How is Chicago not in the index at all! Majority of bikes I see in the city are fixed gear, including my own. The flat land makes it ideal.
The Fixie Bike Index
21–30 of 89 posts
Re: The Fixie Bike Index
#22Missing detail: A fixie is actually borderline-practical in Manhattan because there aren't many hills. If you live in Brooklyn, you've gotta ride over some really steep bridges to get to Manhattan. So the hipsters ride single-speeds, or retro-bikes, which are actually more hipster than a fixie these days. Get with it, grandpa!
Single-speed are also lighter if you have a walk up apartment.
Re: The Fixie Bike Index
#23I love how my home state (RI) is considered as a whole...
Re: The Fixie Bike Index
#24Orange County is a county, with a 3,000,000 population twice that of Manhattan (a borough.) Orange, CA is a city, with a population of 150,000 Why is Orange County listed in the chart when all other entrants seem to be cities (or boroughs).
You go to LA and you will see. :)
I grew up in LA, and have lived behind the Orange Curtain, and that's my point. The area is way too large in geographic area and demographics for me to believe the folks there are buying fixies in ways that exceed the mean.
It's far easier for me to wonder if they mixed up the data.
Almost by definition, a very large place with a very large population should have regressed to the mean, not far exceed it.
Re: The Fixie Bike Index
#25Wait a second- https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3387895/Screen%20shot%202012-01-17%... There are 100 fixies per capita in Manhattan? So each person in Manhattan owns 100 fixed gear bicycles? No wonder rent is so expensive; I imagine storing 100 bicycles isn't cheap!!
None of this data is actually anything to do with owning bikes.
Re: The Fixie Bike Index
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please keep the current scaling of the charts, but label it with the actual per-capita values instead of 0 - 100. (I agree with sequoia's comment.)
We're just looking at a sample of the data so the actual per capital figures aren't meaningful. Would have loved to have showed that, but instead we just normalized the data to 100.
100 what???
Re: The Fixie Bike Index
#27I'm surprised that Allentown, PA has the fewest fixies for sale per capita as there is a velodrome there.
Re: The Fixie Bike Index
#28Isn't there a bit of a huge problem using the number for sale as the metric here? Couldn't more supply equate to less demand?
Re: The Fixie Bike Index
#29You failed to note that the relative hilliness of two cities could have a huge effect on the reliability of using the "fixie index" to measure relative hipsterness. Even if they were equally hipsterish, it would stand to reason that LA would have more fixies than SF, since the bike is far more practical in that city.
Re: The Fixie Bike Index
#30this is flawed, because they are making the assumption that only hipsters use fixies in SOCal. The surfer community has tons of beach cruisers that are fixed gear, and I dare you to go to a parking lot or a lineup and call a bunch of surfers 'hipsters'....