The fact that people are getting bikes, even if it’s because “they’re cool”, is a good thing. If they’re not going to ride them, I’ll grab them from a garage sale a few years down the road. People have been buying cars with oversized engines for decades “because they’re cool” and the planet has paid the price dearly in terms of wars, environmental destruction and air quality. If these kids want to prop up the market for bike shops, they can go right ahead.

In any case, cycling has needed to take a more utilitarian and old-school turn for years, anyway. Downhill, dual suspension mountain bikes with 3-inch tires come in two varieties: too expensive and cheap but flat-out useless. Modern racing bikes are nice, but cost truly horrendous amounts of money, and are far beyond what any commuter cyclist needs (carbon frames, 10-speed cassettes, $800 campy shifting systems etc). For far too long, the aesthetic has prized this kind of nonsense and left the rest of the population with department-store mountain bikes and garage-saled granny cruisers. Building a decent fixie is very possible on a few hundred dollars with an old roadie frame (most likely covered in gears that don’t work anyway), is quite practical and very fun to ride. If they weren’t practical for inner-city riding, messengers (like myself) wouldn’t use them. If mine isn’t “cool enough” for the hipsters, that’s fine, I was never cool enough for those wankers in the first place.

Honestly, anything that gets people excited about bikes is ok with me.

Granted, a lot of these rich kids are simply into trends, but I grew up farming, playing on tractors, and making ramps for our skateboards and freestyle bikes. Everyone isn’t so fortunate. I think it’s kinda…*cute* in a way. They’ll fade fast enough, leaving cheap rides for the diehards.