Features

Another ember that spawned a wildfire is trick riding, a fresh approach to track bikes that borrows heavily from BMX styles and technology. John Watson, 28, is an architect by day and the weekly host of Peel Sessions, a trick-sharing night for fixed riders in New York.

“It’s all about moving through the city going from spot to spot and having a bike that doesn’t take you 45 minutes to ride a mile,” he said.

Watson’s trick inventory progressed from “simple” messenger stunts – backward circles, bar spins, pogos and trackstands – to more pro moves when Philadelphia-based tricksters visited New York for an informal competition in 2007.

“That’s when you really started seeing people doing 180 bunny hops on a fixed-gear and people doing three taps and all these other BMX-style moves,” Watson said.

Sensing an opportunity, track and BMX companies have responded with hefty “trick track” bikes – bikes like the Milwaukee Bruiser, the Volume Thrasher, the Charge Scissor, the Gorilla Kilroy, the Gran Royal Lurker, the Subrosa Malum, Brooklyn Machine Works’ Launchpad and Nemesis Project’s “fixed-gear freestyle” frame.

“Now we’re basically riding almost all BMX componentry on big BMX bikes that have the angles and the geometry of their track bike predecessors,” Watson explained.

But the real reason he rides fixed is still for the surf-like groove: “Pulling lines through traffic is very much like dropping in on a big wave and pulling lines up and down the face.”

The late, great Internet bike guru Sheldon “Coasting Is a Pernicious Habit” Brown, once summed up the reason so many still go for the golden experience: “There is an almost mystical connection between a fixed-gear cyclist and bicycle,” he wrote. “It feels like an extension of your body.”