Brooks, brakeless hipsters, and the tobacco industry
Brooks has been aggressively marketing their $500.00 and $1,000.00 bike messenger bags lately and it is getting on my nerves. I’m sure they’re great bags and everything but the appropriation of the messenger culture to do the selling of such pricey accessories is, uh, gross.
They have a full-page ad out now in Momentum that shows “Ted,” an “event manager in London” astride his gorgeous vintage Holdsworth track bike, which he apparently uses to transport himself through the streets of London whilst carrying his important event-management documents safely inside his $500.00 messenger bag. Brakeless.
I’ve had a huge falling out with the whole brakeless thing. I am just plain not on board with it any more. Here it comes, I’m going to say it: I think it’s stupid to ride a bike in city traffic without brakes, and I don’t care how well you can skid the thing in your tennies and toe clips. It’s still stupid and I don’t think Brooks ought to be showing people how cool they can be by riding that way in pricey Brooks gear. If you can afford a $500.00 messenger bag, you can afford a really cool vintage front brake, too.
It’s what got the tobacco industry in so much trouble — advertising a suicidally stupid activity as cool. Is it stupider to ride a bike without brakes or to smoke Camels all day long? At least in one case you can plead a chemical dependency.
–Erik Ryberg
January 5th, 2010 at 6:00 pm
I’m with you on this one. I was riding behind a brakeless bike the other day and I was riding pretty close. We came up to a stop sign and he had to stop because there were cars in the intersection and he went into a full out skid. I almost fell off by bike laughing. I think the whole fixed gear thing is cool, but at least get a front brake so you can slow your bike down safely.
January 6th, 2010 at 11:42 am
Five hundred bucks for a messenger bag? Good grief, you can buy a pretty decent bike for that money. Or, if you’re trying to look nice, how about a nice suit like those cycling lawyers of the Netherlands?
January 6th, 2010 at 12:10 pm
What’s that… an 18 pound
bike and he’s hauling around
15 pounds of leather!?!??
Not that I have an answer…
but I’ve been bothered more
lately with the image projected
by the ‘fringe’ riders. It’s the
nature of the bike and we’ve all
approached the line from time to
time. But this culture is so
affected by image, like the one
above hopes to have, that it seems
harder to ignore the hole that the
general cycling community can find
itself in as a result.
January 6th, 2010 at 1:04 pm
It rains in London like the sun shines in Tucson…unlikely Ted rides that bike very often in the real world of London even if he really is a messenger.
More about and from Ted (Teddy):
http://www.lfgss.com/thread31524.html
perhaps the bloke was simply trying to make living and perhaps Brooks was making a joke.
It all gets worse, though over at “London Cycle Chic”
http://londoncyclechic.blogspot.com/search/label/Cycle%20fashion
January 6th, 2010 at 5:08 pm
Is that what they’re calling drug dealers these days? “event managers?”.
January 8th, 2010 at 12:06 pm
C’mon now. There is basically no difference between a coaster brake equipped bike and a brakeless fixed gear with a low gear in the ability to stop. True, a higher gear and an inexperienced rider is looking for trouble, but let’s not start putting everyone into this category. That would be like hating skaters because of the frat boys in sandals with longboards around campus.
Even with a high gear, good riders can stop very well with no brakes.
January 8th, 2010 at 5:25 pm
First of all.. http://www.attackcartoons.com/news/data/upimages/camel.gif
It’s a tossup for me, I’m hesitant to hate on anything that encourages folks who are stupid enough to be a danger to others as well as themselves to quietly Darwin out alone while they’re young and open up some breathing room for the rest of us.
January 8th, 2010 at 9:10 pm
Hi Clarence,
I disagree. In order to skid a fixie you need to take your weight off the rear wheel, diminishing it’s usefulness as a stopping mechanism. A coaster brake lets you keep weight on the wheel and slow it down without putting it into a skid. Skidding of course is way less efficient than slowing (hence anti-lock brakes on cars).
Also, it’s rare a bike with only a coaster brake is ridden as aggressively and in traffic the way fixies are very commonly used. And I doubt even a skilled fixie rider can stop his/her bike as quickly with a skid than a coaster-brake bike could be stopped.
Finally, there are only two reasons, neither of them good, to ride a fixed-gear bike without brakes: (1) vanity, (2) the bike is a track bike and is not drilled for brakes. If your bike isn’t drilled for brakes (I’m talkin’ to you NJ), ride it in the venue it was designed to be oh-so-gracefully appreciated: the velodrome. Track bikes are gorgeous, beautifully engineered machines. Let’s keep them and your skull from getting crumpled at the corner of Congress and Stone.
EBR
January 9th, 2010 at 5:51 pm
Sorry EBR, but I think you’re wrong about the need to take the weight off your back wheel… with a low enough gear, seated skids are the preferred method of stopping.
TRUE, skidding a wheel is less efficient, but when done correctly it works very well.
I watched Chris Cuneely (former Ordinary mechanic) come to an unreal dead stop after mashing down the aviation path on his huge chainring and high gearing. Some people just have skills. Those who don’t need a front brake.
January 10th, 2010 at 6:38 pm
Evening all. Londoner here, I can honestly say, I know Ted personally. That is his bike, and yes, he rides it in London. He also does in fact use that bag, and is an events manager. Loads of us do it. London is very different to your city if you are in the USA. slower traffic and so on. It is a personal decision.
January 11th, 2010 at 7:40 am
Hey, even I have a messenger bag – it was free schwag I got from the Microsoft booth at a conference I attended five or six years ago, I use it mostly as an airplane carryon. (Anyone who bikes in Tucson knows why it’s a bad idea to carry the load against your back through at least 10 months out of the year.) I’d be hard-pressed to figure out how spending $500 on one makes it work better.
I also tried the fixie thing (yeah – with brakes) as a training aid back in the 80s. It may or may not have helped smooth out my cadence, but it was just too annoying to have to slow way down or modify my line through the turns to avoid scraping pedals. Seems like a rather bothersome affectation to use for serious transportation, but if you’re into useless affectation, hey – go for it! And don’t forget to remove your brakes before playing in traffic – that way everyone will know how “hardcore” you are.
January 11th, 2010 at 8:03 am
And Clarence, the act of deceleration unweights the back wheel whether you want it to or not – that’s simple physics. Especially on a vehicle where the CG height nearly equals the wheelbase and your braking wheel contact patch is less than one square inch. That’s the cruiser difference – longer wheelbase, lower more rearward CG, and fat low pressure tires that offer more than five times the contact patch area, combined with the fact that cruisers are rarely ridden faster than 10mph; and yeah, cruiser brakes are *still* crappy, though far superior to skidding that skinny little fixie tire. All the “mad skilz” in the world do not nullify the laws of physics.
January 11th, 2010 at 9:26 am
FWIW:
“A bicycle shall be equipped with a brake that enables the operator to make the braked wheels skid on dry, level, clean pavement”
http://azbikelaw.org/excerpts.html#817
I’ve never ridden a fixie and don’t know much about them. I’m guessing that (“brakeless”) fixie riders believe they are meeting the legal equipment requirements(?) What do the police think about this? just wondering.
January 11th, 2010 at 9:31 am
Hi Ed,
The only place I am aware of where this went to court is Portland (big surprise) where the judge rejected the argument that the drivetrain itself was a “brake” because it could be used to slow or stop the wheel. It’s an interesting question, what constitutes a “brake” and whether fixie riders are complying with the law or not. In Portland, anyway, they probably aren’t.
EBR
January 11th, 2010 at 5:59 pm
“He also does in fact use that bag, and is an events manager. Loads of us do it.”
Loads of you are events managers? That’s a lot of events!
January 20th, 2010 at 7:21 pm
One last point here. All day long I work with and for people, many of them very experienced cyclists, who have had limbs broken, teeth lost, skulls crushed, and worse. Some weren’t paying attention, some were unlucky, and others never had a chance.
I make my living doing this, but believe me, I experience nothing but dread when I get a call from an injured cyclist, usually but not always followed by relief that the injuries weren’t worse.
Please ride carefully.
–EBR