a track bike, or fixed-gear bike — fixie for short — as it is also known.

Many fixed-gear adherents contend that their bikes are the ultimate and all others are pretenders. And these fixed-gear zealots are a growing presence on the streets of New York. Perceived by some as nuisances, or as troublesome, anarchist Dumpster-diving punks who happen to ride bikes, they are occasionally reviled, but they are also the subject of curiosity and interest. Just as die-hard skateboarders 15 years ago stood on the cusp of providing a new lifestyle, so the fixed-gear bike culture could be the tip of something that nobody can accurately predict but something that is huge.

Riders of fixed-gear bikes are as diverse as bike riders in general. Messengers are big fixie aficionados, but more and more fixed-gear bikes are being ridden by nonmessengers, most conspicuously the kind of younger people to whom the term “hipster” applies and who emanate from certain neighborhoods in Brooklyn. You see these riders weaving in and out of traffic without stopping, balancing on the pedals at a stoplight and in the process infuriating pedestrians and drivers alike.

In Williamsburg and points south of Grand Street, these bikes are legion. But they are fast gaining popularity, not just in those bastions of trend followers, and not just among 22-year-olds. Fixed-gear bikes are being ridden all over New York, by messengers, racers, lawyers, accountants and college professors — a diverse and not necessarily youthful cross section of the city’s population. They’re being ridden by people who work in sandwich shops and don’t know or care about gear ratios and bike history, and by people who have been racing these bikes for years in places like the Kissena Velodrome in Flushing, Queens, with its banked, elliptical track. They’re ridden by militant vegans who are virtual encyclopedias of arcane bicycle history, by thrill-seeking members of renegade bike gangs like Black Label, by shopgirls, street racers, Critical Mass riders, your aunt.

There’s also the phenomenon of city riders returning to fixed-gear biking’s roots and getting back to the track, entering races like the Cyclehawk Velo City Tour, to be held at the Kissena Velodrome on May 6.

These disparate riders represent a rainbow coalition, a movement that’s about bikes as part of a way of life, as an identity. Although fixed-gear bikes can be seen as a trendy accessory, they also allow a mild form of rebellion against what many of these bike riders see as a wasteful and insipid way of life. Fixed-gear riders embrace the contrary notion of taking a different route.

“We own the streets,” the spray-painted stencil reads. Not really, but fixed-gear riders are, in a benign way, promoting an alternative to accepted norms.

Anarchy in Motion
So what’s the big deal? It’s just a bike, right? On some level, yes. Two wheels, a chain, a cog, a seat and handlebars. But in the way that one of Marcel Breuer’s vintage Wassily chairs is just a chair that costs $10,000, the top fixed-gear bikes are just custom-made bikes that cost 10 times as much as a regular factory-made bicycle. The pinnacle of two-wheeled transport, they are beautiful objects with simple, clean, stripped-down lines that make them look fast even when they’re standing still.

“They’re the prettiest bikes out there,” said Gina Scardino, owner of King Kog, a store on Hope Street in Williamsburg that sells only fixed-gear bikes. Indeed they are, with a modernist blending of form and function and a look that matches what they’re made for, which is going really fast on a banked velodrome track.

But the question arises: Especially in this city, isn’t it insane to ride a bike that you can’t easily stop? By riding a bike that’s meant to be raced around a special track on the chaotic streets of New York, aren’t you risking life and limb?

It doesn’t make sense. But that may be the appeal, and has been ever since the bikes appeared on the scene more than a century ago.

Fixed-gear bikes have a rich past. Before the invention of the derailleur, the device that made multiple gears a reality, fixed-gears were the racing bike. The original Madison Square Garden, built in 1879 at 26th Street and Madison Avenue, was built for a velodrome. Races testing speed and endurance drew huge crowds, with the top riders among the sports stars of their day.

The bike races at Madison Square Garden were all the rage around the turn of the last century. A velodrome circuit flourished around the country, with the best racers earning $100,000 to $150,000 a year at a time when carpenters were lucky to make $5,000. And all this was happening on the forerunners of the bikes being ridden today.
Johnny Coast’s Coast Cycles sits at the end of a desolate cul-de-sac in the heart of Bushwick, Brooklyn, near the Myrtle Avenue stop on the J, M and Z lines. Mr. Coast, a 31-year-old with dreadlocks down to the small of his back, is a former squatter and current member of Black Label.

Coast Cycles is not your typical bike store stocked with rows of three-speeds and road bikes, along with locks, water bottles and other doodads. It is an old-fashioned, one-person workshop where chickens wander in from the yard. Here, Mr. Coast builds two or three custom-framed bicycles a month, most of them fixed-gears, “tailored to suit a body’s dimensions, to an individual’s geometry and affording the maximum of comfort, design and style,” as he put it in an e-mail message.

Mr. Coast, who works surrounded by Bridgeport lathes, jigs and blueprints, is a believer in fixies as a metaphorical extension of a squatters’ lifestyle that connotes, as he puts it, “living a certain way, subsisting on recycling, not wasting, finding liberation, freedom as a revolutionary act, like in a Hakim Bey sense, primitivist, spiritualist anarchism.”

He laughs at the absurdity of a brand like Mountain Dew approaching Black Label with an offer of sponsorship, as he says happened last year, and is wary of exploitation of the fixed-gear bike culture by corporations that have little to do with biking. “I saw what happened to skateboarding and surfing and punk,” Mr. Coast said grimly.

Look, Ma, No Brakes
The dangers of a small world getting bigger were vividly illustrated a few months ago when a hipster wearing square-frame glasses wandered into King Kog. The store, which sells fixed-gear bikes starting around $800 and going up to the thousands, also carries Jason Chaste’s Fortynine Sixteen clothing line, named for a gear ratio, and high-end parts like Sugino cranks, Izumi chains, and Dura-Ace and Ciocc frames.

“Um, I’m looking for a track bike,” the visitor said.

“What’s your price range?” Ms. Scardino asked.

“Three hundred dollars,” the visitor replied.

“Hmmm, you might want to try Craigslist or eBay,” she suggested gently.

When Ms. Scardino asked the visitor how he planned to use the bike, he answered, “I’m just going to be cruising around.”

You got the sense that this wasn’t the place for him, but also that he might come back one day. As he put it when he left: “I like your shop. It’s neat.”

At Bike Kill, an annual racing event sponsored by Black Label and held in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, nobody seemed worried about the issue of fixed-gear biking becoming too popular; everybody was having too much fun.
Vehicles used in the event, held on a blustery autumn day near the Samuel C. Barnes Elementary School, included tall bikes (two frames on top of each other with a seat about six feet off the ground), bikes with metal rollers as front wheels, tiny bikes and BMX bikes (little single-gear bikes used for tricks) and, of course, fixed-gear bikes.

Stopping on a Prayer
Mr. Coast was there, along with members of Black Label’s Minneapolis and Reno, Nev., chapters and members of other biker groups like C.H.U.N.K. 666, which has footholds in Brooklyn and Portland, Ore.; the Rat Patrol, from Chicago; Dead Baby, from Seattle; and the Skidmarxxx, from Austin, Tex. A lot of unwashed dreads, denim, leather and facial tattoos were in evidence, along with a carnivalesque assortment of voodoo top hats, orange jumpsuits, bunny ears, Mexican wrestling masks and a Pee-wee Herman doppelgänger waving from his Schwinn cruiser.

There were copious drinking, including a contest to see who could ride around in a circle while drinking a six-pack fastest, and the “Blind Skull” event, in which riders wearing big foam skulls over their heads pedaled until they fell over or ran into somebody.

Toward 8 p.m. the drunken tall-bike jousting began, with knights of both sexes armed with padded plastic “spears.” The only dissonant note occurred when a cassock-wearing interloper on Rollerblades with a motor attached was expelled by a Black Label member. “Get your motor out of here!” the biker yelled.

That’s the cardinal rule. No motors. For environmental reasons. Or practical ones, recalling the West Indian messengers who pioneered urban fixed-gear riding in the 1980s, bringing their ingenuity to New York from the islands, where bikes that didn’t have much of anything on them to steal were a decided advantage.

But pinning down what constitutes the fixed-gear movement gets complicated. After all, what does the insanity of Bike Kill have to do with someone like “Fast” Eddie Williams, who runs the bicycle-themed Nayako Gallery in Bedford-Stuyvesant, has published a book of photographs of messengers and competes in Alley Cat and Monster Track street races?

Mr. Williams’s scene is the messenger scene, in which he has been a participant since the early 1980s, when he first encountered the West Indian messengers hanging out at Washington Square Park. “I saw them riding,” he said. “I liked how they maneuvered, stopped at a red light and didn’t step down. And I thought, ‘How do they do that?’ ”

Mr. Williams got a Matsuri, a fast fixed-gear bike, and started working as a messenger. Twenty-five years later, he’s still at it, looking incredibly fit and younger than his 43 years. “Track bikes are not made for street,” he conceded, “and sometimes I need a hope and a prayer to stop short.” But he rhapsodized about their charms. “It’s like playing chess,” he said. “You think out your moves from a block away.”

John Campo, the salty-tongued director of the racing program at the Kissena Velodrome, is another fixie aficionado. As with Mr. Williams, the fixed-gear lifestyle seems to be a healthy one; Mr. Campo looks at least 15 years younger than his 60. Biking isn’t his profession — he’s a jazz musician who has played with Miles Davis, among others — but it is undeniably his passion.

Mr. Campo missed out on the glory days of the Kissena Velodrome, but he tells tales about the father of Vinny Vella, the actor who plays Jimmy Petrille on “The Sopranos,” racing at Madison Square Garden to win enough money to buy a scale for the pushcart he sold fish from, then earning enough to open a fish store on Elizabeth Street. Mr. Campo remembers all the Polish, German and Italian bike clubs, and he remembers Lou Maltese, a member of the Century Road Club who held many cycling records, including the 100-mile national record in a race from Union City, N.J., to Philadelphia.

‘A Zen Thing’
Far from worrying about fixed-gear bikes getting too popular, Mr. Campo yearns for them to return to the their prominence of a century ago, and he welcomes street riders to Kissena. “These kids are lovely,” he said. “They come; they win, lose or draw; they have a great time. This is an American spirit thing, to be free, to do what you want to do and express yourself in your own medium, like surfing or skating.”

Surfing and skating are mentioned a lot in relation to fixed-gear bikes. Something about these activities prefigures much of what is going on today in the bike community. Surfing 50 years ago and skating 25 years ago were small, below-the-radar pursuits with their own rituals and secret codes and vernacular. Now they’re billion-dollar industries, popular the world over. And in the opinion of many aficionados, a little bit of soul was lost along the way.

Bicycling is obviously different; there are more bikes than cars in the world, and bikes have a longer popular history, not to mention the fact that fixed-gear bikes predate “regular” bikes. But something about the trajectories of surfing and skating from unexamined, semi-underground secret societies to blown-out cheesy “sports” could forecast the future of the fixed-gear bike.

Surfing and skating retained some of their rebelliousness, in part because of the varied, unpredictable demographic of who is involved: 5-year-olds and 80-year-olds of both sexes, doctors and garbage collectors, law-abiding citizens and criminals. That makes the skating or surfing “movement” hard to locate exactly, just like the amorphous bike movement.

Johnny Coast. Gina Scardino. Fast Eddie. John Campo. The menagerie at Bike Kill. It’s a broad swath. The group also includes people like Toni Germanotta, a 42-year-old owner of an art studio that serves the apparel industry. “When you’re on a fixed gear,” said Ms. Germanotta, who works in the garment district, “it gives you a higher skill level. You have to be constantly aware, always watching the road. You don’t just ride, and it feels a little crazy.”

And it includes Kyle Fay, a designer for Urban Outfitters who is a relatively new convert. “You take the blame if you get hit,” he said. “It’s self-reliance, being responsible for yourself. It might sound kind of corny, but it’s a Zen thing, being one with the bike.”

And it includes Alex Escamilla, a 23-year-old book artist from Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

“I had a couple of friends who made fun of me for riding one because it was trendy,” Ms. Escamilla said. “But the problem with looking at bike riding as a trend is that you lose sight of everything that is positive about bikes. You know, the renewable energy source, exercise, convenience, saving money, saving time, community, seeing the city in a whole new way, blah blah blah.”

Besides, she added: “Track bikes are fun. And they’re beautiful.”