Bike Snob - Anonymous [37]
Naturally, the fixed-gear bicycle soon became an indispensable part of hipster culture, and because hipsters began to rely upon them more and more in order to travel within their rapidly-expanding territories the bicycle in turn became even trendier and more coveted. The fixed-gear bicycle is as vital to the hipster as the horse is to the cowboy, or the tractor is to the farmer, or the boat is to the fisherman. Furthermore, hipsters also express themselves creatively with their fixed-gears through the dubious art of customization, like Harley-Davidson riders or the lowriders of Southern California. Perhaps most importantly, the fixed-gear bicycle has become an integral part of the socialization and mating customs of the hipster. The bicycle itself is now a throat pouch.
Indeed, the bicycle is the hipster’s best friend. In fact, another way to understand the relationship between them is in the context of regular humans and dogs:
Pedigree Is Important
It’s not enough for some people to just have a dog. Their dog also has to have a story. This might mean it’s an exotic breed, or that they bought it from a famous breeder. Or else, if it’s not a designer dog and it came from a shelter, it has to be something “rugged” or “urban,” like a pit bull. The same goes for bikes. Gentrifiers obsess over the provenance of their bicycles. Either it’s a vintage Italian road racing frame, or a genuine Japanese keirin frame, or maybe even an eighties BMX. Otherwise it’s the bicycle equivalent of a pit bull—a fashionably battered beater bike that looks rugged but actually has a $100 headset and $400 hubs.
Their Use Is Often Divorced from Their Original Purpose
While it’s commonplace to see expensive purebred dogs in cities, it’s rare to see these purebred dogs actually engaged in the activities for which they were bred. It may have taken hundreds of years of breeding to genetically engineer a certain dog to retrieve dead birds from bodies of water, yet it will never have the opportunity to fetch anything more than a Frisbee in a city park. Likewise, a hand-built custom track frame in the city will probably never see the velodrome for which it was built.
They’re Also Used as Part of the Human Mating Process
A typical city dog is neutered and doesn’t have much interest in reproducing. However, that’s not true of its owner, who will use the dog as an integral part of the pickup process. (Humans are the only animals that use other animals to facilitate mating. Have you ever seen a monkey use a squirrel to pick up another monkey?) One of the main reasons people walk around with dogs is so they have an excuse to talk to other people with dogs, or so they can attract attention to themselves due to the impressive pedigree of their dog which has been purpose-bred to rescue wayward hikers from icy crevasses yet spends its entire life shuttling between a 700-square-foot apartment and a 350-square-foot dog run. They even make movies about this, like Must Love Dogs, which I’m afraid to admit I saw, though my excuse is that I was on a plane and there was nothing else to do. Well, bicycles too have become rolling pretenses for human interaction. All you have to do is check out online personals like Craigslist’s “Missed Connections”:
help me find a new bike? - m4w - 24 (w.burg, les, wherevs.)
Reply to: [deleted]
Date: 2009-01-06, 9:42PM EST
so, yeah, my bike was stolen yesterday, my girlfriend dumped me last month, and im bored as shit. the whip was a ‘74 orange peugeot fixie and—heartbroken though i may be—im heading out this weekend to try and find a New Better Half in the same vein…want to come along?
drinks are on me as soon as ive got