Back in June, I wrote a kind of grumpy post about how most of the fixed gear tricks that get filmed time and again are essentially copies of tricks people were doing over 100 years ago. I suggested maybe it was time to take it up a notch.
Well, I think we’ve gone all the way to eleven with this video I saw over at Car Free Days of two German girls doing synchronized fixed gear tricks/gymanstics/ballet. Now, I’m impressed.
on Aug 21st, 2009 at 8:51 am
It’s called “artistic cycling”, and has been around for about as long as that edison clip. The bikes they use are pretty specialized, and they’d be hard pressed to ride to wherever they were doing their thing on the same vehicle, due to the near 1-1 gear ratio and super wacky geometry: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/61/Stunt-bicycle-Paris.JPG
Very interesting cycling discipline, though I’ll admit I’m still impressed by a fixie kid jumping a stair gap or getting decent air on a track bike.
on Aug 21st, 2009 at 9:29 am
As an aside you’ve actually posted a clip of artistic cycling before. The link in this entry shows the bike dance scene from Quicksilver, which uses a bike very similarly set up to the one the ladies ride. While not as visually attractive as the above clip, still interesting to see artistic cycling in a US movie from the 80s.
on Aug 21st, 2009 at 9:59 am
Thanks for the background info, Jason. I think what makes this so cool is that its not just one person, but two people doing the tricks in unison. That took some serious time and practice. I don’t mean to be so grumpy about regular fixie tricks which are no doubt a lot of fun to do. I just really appreciate that work that went into something like this.
on Aug 24th, 2009 at 8:45 am
[...] Friday, I posted a video of two German teenage girls performing artistic cycling, a version of synchronized fixed gear trick riding set to music. I noticed at the end of the video [...]