What the hell is wrong with people? More specifically, what's wrong with people who want to refurbish vintage bikes and make them into fixies or single speeds?
I'll admit that I am guilty of this. I have committed this hipster sin multiple times, both for my own fixie gain and for the gain of others. Where I stand out from the rest is in my occupation as a bike wrench. The easy of access to a multitude of parts and tools makes super hip conversions a cinch. I can build a rear wheel and setup a single-speed chain ring in 45 minutes. Drunk. In fact, I can still vaguely recall those days I buckled down for a long night surrounded by fruity-colored rims, hubs, and a six pack. It was very easy to setup a handful of rigs the night before a city ride/pub crawl. Fun would be had by all, even if we were some awful clichéd suburbanites turned drunken hipster/hobo amalgamation. But at least we were self-aware. We knew this was a new fad and how quickly it would turn lame. It didn't matter because we did it on the cheap, didn't really care much about our bikes, and were more about drinking than actually riding. That's how I justify my hipster sins.
We see a lot of hipster sins at the shop. Sometimes we're the confessional, where customers come to ask forgiveness for threading both a cog and lockring onto the freewheel side of their free/free "flip-flop" hub. It's at these moments I usual go into fire-and-brimstone mode: "Are you crazy?! You could have DIED! Did you wrench on this yourself? Have you never heard of Sheldon Brown??" Other times we play the role of the Lucifer himself; throwing Zipp track wheels onto chrome-lugged Waterfords. It's these days that I feel my soul burning.
To make up for these sins, I repent by (and get great satisfaction from) telling customers to cease and desist. It starts with an innocent customer walking in to get a crankarm removed. Usually a simple task, but this particular crank is the older cotter-pinned system that was install in the pre-WWII era. It's not going to budge. Sure we could take a saw to this piece of crap, but one look at your vintage Dutch bike's bottom bracket tells me that there's no way in hell you're going find anything remotely close to this antiquated standard. Oh, you brought in another vintage bike from the same era and it has a crank in "good condition"? Well I'm not going to be able to remove that crank either and since the second bike is from a different country, it's wholly incompatible with the first frame's bottom bracket. I'm sorry you had some big ol' plans to strip and paint your cool frame, but looks like you walked in with two hunks of junk and you're leaving with both of them.
Other things I didn't tell you:
- There's probably rust throughout the inside of the frame that threatens its structural soundness. I know. I've broken a fixie because of that.
- You're going to be spending a lot of money on that bike, especially if you plan on running brakes.
- Whatever you do, it won't be reliable. Want reliability? Buy new.
- The internet can be tricky. Sure there's FGG and forums galore, but those are all naively positive perspectives on fixie culture. The internet is also the place where you'll find highly cynical and negative voices on said culture. Your best bet is to do the due diligence before you get your heart broken by your LBS mechanic. Chances are you won't be building up that piece of scrap metal after all. Amen!
Don't Hate Disclaimer:
Fixies are still fun as shit to ride and very easy to maintain. They definitely serve a purpose for simple urban transportation. That's why there are so many of them. This post was geared (pun intended) towards those who have taken a relatively simple task of building a fixed gear and made my life at the shop considerably more of a pain in the ass.
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