Bare bones biking

>> Fixed-gear enthusiasts Skids in the Hall celebrate life without brakes

SCENES FROM A RECENT STREET TRACK: A night at the races...

by LUCAS WISENTHAL

Dan Pelissier claims his penchant for fixed-gear bicycles stems from his taste in home decor. “I just wanted to get a bike and I was just looking at the different options,” says Pelissier. “And somebody actually looked at my bedroom, where I don’t have anything—I just have a desk and a bed—and they’re like, ‘Maybe you’d like these bikes. You know, they’re very minimal and whatnot.’”

SKIDSTERS (L TO R): Dave Greenfield, Dayne Waterlow and Dan Pelissier

Pelissier’s friend wasn’t kidding: There is nothing superfluous about a fixed-gear bike. Because its sprocket is secured to its hub, it is unable to coast. The bike must be peddled to move. This leaves little use for brakes, so most fixed-gear enthusiasts eschew them completely. To stop, one must slow gradually or simply skid.

When Pelissier purchased his first fixed-gear a year and a half ago, he was oblivious to any sort of fixed scene. “I just started riding and meeting people,” he says. Those people included Dayne Waterlow, a former bike messenger, and Dave Greenfield, a fellow fixed-gear rider of two years. The three 20-somethings this year formed Skids in the Hall and began holding regular fixed events.

Different reading required

Greenfield and Waterlow had long been familiar with what devotees call fixies. While Greenfield was compelled by their simplicity—no brakes or gears means minimal maintenance—Waterlow made the switch from free-gears almost four years ago when his courier friends convinced him of the practicality of riding a stripped-down bike built for race tracks. “There’s nothing really to steal and nothing really to go wrong,” says Waterlow.

But Waterlow, Greenfield and Pelissier all admit that riding bikes that neither coast nor brake was daunting at first. “I think a close comparison would be climbing up stairs with a 200-pound backpack on your back—that’s what you feel in your legs the first couple of times,” says Waterlow.

The Skids also agree that fixed-gear riding requires an acute awareness of one’s surroundings that is foreign to other forms of biking. A fixed bike’s peddles are constantly moving, making the sharp, abrupt turns necessary to dodge cars, potholes and other obstacles almost impossible. “You should have at least a good couple of years experience playing in traffic before you go and buy yourself a fixed-gear,” says Greenfield, “because you won’t know how to read cars, you won’t know how to react to certain situations.”

But the threat of serious injury is no deterrent to those who wish to take up the sport. Waterlow says that at Le Yéti, the store at St-Laurent and Fairmount where he works, one out of 10 bikes sold is a fixed-gear. The bikes start at about $550, but because they are entirely customizable, prices can reach far into the thousands.

For as little as $100, though, many stores will turn a free-gear bike into a fixed-gear. “Most people take an old, steel road frame and buy a rear wheel that has a fixed cog on it, and basically convert it—just change their chain, and usually their chain ring in the front, and you can use that as a fixed-gear,” says Greenfield.

Waterlow and Pelissier, however, are not bothered by novices buying costly bikes. They expect the fixed-gears to fall into their own hands when people realize how difficult they are to ride. “It just means that we’ll be able to buy cheap bikes next year on Craigslist or on the Internet,” says Pelissier.

Brawls on wheels

But Waterlow welcomes all riders to Street Track, Skids in the Hall’s bi-weekly event in St-Henri. Unlike alley cat races, in which couriers race through cities, Street Track takes place in a parking lot and features a race as well as several events tailored to fixed-gear bikes. A track stand entails standing still on the bike, skid contests and sprints are what one would imagine, and a foot down involves numerous cyclists, fixed and free, riding in a circle, attempting to push each other over. The last person to touch the ground wins. This event, says Pelissier, is “an all-out brawl.”

The Street Track events have so far drawn larger crowds than Skids in the Hall anticipated. “The first race, we were just kind of joking about it,” says Greenfield. “We were imagining, like, six or eight people are gonna show up, and over 30 people must have shown up.”

Greenfield would like to see more diverse groups of riders at future events. “There’s quite a few fixed-gear girls,” he says. “They need to come out and race.”

But Street Track was conceived to foster a scene, not crown a champion, says Greenfield. “We kind of started all this just to drink root beer and hang out.”

The next Street Track event takes place on June 30, back alley of 284 Rose-de-Lima at 9 p.m. See www.fixedmtl.com for more info.