In the cycling blogosphere, fixed gear is its own vibrant sub-culture that has really taken to the technology to share in the passion. It’s not really my scene, but I do visit quite a few of these sites including our own ATXFixed which was recently absorbed into the statewide site Third Coast Fixed.

One thing that any self respecting fixed gear blog must have is video of riders doing all kinds of tricks on their fixed gear bikes. This is pretty cool at first, but once you’ve watched about three or four clips you realize they are all doing the same tricks for the most part. I rarely bother to watch these clips anymore because other than the location, color of the bike, and clothing of the rider they are ensentially the same. (Notice I left out ethnicity, age, and gender in the list of differences. That’s because pretty much without exception the fixie trixters are white guys in the 20-35 year old range. I’m not sure why but there it is.)

Here’s a prototypical fixed gear trick video with requisite loud punk music:

Sometimes, the clips get a little more interesting like this one from Arak Avakian showing the evolution of a trick.

ATX Fixed 2 from Arak Avakian on Vimeo.

Well, I have to give a big shout out of thanks to BikeHugger for discovering this classic 1899 film clip from Tom Edison of a cyclist doing tricks on his fixed gear bike. 

Guess what? They are all the same tricks today’s fixters are doing. I don’t know but maybe it’s time to take it up a level or stop video taping the same tricks they did in the when the horse-less carriage was new. Or at least do tricks that are 23 years old instead of 110 years old: