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It gets easy to navigate your bike through the parallel universe of tourists in Amsterdam once you know your way around town. Anticipating traffic lights and taxi cabs, I hop from place to place efficiently without disturbing the flowing waves of traffic and sightseers. Sometimes I even feel like I don’t have to think about it, like I have developed a sixth sense that takes control while my mind wanders to places of higher serenity. But there is always these moments when that mental serenity gets penetrated by a panicky, ringing sound.
My mind gets janked back inside my body and then pulls it to a screeching halt. I feel a gush of wind pass my face as I’m almost hit by a winding red haze. Tourists on bikes. It’s the only thing my sixth sense isn’t able of coping with; these amateurs on rental bikes. There’s no logic to their actions whatsoever, and they have absolutely no idea what they’re doing or why the hell they’re on a bike anyway. They’re the rabid wild dogs of the city: unpredictable and perilous.
This sixth sense I am talking about is essential to be able to move through traffic quickly, and has therefore been perfected over years by the likes of bike messengers and couriers. This subculture has its roots in cities like New York, but has also been on the rise in Europe for some time now. The bikes they ride: fixies.
Fixed-gear bikes, or ‘fixies’, are bikes without a freewheel, meaning they are unable to coast and the pedals are always moving while the bike is in motion. This means that the bikes are extremely simple and undecorated, and require very little maintenance, but it also means that these bikes have no brakes at all. To be able to ride a fixie, you need to be in a constant state of concentration, following the flow of the traffic, anticipating every little change up to hundreds of meters ahead.
Fixies are starting to pop up all over Amsterdam. This rise in popularity is much to the annoyance of the police, who have now banned brakeless bikes in public traffic and are happily handing out fines to what are probably the best bike riders in Amsterdam. If you want to try a fixie yourself, you can now legally do so at Sur Place, an exhibition on urban bike culture. With an indoor track, a bike workshop, a collection of rare vintage track bikes, a dynamometer racing competition, an exhibition of crash portraits and much more, Sur Place is really worth checking out. I’ll be in the workshop building my own fixie, preparing to outmanoeuvre our beloved coppers as they try to avoid crashing into a Chinese day-tripper on a rental bike, so see you there!
Sur Place – Urban Bike Culture (link)
May 8th to August 22nd, 2010
Location: Mediamatic BANK
Opening hours: Mon-Fri 13.00-19.00 / Sat-Sun 13.00-18.00
(Photos were shamelessly stolen from Loyal K.N.G., Jennifer Reed and Fixed Gear Republic)
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