No Brakes? No Problem!

Fixed gear biking is trendier than skinny jeans...well maybe not quite, but they do go hand in hand. This phenomenon has really taken off with the young and hip SF crowd.

Look closely, is there anything missing on this bike? If your answer is 'no' your either a SF hipster or your not looking hard enough.

"Fixed gear" refers to a kind of street bicycle with no back brakes and if you're really bad ass, no front brakes either. In their advanced evolutionary development these bikes also managed to shed traces of any gears. Once the pride of of any high pedaling cyclist, those 12, 18 and even the 24 "speed" gears are now considered unnecessary junk, damned to the scrap pile. These days A true sign of San Francisco machismo is going without gears!

So just how do San Francisco trendsetting cyclists coast their trusty mounts to a stop? Well let me tell you how I came to find out...

I do some volunteer work with the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, including promotions and helping out with the Fix Masonic Campaign. This past week myself and the two other SFBC volunteers from USF manned a table at the Health Fair in USF's Harney plaza. While I was there I had the opportunity to try one of my colleagues "fixies" and he explained that since the pedals are permanently fixed to the chain, and thus the wheel axle, all I had to do was push back hard on the pedals and I would lock up the back tire, laying down rubber while coming to a screeching, smokey halt.


It's kind of like peeling out in your mom's car when you were 16, totally unnecessary yet totally fun. The rubber burns about as fast too.