In this our modern age where Gen X and Gen Y fight over aesthetic and street credibility (hint: Gen Y wins, but only because they have youth on their side), fixed gear bicycles have typically signified the presence of a hipster during this war. What is a fixed gear bike, you ask? Well, a "fixe" will only allow a cyclist to ride using a single gear and the only way to brake the bike is to pedal backwards to skid the bike to a stop. They're also more pleasing to the eye than, say, a Schwinn ten-speed—is that still a thing?—which could be the main reason why so many young chic freaks enjoy riding the dangerous yet unfairly maligned bike.

Thus, fixie equal hipster. Right? Well, that might no longer be the case.

Enter Priceonomics. They recently measured what kinds of bikes people use in which cities. In an effort to build a price guide for their stock, they measured "what kind of used bikes people are trying to sell and the quantity sold in any city." Using 1.3 million bicycle listings, the came up with the markets for the largest fixie population. And that location would be Orange County, California.

Priceonomics reports:

Before we ran the numbers, we were pretty sure the answer would be Portland. San Franciscans (which we are) take a particular delight in being weird, but not being quite as weird as the people from Portland. This seemed like a great opportunity to point out “hey we like these impractical but cool bikes in San Francisco, but we haven’t taken it too far like those misguided folks out in Portland.”

Unfortunately the data did not comply with our desire to tease the people of Portland. In fact, we were shocked to learn that Southern California is the epicenter of the fixie community and that San Francisco is the fourth most popular area for fixed gear bikes. By the fixie metric, it appears that Portland is about as hipster as khaki pants and a blue button down.

Southern California also tends to refer to these bikes as “fixies” while the rest of the country tends to use the less silly term “fixed gear bike” instead. Are Orange County and Manhattan actually bastions of hipsterdom? If not, perhaps it’s time to reevaluate whether fixie-affinity should be part of the hipster stereotype.

Heh, nice shot at Portland.

Allentown, Pennsylvania proved the least hipster place in America, according to their nationwide fixie data. Also, now whenever we see a fixie whizz past us on Valencia Street, we will forever think of and then hum the (excellent) theme song to Laguna Beach.

But fret not, San Francisco, for all is not lost. Priceonomics' data concluded that San Francisco boasts the largest overall bicycling market in the U.S. followed by Los Angeles, Chicago, Orange County, and misguided Portland.

Recently spotted on BART was this track bike with an ersatz disc rear wheel. Mismatched wheels have long been a staple of fixie style, particularly when one of the wheels is an expensive piece of racing hardware (extra points for juxtaposing the expensive and the cheap).

Yet this track star thumbs his nose at the prevailing convention, choosing not a $500 racing disc wheel, but electing instead to cover a regular wheel with paper -- and not stopping there, to cover the paper with graffiti-style art. And thus the fixie enters its ironic phase.

In other words, the two sides of San Francisco fixie culture -- a surly DIY aesthetic and the fetishism of conspicuous consumption -- have now bit each other in the ass: homage and mockery can no longer be distinguished.

Or can they? As Fredric Jameson put it in one of the longest questions ever written in English:

The enumeration of what follows, then, at once becomes empirical, chaotic, and heterogeneous: Andy Warhol and pop art, but also photorealism, and beyond it, the “new expressionism”; the moment, in music, of John Cage, but also the synthesis of classical and “popular” styles found in composers like Phil Glass and Terry Riley, and also punk and new wave rock (the Beatles and the Stones now standing as the high-modernist moment of that more recent and rapidly evolving tradition); in film, Godard, post-Godard, and experimental cinema and video, but also a whole new type of commercial film (about which more below); Burroughs, Pynchon, or Ishmael Reed, on the one hand, and the French nouveau roman and its succession, on the other, along with alarming new kinds of literary criticism based on some new aesthetic of textuality or écriture... the list might be extended indefinitely; but does it imply any more fundamental change or break than the periodic style and fashion changes determined by an older high-modernist imperative of stylistic innovation?

Photo: Adam Polakoff

P.S. Yes, rajbot, we smell you, ridin' on your scraper bike.

He truly exemplifies the Japanese concept of Jinba-Ittai (人馬一体), the unity, the oneness between rider and horse.

He's not cloistered inside with the Nintendo Wii or the Guitar Hero. No, he's out there in the turning world. His simple message: "Have Fun On Bikes."

And what's wrong with that?

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It’s a classic example of fixie bike lust: the carefully accented color coordination, expensive but mismatched wheels, improbably narrow handlebars, and, of course, lack of any unsightly “extras” such as gears and brakes. But wait...is that a basket we see?

We love – and love to hate – those slim fixie kids. In our fair city -- and, apparently, in every other city and town on the globe (our friend just back from Budapest reports that the place is crawling with them) -- one either a) rides a fixie, b) wants to ride one, or c) hates fixies and their aficionados. Preliminary and informal research (soon to appear in the Journal of Mundane Behavior) indicates that these groups can be mapped with a simple Venn diagram:

About half of those who hate riders also (secretly?) wish they rode; a small portion of those who ride also hate other fixie kids or, in rare cases, themselves. As a San Francisco attorney of our acquaintance remarked to us during a recent Critical Mass, "It’s strange, I often don't like the people who like the same things that I like."

Just passing along the latest news on Roisin Isner, the 17-year-old drummer hit by a firecracker in Dolores Park on July 4.

The 17-year-old boy the SFPD arrested has been released by the juvenile court to home detention, but remains a person of interest in the case. They have videotape footage confirming that he was on the scene, and he admitted to anarchist activity and to throwing firecrackers in the park and in a phone booth earlier, but said he didn't throw anything at people.

Isner, for what it's worth, says she knows the guy they arrested, and he's not the person who threw the firecracker at her, saying "he's an artist, of course he's an anarchist." She also noted that witnesses have said the guy who actually did throw the firecracker at her was a husky 20-something guy (and riding a fixie, for what it's worth).

Isner's right index finger was amputated, and she has more surgeries scheduled on her hand, but she says she should be okay and her middle finger should be able to operate normally and take over her index finger's functions. The proceeds from Monday's Punk Rock Sideshow benefit concert will go to pay for her doctors, because her family doesn't have health insurance. When's Ammiano and Newsom's universal health care coverage go into effect? (Note: kids already get health insurance from the city at certain qualifying income levels -- not sure if that information'll help the Isners, but there it is if you the reader might want to look into it.)

The famed Hayes Street Hill that's so tough to run up when jogging is a piece of cake to go down when cycling. Unless you have no brakes, as here.

Dude has a fixed gear bike, so it's only his leg muscles stopping the rear tire from spinning. This hill is pretty steep - that's why he'd swing out his rear tire alternatively to the left and right in an impressive display of control.

All drifting, no shifting.

Our trucker hats are off to you, fixie guy. We've seen a lot of cyclists in this city, but you, you're special.

Of course, this guy couldn't really commute in such a fashion because even a slight drizzle would render his bike well nigh unstoppable.

And the Wall Street Journal does NOT approve. Surprised?

However, for those about to die (or become seriously injured), we salute you.

Our head is areel with all the options for fun this afternoon! Here's a partial list:

--Are you one of those people who says, when people ask you how old you are, "29 for the fourth time"? Well, if you are, and you're in the Marina today, Outside Magazine is holding a "Stay 30 Forever" event at the Marina Green from 11 a.m to 4 p.m. Free yoga, body fat testing, a speech by a vegan athlete, and folks selling outdoor gear. Birth certificate alterations not included.

--For those of you on the other side of Market, hop on that fixie bike and help celebrate Ritual Roasters' second anniversary by checking out their second store in the Bayview! Inside plant store Flora Grubb Garden's new location on 1634 Jerrold Ave (x Third), there's a happy birthday celebration at 1 p.m. today. Print this flyer out (.pdf) for two cups of coffee for the price of one at the new locations.

--And as we've already told you -- there's a book swap this afternoon, a craft fair, and a party for the John Barleycorn. Saturday afternoons in San Francisco are .

Picture from the SFist Flickr stream of the O.R.R. (Original Ritual Roasters), by exuberance.com. Go out today, take some pictures, and tag 'em SFist too!

We still have no idea what exactly a "fixie" bike is (and at this point, we think we're having a better time imagining what one looks like than just walking out to Ritual Coffee and seeing one for ourselves), but we know they're destroying San Francisco bike culture -- just like Matier and Ross! The boys follow up their sensationalistic "Critical Mass attacks children" article from earlier this week to relate the tale of another dustup from a car driver about last week's Critical Mass bike ride.

SFist reader obviously_human was there and sent along these pictures from the confrontation, one of which is above. (A poster on the SF Junto was there too, and gives this version of events.)