
The Fixie Bike Index - omarish
http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/16013457968/the-fixie-bike-index
======
sequoia
Wait a second-
[https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3387895/Screen%20shot%202012-01-17%...](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3387895/Screen%20shot%202012-01-17%20at%209.38.13%20AM.png)

There are 100 fixies per capita in Manhattan? So each person in Manhattan owns
100 fixed gear bicycles? No wonder rent is so expensive; I imagine storing 100
bicycles isn't cheap!!

~~~
midas
Sorry if that's not clear, it's all indexed to 100. Those are all relative
values and not absolute values.

~~~
sequoia
It's not "unclear" it's "inaccurate." :p "Per capita" means something
specific, not just "you know, whatever." Thanks for the response tho! I could
take the article more seriously if the charts made sense; consider fixing
them? :)

~~~
mseebach
"Index" also means something specific.

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hack_edu
Fixies have always been a fun subject of armchair economics. As late as '06,
it was very rare that you'd come across track bike-specific parts. This was
especially so with frames. Finding an old track hub in a used parts bin was
practically winning the jackpot on a slot machine. Prices and competition for
used parts was high, but mostly stable and flat. Ebay and track-specific
forums were where you'd buy your parts; local bike shops hardly didn't even
know the word 'fixie', let alone stock track parts (with it especially hard to
find reasonably priced, non-Olympic competition level components).

The trend was growing quick, and folks started finding fancier and fancier
vintage bikes as collectors realized that the market for the obscure bikes lit
up like wildfire. At the same time manufacturers (big and small, global and
local) began sourcing extremely cheap (>$300) frames from Taiwan and
saturating the market, bringing prices down ~50%.

Then the Crash happend in '08. The market for fixies, mostly a semi-practical
luxury item/status symbol similar to an iPhone at the time, fell
significantly. They're still a big deal and quite popular, but not nearly as
much so as a few years ago. Prices, especially the used market fallen
drastically. A cheap, Average condition frame that went for $300 in early '08
could barely get $100 today in San Francisco.

Luckily for those who bought into the vintage/collector track bike market
(like most), prices are relatively stable...

~~~
jordan0day
I'm not sure what you consider "rare" or how you sourced your parts, but I
feel like maybe your timetable is a little off.

I can't speak to the economics side, but I feel fixed-gear mania was in full-
swing well before 2006. I worked in a bike shop in a small Midwestern city (so
presumably the trend had already been on the rise on the coasts well before
this) from 2003 to 2005, and even then fixed-gear discussion was not
infrequent. I'm pretty sure you could order flip-flop hubs from QBP at the
time, although I can't recall if fixed-specific hubs were available, since I
don't recall anyone ever actually wanting one and not a flip-flop. My point is
that major suppliers were already providing new parts specifically for that
market.

Although, yeah, I don't recall any non-boutique manufacturers making fixed or
flip-flop models while I was in the business.

Anyway, maybe you specifically meant the secondhand or market, but I just
wanted to point out that your LBS probably had plenty of fixed-gear parts
available before '06.

~~~
hack_edu
You are correct about the parts being available in QBP and such. I was working
in an LBS at the time. I suppose the timetable of 'boom' I'm talking about
falls in when the generic sealed-bearing Velocity hubs started to show up on
the scene. Before that you needed to go the Surly or Suzue Basic route if you
wanted a cheap-ish hub. Prices were notably higher in price though.

I know that I was getting into things right around '03, and my friends were
all about it by about then too. But it wasn't nearly as regular an occurance
to see a fixie rider on the street (in SF/Oakland) until '06 or '07.

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schiffern
>For those unfamiliar, a fixed gear bike requires riding in a single gear and
the only way to stop the bike is to pedal backwards to help skid the bike to a
halt.

Lack-of-brakes do not a fixed gear make.

All bicycles should have at least two ways to stop. Fixed gear bicycles are no
exception.

~~~
tlear
I guess you can skid and you can use your foot to break the back wheel. If you
see messenger races those guys go downhill at 50kmh with pedals spinning free
then use foot to break the back wheel, complete insanity if you ask me.

~~~
georgieporgie
It's simply astounding, the number of people who do not understand that most
of your braking potential comes from the front wheel.

~~~
msellout
But it's harder to put your foot on the front wheel at high speed and not
fall.

------
DavidAdams
To answer the question about Salt Lake City's bike market, I live in Park
City, and mountain bike with a bunch of SLC guys, and I know the bike market
there pretty well. It's about demographics. SLC doesn't have many more urban
commuter/transportation bikers than any similar-sized city, and in fact I
think that the per-capita rate of casual cyclists is actually below the
national average. But it does have a lot of serious cyclists who spend major
money on high end mountain and road bikes. So that skews the average.

------
jbooth
Missing detail: A fixie is actually borderline-practical in Manhattan because
there aren't many hills. If you live in Brooklyn, you've gotta ride over some
really steep bridges to get to Manhattan. So the hipsters ride single-speeds,
or retro-bikes, which are actually more hipster than a fixie these days.

Get with it, grandpa!

~~~
app
Single-speed are also lighter if you have a walk up apartment.

~~~
sukuriant
That's not entirely accurate. There are plenty of carbon fiber or titanium
bikes that completely change your understanding of what is light with regard
to a bike.

[edit: missed a word]

~~~
silentbicycle
Expensive bikes usually get a heavier locks, so it tends to even out.

~~~
jrockway
My single speed bike is 24 pounds. A racing bike is 15 pounds. A U-lock is not
10 pounds.

Anyway, I can't think of any time I've ever brought a lock along while on my
racing bike. It's for riding, not for errands.

------
jerrya
Orange County is a county, with a 3,000,000 population twice that of Manhattan
(a borough.)

Orange, CA is a city, with a population of 150,000

Why is Orange County listed in the chart when all other entrants seem to be
cities (or boroughs).

~~~
lambdasquirrel
You go to LA and you will see. :)

~~~
jerrya
I grew up in LA, and have lived behind the Orange Curtain, and that's my
point. The area is way too large in geographic area and demographics for me to
believe the folks there are buying fixies in ways that exceed the mean.

It's far easier for me to wonder if they mixed up the data.

Almost by definition, a very large place with a very large population should
have regressed to the mean, not far exceed it.

~~~
Ogre
I live in San Clemente (a city of ~60,000 in Orange County) now, and was born
in Pasadena. I was starting to get annoyed at OC being treated as one "city"
here too, then I realized I should probably just be happy that a distinction
between LA and OC was made at all. All too often, "LA" is used to mean
everything south of Santa Barbara and north of Oceanside.

~~~
xp84
That's us Northern Californians doing that to you ;)

> OC

Also, don't call it that.

------
far33d
This is a more thorough version of what a popular bike blog "bikesnobnyc" used
to call the "pistadex", where he used the average price of a bianchi pista to
determine the popularity of the fixie trend.

~~~
danielhfrank
Don't forget the Chris King Headset Composite Index:
[http://bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com/2008/10/no-getting-around-
it...](http://bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com/2008/10/no-getting-around-it-cycling-
and.html)

------
thadwoodman
The Brooklyn vs. Manhattan result shouldn't be surprising considering that
Brooklyn is really REALLY big, and much poorer than Manhattan. I would bet
that if you were to whittle down Brooklyn to Williamsburg, or if you were to
control for income, the results would look significantly different.

------
nvarsj
How is Chicago not in the index at all! Majority of bikes I see in the city
are fixed gear, including my own. The flat land makes it ideal.

~~~
jberryman
I was going to say. I think Chicago is the first place I remember being struck
by the number of bike messengers, and sort of distinct hipster style of the
bikers.

------
weenis
Fixies in Portland are OVER! It's all about the abomination mutant cycles.

~~~
bch
Put a bird on them. Then pickle them.

~~~
msellout
Dude, double-decker bikes are OVER. Check out my dodekacycle!

<http://vimeo.com/30004597> Google for more instances.

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cafard
Perhaps if one could calculate altitude variance it would be helpful. It take
a pretty fanatical cyclist to take a fixie up some of the routes from Boulder.

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alexleavitt
Having moved to Los Angeles only 7 months ago, I was really surprised to see
fixies as a dominant mode of transport, especially within the Latino community
(colored, deep-V rims are a huge trend). And even though LA tops the chart in
terms of # bikes for sale, that doesn't mean it's a high percentage of people
biking (very unfortunate). LA's trying to add more bike lanes, but it's a
pretty dismal situation here.

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erickhill
Wow - according to this, Spokane (#30) has more hipsters per capita than
Seattle (#33). That's a bit difficult to process. Seattle is literally built
around biking. I guess the actual bikes are more practical in nature and less
hipsterish? As in, an actual means of transportation rather than personal
branding. Still pretty hard to believe. UW alone should tip the scales.

~~~
atourgates
Nail on the head. Also - hills. Seattle has lots and lots of them, and fixies
are particularly impractical for hills.

------
bbwharris
Damn Synchronicity <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity>

I am seriously considering getting a fixie or single speed and this article
pops up on Hacker News.

I remember about 5 years ago getting a fixie was more of an enthusiast cyclist
endeavor than a hipster one. I don't care, it's better for training and feels
less inhibited.

------
conipto
Isn't there a bit of a huge problem using the number for sale as the metric
here? Couldn't more supply equate to less demand?

~~~
pak
I'm with you on secondhand sales being a poor correlate for actual ownership.
It's completely reasonable that more for-sale listings indicate cities or
places where people _don't want_ their fixie anymore. Additionally,
Priceonomics only looks at sales taking place on eBay, Craigslist, etc. So,
not only are the numbers skewed toward areas that have more active internet
users, the buyer may not even be in the same region.

This is why data shows fixies selling so often in Manhattan: it's all the
hipsters that moved _to_ Manhattan, who found less use for their bike, and
then sold it back to somebody else in Brooklyn.

------
xtyhflp
You failed to note that the relative hilliness of two cities could have a huge
effect on the reliability of using the "fixie index" to measure relative
hipsterness. Even if they were equally hipsterish, it would stand to reason
that LA would have more fixies than SF, since the bike is far more practical
in that city.

~~~
eklitzke
On the other hand, Los Angeles is ten times bigger in terms of total area, and
has less than half the population density of San Francisco. That makes it more
practical to have a fixie in SF, where you're generally traveling shorter
distances.

------
thalecress
"There are more bikes offered for sale in Brooklyn than Manhattan, but only
8.3% of them are fixies versus 9.5% in Manhattan."

This is key. Fixies as fraction of for-sale bike population <> prevalence of
fixies on streets.

From a purely anecdotal angle (supported by BikeSnobNyc's recurring
photographs of DIY fenders), there's a lot of cheap mountain bikes in
Brooklyn. In contrast, a Manhattanite who commutes by chauffeur or all-Dura-
Ace, not-for-sale-on-Craigslist Colnago isn't part of the sample.

------
aerligtalt
One critique of your "Top 50 Cities in America for Biking." You seem to
actually be evaluating churn in the bicycle resale market, not riding or
ridability. Of course college towns have more bikes for sale - partly due to
their practical nature for getting around, and partly due to students buying
bikes when they arrive and selling them when they leave.

------
ilaksh
When I was a kid, I thought all bikes had only one gear. Not because I was
"hip" or "hipster" (absolutely the opposite) but because my parents were
cheap. I had been riding my used "fixie" bike (from the thrift store) for a
year before I found out about bikes with gears, and I actually never learned
how to use different gears when riding.

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w-ll
How about State Code on the Fixie Index.
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aik-d7nXHh6SdGt...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aik-d7nXHh6SdGtWRjNLVFJPTkw2Y2g0bmpiaWY3TkE#gid=1)

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redsparrow
I'm surprised that Allentown, PA has the fewest fixies for sale per capita as
there is a velodrome there.

<http://www.thevelodrome.com/contact-us/directions/>

~~~
bch
Also note that fixie != track bike. Fixies are often some converted something-
or-other (one of mine is a road frame, the other an MTB frame), where a true
track bike has a track-frame, which has a specific geometry and BB height
(BB== bottom bracket, where the axle between your cranks goes), and may not
even be drilled for accepting brakes, and certainly not fenders, etc. I don't
know the people using the velodrome, nor the rules for it's use, but it may
_require_ track bikes. Investigating, at least one velodrome[1] says road
bikes _may_ be used, but not during track bike sessions. Point is, the subtle
differences you do (not) observe between the bikes on the street and the bikes
in the velodrome may be a cultural world apart from each other.

[1] Oregon Bicycle Racing Association <http://www.obra.org/track/information/>

~~~
tadfisher
Correct. Track bikes have a super-steep geometry (sometimes a 90 degree seat
tube!) and tall gearing, both of which are very impractical in traffic.

------
spike918
is the metric of bicycles for sale a good indicator of anything but people
giving up? That says to me a large population are bailing rather than riding.
Are hipsters known for giving up when the pedaling gets tough?

------
davidw
Cool to see my home state of Oregon up there on all those indexes. A bit
surprising to see Bend though. To tell the truth, I think it's too cold up
there to be that pleasant a place to ride around much.

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ciferkey
I love how my home state (RI) is considered as a whole...

------
surferoso
this is flawed, because they are making the assumption that only hipsters use
fixies in SOCal. The surfer community has tons of beach cruisers that are
fixed gear, and I dare you to go to a parking lot or a lineup and call a bunch
of surfers 'hipsters'....

~~~
jleader
My grasp of the details of bike terminology is rusty, but don't cruisers
usually have a single-speed freewheeling coaster-brake hub, rather than a
fixed hub? So when you stop pedaling on a coaster, the wheels keep turning
freely, and when you try to back-pedal, it applies a brake inside the hub? As
opposed to a fixie, where the pedals turn whenever the wheel turns.

~~~
anykey
You are correct.

------
derrida
According to the first graph, there are 100 fixies per capita in Manhattan.

------
brighton36
Does anyone know where the data came from? How it was collected?

------
herdrick
Amazing to me how highly Spokane ranks on all of these.

------
pitdesi
This analysis is interesting but deeply flawed, as you're just using one
variable. I don't think anyone would refer to OC as the most hipster place in
America.

Weather is a huge missing component. Another is hilliness/other bike-
friendliness (bike lanes, etc). The top 12 cities in the analysis are warm-
weather cities (mostly California/Hawaii).

For example, no-one is buying bikes in Chicago at the moment, because it's
freaking cold. But there are likely many more fixed-gear bikes here than
almost anywhere else (flat, bike-friendly city with lots of hipsters).
Portland is capital of hipsterdom - well atleast until Pittsburgh takes over
([http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/arts-
post/post/portlandi...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/arts-
post/post/portlandia-your-15-minutes-are-up-long-live-
pittsburgh/2012/01/03/gIQAMUlSYP_blog.html)) but it's cold there right now so
people aren't selling their bikes.

~~~
hack_edu
Chicago has been a main hub of the fixie/track scene for years, way before the
big fixie boom.

~~~
izak30
Are you saying, that in Chicago, you were riding Fixies before they were cool?

~~~
msellout
I think there's something about the "before they were cool" statement that
Higgs-Boson-like goes back in time and prevents it from happening.

