Urban Outfitters and O.G. fixies

So Urban Outfitters announced last week that they were going to start selling colorful single-speed/fixed-gear bikes, and the reaction in the fancy-bike community, both online and with people I know, was not particularly positive. Here’s a fairly representative comment from the discussion on velospace:

i have faith that humanity is smarter than this and that it’ll make urban outfitters look stupid even to people hopping on the band wagon.

Ha! Yeah, right! The new hipster bikers that the O.G. hipster bikers (some of whom have probably been riding fancy bikes for upwards of five years!) so dread seem to be totally into a colorful, customizable, messenger-ish bike that sells for $400. For example, check out this Nylon post and the comments, which I think epitomize what veteran bikers find so annoying about new bikers:

With their new online Bike Shop, they’ve gone above and beyond the call of Outfitting duty and given us the tools to build our dream bike. In what is probably their most technical undertaking yet, the site allows you to customize nearly every aspect: frame size, saddle, grips, chains, rims and tires. Really, just talking about bike parts is already making us feel like a cool mechanic (we said grips.)

So there’s a few main points O.G. bikers make about why the Urban Outfitters bikes are a travesty:

1. It’ll crowd the streets with more people who don’t know how to ride a bike in the city, and will turn drivers against people who already had colorful fixies.

Well, this may be true, but I’ve seen at least as many (if not more) pretty bikes doing stuff in traffic that infuriates drivers (running stoplights, weaving through moving cars, Critical Mass) as less expensive bikes. I’d say the only thing I’ve noticed that cheapo bikes do more frequently is ride the wrong way in the bike lane and on the sidewalk, which is annoying, but not to drivers.

2. It has a brake on the back wheel, which means it’s not a true fixed gear. Ha ha, posers!

Riding brakeless in a city with frequent traffic lights and irrational, crazy drivers is one of those things that fixie people and I are going to just have to agree to disagree on forever. I’m sure there are some uber-responsible riders who have total control of their bikes at all times, but I have zero faith in most people’s (especially young people’s) ability to gauge their own skill at anything, much less how they’ll react in an emergency. By definition, anyone who would buy a bike from Urban Outfitters is not experienced enough to ride brakeless.

Also, if you’re using the word ‘poser’ in a serious manner and you’re over the age of 15, you need to take a hard look at your life.

3. There’s going to be no room in the bike lanes, it’s gonna be clogged up by people with complicated haircuts riding five abreast.

So much of bike culture claims to be of the “One more bike, one less car! I’m good because I bike! Everybody should bike!” bent. I can’t see how that can be reconciled with “…But don’t bike if you’re a d-bag, you’re making us look bad.” There’s idiots all over the place, having more of them on bikes is a natural byproduct of increasing the total number of people on bikes. Which is what you want, right? Right? Besides, you probably looked dumb when you were starting out, too.

4. The bike they’re selling is made by Republic Bikes, which makes shitty bikes that don’t stand the test of time.

Uh, seems to be true-ish, based on bike forum chatter. Republic Bikes’ Aristotle frame is made of high-tensile steel, the cheapest option, which rusts quicker, weighs more, and breaks more easily than other, more expensive, materials. Here’s the specs from the Republic website (where, incidentally, they were selling the Aristotle for $350 a few months ago):

According to this Bikeforum post, in which they are discussing the Aristotle model before it got picked up by Urban Outfitters, the grips, chain and brake are cheap as well as the frame.

However, this doesn’t mean anything to people who would buy a bike from Urban Outfitters, who are for the most part not going to ride their bike several miles every day, or ride it in the snow, or have any idea that their bike is not as good as it could be. There’s a lot of cheap, shoddy bikes out there already, and there always will be. You didn’t care as long as they didn’t look like yours, why do you care now?

5. Small/Medium/Large is a stupid way to choose a bike.

Quite true! Sheldon Brown says it best, so I’m not really gonna try, but the gist is that a new bike is sort of like a pair of pants for an octopus. There’s a lot of places where the measurements can be not quite right, and it’s kind of a bad idea to buy a bike without trying it out first unless you’re really, really sure about the measurements that work for you.

And what kind of bullshit is the height range? There’s a lot of us out here under 5′5″.

6. There will be many more extremely ugly bikes.

I just had dinner with my boyfriend, and he suggested that I amend this post with a sixth point based on aesthetics. He is correct, there is a higher potential for eye-burning bikes on the road.

BUT ANYWAY: if your subculture can’t survive a sudden influx of lookalike “posers,” then you might want to think hard about how much it was based on appearances. If you really love your bike for no reason other than its glorious function, say, “OK, well, uh, welcome!” and wait for the interlopers to either get bored or get legitimately interested and start coming to Bike Church. Bike Snob NYC had a particularly good point on this that I wish to steal:

You can certainly continue to enjoy something after it’s received the Urban Outfitters treatment, though you can no longer tell yourself that the fact that you enjoy it makes you special.

Besides, if Republic Bikes’ construction is really as crappy as everyone says and factoring in that a lot of people have their first bike stolen before they’ll shell out for a decent lock, these Urban Outfitters bikes have a half-life of maybe nine months. They’ll vanish away in no time.