Really Seattle? I thought you were cooler than this. 28th? That’s it?
A recent analysis of bikes for sale by the Priceonomics blog ranks cities based on the number of fixed gear bikes for sale online in each locale. Seattle falls behind such hip bastions as Gainsville, Raleigh and Spokane, clocking in at 28th.
So next time you hear someone complaining about Seattle’s “fixie hipsters,” you can say, “Well, at least we’re not as bad as Boise!”
Priceonomics also crunched the unscientific-yet-data-driven data to show that Seattle is 11th in number of bikes for sale and 27th in bikes for sale per capita.
And if you thought that bikes here are more expensive than elsewhere, you might be right. Seattle falls 9th in median price per bike for sale.
From Pricenomics:
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.
Comments
8 responses to “Seattle ranks a pitifully unhip 28th in ‘Fixie Index’”
Well the cost of a bicycle is in part due to the number of parts on it. Fixies should be less expensive than geared bicycles because they have less stuff on them. So the hipster rating and the cost/bicycle rating should track pretty close. As well as poorer places have less money to spend on bicycles, so less high tech carbon bicycles are trading hands on Craig’s list. The alternative is that we have more stolen high end bicycles and they show up on Craig’s list..ie our riders are more trusting about locks etc.
I am surprised that San Fran was listed as high as it was. I have not ridden a fixed gear bike since I was a kid, and I definitely use all of my gears as I ride the hills of Seattle. (I might not use ALL of the gears, but I certainly go from the extreme high to extreme low gears.)
If they’re using cities’ political boundaries, it’s notable that SF, for example, is very compact and fairly urban, while Seattle and Portland have lots of “streetcar suburb” (and even some “car suburb”) within the city limits. Portland and Seattle are places where biking is really popular among practical-minded commuters, casual cyclists, suburbanites (not the fixie crowd).
Also, San Jose still has a velodrome, and there are a couple in Southern California. That probably helps bump up the fixie index there.
I could ride single-speed in this region (I found that out the fun way when my derailers went crazy last week, fortunately sticking me in a reasonable middling gear). I’m not sure I could handle fixie on the descents.
Yep, as a suburban cyclist, my ride home is 34 miles. No way am I going to do that on a fixie.
I too had a instantaneous conversion from a 20 speed to a 2 speed when my rear cable broke. I wired it so that I had the two middle to low gears and I can ride my hills in a 34×16 and down on a 48×16 but I go up hills as if I was on a stair stepper and I spin out going down, so no fixed gears for me either.
That’s why I ride single speed. Of course, I’m in the flatlands of Queens. When I move to Seattle this summer I may change my mind.
It’s all about performance…
Pshhht. Fixed gears are so 2005.