Fixed-gear bicycles have become a staple in our urban landscapes, and thanks to the likes of retailers such as Wal-Mart, they’ve reached the farthest posts of our nation.
A fixie is a bicycle in its purest, simplest form -- no gears and sometimes no brakes. Often considered the ultimate marriage between man and machine, a sub-twenty-pound piece of machinery is the only thing separating your body from the hard concrete.
These bikes were originally designed for the track, raced around velodromes in the Olympics. Its use changed dramatically when messengers in urban hubs such as New York City and San Francisco found the fixed-gear bicycle to be their ultimate mode of transportation -- maneuvering in and out of gridlocked traffic, defying the laws of the road in an attempt to deliver packages and letters.
