"Fiksi taipuu vaikka polkupyöräpooloon"

Just some media coverage (in finnish ) of our hobby again.
With tnts AKA Mr. KRNKY keeping the FGFS fiya burnin' !

'Are There Really No Hipsters in China?'

"Irony-resisting Chinese bicyclists have skipped the fixed-gear trend that has swept the rest of the world.
By J. David Goodman


BEIJING—A multicolored messenger bag slung over one shoulder and short-brimmed hat cocked to the side, Nie Zheng parked his brakeless bike in the corner of a trendy cafe in the Beijing Central Business District before settling into a molded plastic chair to chat about his particular obsession. "It's been a dream since I was a kid to get a bicycle like this," the 40-year-old fashion photographer told me. "But no one sold them here." It took nearly nine months, he said, to get a track bike he wanted sent from England in 2007.

Such devotion is something of a rarity among the fashion-conscious in China, where bicycles are simply not mainstream cool. In fact, this bike-saturated nation has—so far—managed to skip entirely what is arguably the biggest global bicycle fad in a generation: the fixed-gear."

...

Irony also plays a key role, as riders deliberately opt for an expensive, often custom-made ride, with hand-built components, that is less functional than what's available at Wal-Mart. 

It may be this last aspect that's preventing the bikes from catching on in China. Indeed, the anemic fixie scene seems to offer an object lesson in the difficulty of marketing fashion irony here.

"There is a saying in Chinese: 'Laugh at the poor, not the prostitutes,'" Juanjuan Wu, a professor at the University of Minnesota and author of Chinese Fashion From Mao to Now, told me. "Hipster fashion only really works by communicating your irony—in other words, someone needs to 'get it.' Hipster irony in dress would most likely be misinterpreted in Chinese society as simple poverty or weirdness."

Continue reading the full article at Slate after the jump...

'FIX explained'

I'm loving this. Taken from a Finnish major tabloid-newspaper. Explanation of a FIX bicycle, all good, even mentions track bikes and skidding as the stopping method in there and all on-the-point but then it says: "Fix can reach speeds up to 40-50 km/h while the maximum speed of normal bicycle is approximately 25-30 km/h."

Whoa! ;)

Thanks to TSMO for posting the clip.

"Le 'Fixie' Hits The Steets"

 
French quality newspaper Le Monde published yesterday an article on fixed gear bikes and the scene in Paris. 

It's a nice and informative piece of writing which I liked a lot because this is probably the first an article on the fg phenomena on a major newspaper ever which does NOT make a huge deal out of the fact that the 'fixie bikes' don't often have brakes. It's mentioned for sure, but in a very casual way. Fixed gear bikes are track bikes and track bikes don't have brakes, simple as that. I like that. 

Thanks for Yann G for posting the article (click the pic to make it bigger...).