Fixie—Snide fixed-geared bike jokes are the new snide
vegan jokes, but these swift bikes actually take some skill to ride.
Lacking a freewheel, fixies can’t coast and are powered entirely by
buff bikers. The trick to spotting a fixie? Try turning its pedals
backward—a fixie’s won’t budge.
Trackstanding—The favored sport of fixie riders, this
is the art of stopping at red lights without putting a foot down. Don’t
even try to compete.
MAX and streetcar tracks—A bicyclist death trap!
Everyone eats it on these ONCE—and forevermore remembers to only
cross the tracks at an angle.
$242—The fine for running a red light, a stop sign, or
making an illegal turn off the transit mall.
Bike polo—Like regular polo—but without the
cardigans and horses—with homemade mallets and Hamm’s. Bike polo
happens every Tuesday at Portland State and Sundays at Alberta
Park.
Tall bike—A handcrafted cycle made from welding several
bikes into one super-tall bike frame. Often ridden by punk clowns and
people who like punk clowns, these unique steeds also spawned a new
sport: tall-bike jousting.
Ghost Bikes—White bikes locked as memorials at the
scenes of fatal bike wrecks.
Pedalpalooza—The biggest free bike festival in America,
right here in your own frontyard every June. Hosted by the bike-fun
group Shift (shift2bikes.org).
Front light, rear reflector—The law in Portland,
Oregon.
Helmet—Not the law in Portland, Oregon, if you’re over
16. But still the nation’s cheapest health insurance plan.
Bicycle Transportation Alliance—Love ’em or hate ’em,
the BTA is Oregon’s biggest bike advocacy group and they’re working to
keep you safe and legal.
World Naked Bike Ride—Five thousand nudies on bikes
ride through the streets on their way to a massive free dance party
during Pedalpalooza. (Confidential to prudes: It’s more fun than it
sounds.)
Zoobomb!—The infamous weekly tradition of bombing down
the steep hill from the zoo on freak bikes recently got more legit when
the city built the quasi-legal cyclists their own statue on W Burnside
& 13th. Stop by at 9:30 pm on Sundays to see what the fuss is
about.
smirk, it doesn’t surprise me that you’ve got a glaring factual inacurracy in the very first item in your “list”. The pedals on a fixed-gear bicycle will turns backwards; what you’re describing is a coaster brake. But then… you never do research or fact check your articles. Did this make it into the print version of your “newspaper”.
Graham,
Thanks for pointing out that my sentence could be read two ways. You’re right, obviously fixed gears can pedal backwards. What I meant was that WHILE LOCKED UP, the pedals on a fixed gear won’t turn backwards more than a smidge.
My fixie (we didn’t call them that cuz there were no other kind of bikes then) would coast. It had a Bendix brake, which was a much better back brake than a New Departure.