someone needs to go for a ride
You need to stop giving a toss what dickheads do. I find it really helps.
i’d do that, but my therapist tells me i need to connect with the common man. if i ignore the dickheads and wankers that leaves about 35 people in brisbane to talk to. and they probably don’t include me in their 30 people 
as twain said, god must dearly love the common man to have made him so damn common…
Hahahaha, I can gladly say I am not the leader of such a cult movement as evidence I offer you this picture of my only fixie
Ugly as fuck, but get’s the job done. Although I guess I do have the matching thongs…
EDIT: Now that I look at the picture, I think the blurryness of the shitty camera phone pics is actually make it more attractive than it is. It’s filled with dings, scratches, rust spots on the chainstays, the headset that you have to tighten by hand while riding along, the list goes on…
(And yes Horatio that is your frame waiting to be posted in the background ;))
It’s a bit scary that you and Horatio are both rocking the insect wing mudguard. Very interesting. Do you by any chance find yourself cycling in those thongs with no top on sometimes? 
Didnt horatio mention about goin to sydney over cup weekend to meet a ‘friend’
hahahah those sunnies are hot
I actually only picked that up today cause I was about to ride home from work and the roads were wet, so I grabbed one off the shelf (I love working in a bike shop) It prolly won’t see any more use till next winter, but still handy to have.
I a serious response to the thread though, there really isn’t much of a fixie culture in Syd compared to you southern folk. (or if there is, I am very much out of it, which is more than slightly possible) I hardly see any fixies around town when I’m in there, even under the bums of couriers. The only two bikes in syd that I have any memory of are a rather tall, plain orange one with bullhorns, and another that had those newish highflange dura-ace hubs both locked up on campus at UNSW.
I love riding fixie, (and I loved it even more today with the wet roads to bust some nice long skids) but my knees and lower back are screaming at me at the moment to ride my geared roadbike more. I stick at it for a little longer though, I think with a bit more stretching and Yoga all should come good!
-Garth
Haha… had to pull that one out of your little hat didn’t you :evil:
Look, I’m telling you, riding with no shirt is actually quite comfortable on summer days… [prepares himself to be banned from this forum forever…]
There are two things I wish I didn’t have to wear while riding a bike in summer, one is a helmet, the other is a shirt.
I would do it more often, but I don’t think the world is ready for my flavour of beauty yet :mrgreen:
It’s a real pity you weren’t there today ndf to witness it, that includes you too snowflake :evil:
Poor damoh had to endure my toplessness all day, sorry mate!
Look, it was such a beautiful day, was else could I do?
Poor poor damoh. Was this post-Apte? I’d hate to hear that we are not welcome there anymore. Where would we have our general meetings then?
Now we’re motorbike experts?
The shop mentioned in the article is DEUS ex machina, not dues. You may think they are overpriced SR400’s and maybe to you they are, but they are not marketed to you the person with no money, they are for someone who doesn’t want there bike that as they say off the rack, they want them customised, now try and find an SR in the country not rare but not easy to come by either, so buy it from DEUS they are jap imports only a few years old and usually with no more than 8000km on the clock, now strip it and put it back together, include a new wiring loom and slight mods to the engine nickel plate the fork stanchion(because you’ve pulled them apart), maybe rechrome a few bits, powder coat the frame add all your new parts, fuel tank exhaust indicators lights bars whatever you want, put it together price up the bike the parts and your time and there you have it your custom SR lupine, simple eh. And cheap! no customising is not cheap, anyone who has built a bike up from scratch knows that it would have been cheaper to buy another equivilent cheaper.
Now why am I defending DEUS because I built the bikes listed on the DEUS website and yes you may think they are over priced “fixies”, but they are not for your broke ass, the bikes I build are australian made, custom paint jobs care of Peter Flemming (australian) with velocity wheels (australian) chainrings from John Bosevski at cycle underground (australian) and until I can get more aussie made parts I’ll keep trying to make a complete aussie built bike. What do you sell out of your shop? or are just a parts distributor for china? (and yes even those hillbricks are made in china).
Don’t go round kicking cats Lupine(doubt you’d be able to reach from that high horse anyway), start kicking these “fuckers” that come in your shop then they will come and buy bikes off me because of your fucked and elitest attitude!
Why the fuck are you in the bike industry for? Do you just work there because they sponsor you?
I want two things, people to ride bikes fixies or not. And I want money to go back into the bike industry, so we can keep our jobs. Who the fuck cares if they are wankers or not they want to start riding a bike, good? What we don’t need is stupid fucking attitudes like yours that will turn anyone away from riding a bike and possibly owning a bike probably since they were a child, and there introduction to buying a bike is with you, poor cunts.
But I guess you never asked questions you knew it all from the begining!
Oh, SNAP.
hmm, do i answer point by point, or as whole cloth?
probably neither, but some of both. this is going to take a while tho.
and i don’t think i’ll be able to articulate properly what i want to say. people who know me will get the general gist tho. everyone else will might have to struggle a bit if they can be bothered.
yes, yes i guess i am a bit of a motorbike expert. or i was at least. i’ve been out of the scene for a good few years now.
15 years doing custom work of my own, and many years for a brisbane shop doing mostly unit and pre-unit trumpy’s and nortons. i was probably better described as knowledgeable rather than expert tho.
and indeed my SR did cost me a bit to build. more after i modified the oil cooler pathways, but even before that it cost me a bit.
total cost including dyno work and my hours (approximated because it was an evening project) came in at around $12k inc initial purchase. now that was a top down engine rebuild with NOS parts, inc a new head so i could do the porting i wanted, but you get the idea. maybe $14k including a bit of fussing. that’s adjusted to todays prices, this was a few years ago. so add in the cost of shop over heads, etc, $20K? ok.
only thing was i did it and i owned it.
why does this make a difference?
because it was an ongoing project that i loved, and wanted for it’s own sake, not as a purchase because i had the money, nor yet as an item from the must have catalogue. just the bike i remember racing, and loved owning.
my problem isn’t with DEUS as a customizer, the reputation is excellent and the two examples i have seen in the flesh have been beyond outstanding, my concern is with attitude that comes with the purchase.
anyone with the money can buy a fully customized one of a kind flat tracker for themselves with no fuss, or effort.
they don’t need to know anything about it, or have any interest beyond the initial thought. granted, this has always been the case if you were willing to look, but in the custom scene as in the cycling world you can now do it even easier than ever.
it cheapens the work, and it cheapens the person who does it.
and, yes , i know the next response.
it puts money into the pocket of the person doing the work and allows them to eat. it puts money back into the locall scene. how does that become a bad thing?
it becomes a bad thing slowly and without people really noticing.
the work done by truly talented professionals is almost never recognized by the mainstream consumer. it is noticed, if at all, as a shiney example of “X”. X being bicycle, car, bike, computer whatever.
joe in the street sees the shiney example and goes looking for one if he/she is so inclined. if they are serious, and committed, they will seek out someone to make them their object of desire. if several people are serious, it will be taken up by mainstream manufacturers and a cheapo copy will be produced.
joe in the street will now buy the cheapo copy rather than look for better original.
and there goes the local product again because the copy is cheaper and looks the same.
now we still haven’t actually reached the problem yet because it’s a two point one.
point one, and i ask you to bare with me because i’m going to flip between moto and fixie a few times here.
you should no more suggest that a returning cyclist buy a high end fixed than you would sell a person who hasn’t ridden a moto for 20 years an R1.
fixed wheel is inherently difficult to begin with, and takes time to master. it can be dangerous if you don’t know what you are doing, just as any moto can be.
when a person comes into the shop and says that they haven’t ridden a bike in years but they want to buy a fixed, i will absolutely try and discourage them.
if a new moto rider wants to buy a blade, of course i’d try and get them to purchase something more suitable instead.
there has been a steady increase in people who have had no real thought of riding fixed, suddenly deciding to take it up. as i said in an earlier post, it’s up to about 2 a month and on the rise. that’s just those who speak to me.
it’s usually younger people, in mid professional positions, but i’ve had 45 year old lawyer and 18 year old skate bum on a regular basis as well.
i’ll calmly and politely explain what a fixie is (most of them don’t actually know what they want to buy, they were just told by the collective to get one. NOW!), i’ll explain the disadvantages (quite a few) and the advantages (not many), and i’ll go through options with them.
what do you want to do with it?
do you buy off the shelf?
get one built?
restore a vintage frame?
australian parts? japanese? italian?
should you be looking at a fixed at all, or would you be better off buying an internally geared nexus hubbed whatever?
9 times out of 10, they shouldn’t be going anywhere near a fixed.
probably 99 out of a 100 if i’m honest.
do i talk them out of it? if i can, yes.
why? because it’s not suitable for them, they won’t enjoy it, and it will actually turn them away from cycling, not bring them to it.
am i grouchy and bad tempered by the time i get here? of course i am! it’s because hack shops care more about selling a bike than actually selling a person something they can use.
local shops here that will sell a bike 2 sizes too big just to sell it. or a size too small.
shops that will tell a customer that anything less than ultegra is useless for commuting (actual case, last week) so they can sell $3k of carbon bike to a fat slow commuter doing 15 k’s a day.
and now fixies.
i wouldn’t sell my last project SR to the first buyer that looked at because they had no idea what they were getting into. i sent them to go see a guy i know at a local shop who would really help them out
unfortunately that puts me in the minority.
butu then you have the customers. if a person with 22 years experience in the field says that perhaps the shiney new fad bike might not be suitable for you, and certainly not in that size, would you listen? if you knew very little about the thing you were going in to buy, so little that you didn’t actually know what it was, would you expect the guy in the store to help you through it? or would you just automatically expect that they were trying to sell what they had because they didn’t want to be bothered getting something in for you?
why do we get customers that when we say “hmm, this frame is little too big for you, but we can have the right size in 24 hours” start arguing that no, it’ll be fine, they’ll take that one.
people should be worried when the sales guy says that it’s an ok fit and will do fine.
but we as a society have become so used to just wanting it now! RIGHT NOW! no waiting, no pause.
and so they end up with something that is unsuitable, won’t make them happy beyond the initial “i gots the shiney” moment, and will eventually cause them to blame the guy who sold it. because it can’t have been them? right?
so, in a rambling, incoherent way, that’s the first point. kind of.
the second is a little easier to explain (thank god) and comes down to pure avarice and greed on my part.
well not really, but you’ll see what i mean.
i build bikes. some cheap, some nice, some for work, some for pleasure, some with new parts, some with old parts.
mostly i build around older steel frames, with good quality second hand or NOS components.
i build for myself primarily, and very occasionally for sale. when i finish a bike i tend to ride it for a while, then i might sell it, or recycle it into a new project, or i’ll break it and start again.
as with any reasonably small niche market field, finding parts can be difficult, if not impossible sometimes.
so yes, i am concerned about the the ridiculous rise in prices in parts and especially frames. when ordinary steel road frame conversions are going for $500 that makes it hard for me to do what i love.
as someone here said “you can stick the words fixed wheel on a turd and flog it on ebay for a stupid amount of US dollars”. it makes me angry to realize that most of these bikes will end up in a garage somewhere gathering dust, or tossed out.
but, people say, we shouldn’t worry because when the bubble bursts and all the hipsters and fad riders flog their stuff cheap we’ll be flooded with quality parts for next to nothing.
unfortunately it rarely works like that. what we will be flooded with are cheap, bulk produced junkers that we, the people who love what we do, won’t want or need.
it’s the lament of the custom builder from ages past. noah probably complained about all the copycat boat builders taking his timber.
it just makes me a little sad to see these wonderful bikes getting little to no use, then being dumped in a garage for the rest of eternity.
hmm, this has taken a little longer than i expected, and hasn’t really said a lot of what i wanted to say.
i guess i should wrap it up.
to abodigital, while i can’t i’m sorry for giving offense, i hope this explains a little where i’m coming from. yes i suppose my horse is high, but it did come with a step ladder and instructions for those who want to climb above the crowd, and maybe not just wallow in the masses.
to those who have actually met me, whether in the shop, on the road, or through this forum, i do hope you realise that here is one of the few places i can freely give vent to how i feel about some of the people i meet in a days work, whether customers, pedestrians, receptionists, whoever. so far i’ve never had a complaint about how i treat people face to face, but if you have one, come talk to me, either here or in person. i do tend to think of myself as open minded (as i’m sure all small minded people do). make a case, i’ll listen. i might argue about your point, but i will listen.
and finally, as much as i love riding fixed for all the tangible and intangible reasons i suppose everyone does, i recognize that it is inherently more difficult, less efficient, and now less cost effective than many if not most other forms of cycling. i will continue to try and draw people to all types of cycling, including fixed, but not at the cost of my own (admittedly) very limited credibility and reputation. if it ain’t right for you, i’ll try and tell you.
thanks
Speaking of Kronan’s, featured in the latest Design Quarterly
The thing I don’t understand about the Kronan is that they are described as being ‘function’ and ‘minimal’, yet to my eyes the Kronan is literally dripping with superfluous accessories crap. Or is it just me.
They’re damn ugly too. :evil:
Holy shit Lupine.
I haven’t read you post yet, but I think it’ll take me the rest of the week to get through it.
Could you please summarise for me!
Peope often buy what they desire not what they need and they don’t listen to good advice. In the process, they stuff up the community for the really dedicated cylists. That’s probably the gist of it.
I agree with you fully Lupine. As always, you know your shit tell it like it is.
Des
yes and no.
it’s not even what they desire, it’s all too often simply what they have been told to get to be cool or in.
all to often it is actually detrimental to them to purchase the item that is trendy.
in the case of fixed gear bicycles, a good single spped would fulfil all the obligations they require from their bike except the “i’m cool cause i gots me a fixie” part.
sigh.
it’s very difficult for me to explain how i feel about this sort of thing because i get a little lost in the layers.
fixies are good.
more people rolling on fixies is good.
but only if it’s for the right reasons.
but who am i to define the right reasons for people?
and it then comes back to a thing i’ve said a few times if it’s what you want to do, it’s right for you.
but then you have people doing stuff that’s completely wrong for them just because they’ve been told to do it by some fucking magazine on hip style.
and some bike shops don’t help by promoting that “you need this to be cool” attitude.
anyway. that’s not a summary at all, just a continuation…
Jebus Lupine, this city’s awash in f*ckin BMW X5s, not to mention $10K pushies, so I reckon you’ve lost the war on people doing dumb things to be cool. A few people axeing themselves on a fixie won’t change the world for worse. It took me a week to get comfortable on one and I was sweating just from the mental exertion. During that week, I sure didn’t need anyone to tell me a fixie was different to ride - the bike and my body told me that! Now I can spin out to 50 kmh up from 40 and my geared bike feels like a Heath Robinson machine. If your customers want to give it a go, heck, wish them luck and a long life and sell them the bike with a happy heart. They can’t be all that stupid, if they’ve got the sort of money your shop charges to drop on a toy bike. You might surprise yourself and get some converts.
without actually reading the Fin rev article, but a skim through the threads and Lupines thoughts I thought I might add some of my own, certainly no expert at all and open to criticism.
Essentially I think we as general population are being groomed to be clueless consumers, we are presented with products Fads and ideas and we buy now think later, Something Lupine mentioned as well, we want something and want it NOW but different to previous generations WE can actually have it now as well! I think this generally depreciates the value that the consumer has of the actual product as it is so attainable as we become more comfortable with massive levels of debt.
As well we have a lot more disposable cash and as the price of many entry level products across almost everthing becomes so cheap we throw away and buy another creating a range of problems both with the environment and attitiudes.
Bikes of all types fit the bill here.
I have recently moved to Karratha WA and the local council have adds for hard rubbish collection as to remove loose debris as can be a hazard in cyclone season… the amount of KMART $125.,78 bikes with 12,378 gears, disc brakes and dual susp prob 3 months old sitting on the nature strip with a buckled wheel waiting to be taken to land fill is ridiculous, clearly the purchaser of this product isnt prepared to pay a skilled person the fix the wheel as it might cost half the price of the bike so they just go and buy another 1, I am sure this isnt isolated to Karratha but it just highlights hgow attainable these things are and the culture that exists.
I remember my first BMX was eventually repainted, new pads stickers and was passed on to JP then onto someone else, it was of some value for some time.
One thing I am starting to get more and more pissed of with is the line that some bike shops (generally larger franchise ones with kids working) say they dont sell any 2nd hand stuff because they dont know the bikes history and the parts are generally worn out and of no use… BULLSH1T!!!
As Lupine mentioned they are more interested in turning over numbers, even if they do sell something that is ill suited and cause negative experience causing the bike to end up in the shed for the rest of its life.
I have a few old bike mags from the 70’s and 80’s most of the adds are for seperate components, frames, frame repairs god forbid, resprays, wheel builds, rarely could you find a complete bike good to go! Probably because you wanted to to create your own bike to suit your own needs, not what was fashionable, you might be prepared to pay for for 1 important part while buying a more basic but more visible part with little or no performance difference.
This has become so expensive to do, it is much cheaper to buy straight off the shelf than build you own bike to meet your own needs.
At the end of the day, I think people who generally frequent this site give life to and appreciate things that work and have a purpose, I think we generally buy individual items for a functional reason.
This has probably drifted off into another topic, but I just think it is valuable to re think , reduce, re use and recycle which appears to be what this forum is about, oh yeah nad have a whole lotta fun doing it!
Finnaly for those that have bothered to get this far, I have a saying, " the more you know, the more you know you dont know"
Cheers
SP