San Francisco Blog

Meet 'Aristotle'

They sucked the hip out of ironic T-shirts, singer sewing machines, and hamburger phones. Now Urban Outfitters has a new trend-killer in stock: The fixed-gear bicycle.

Fixed-gears are the gazelles of the bicycle world: simple, elegant, and more than a tad dangerous for the inexperienced rider. They're called "fixed-gear" because they have the rear cog attached ("fixed") to the rear wheel of the bicycle, which means the rider has to continuously pedal to keep the bike moving. Some models are even too cool for brakes. But since it's illegal to ride without brakes in most cities -- and stupid in every city -- Urban Outfitters has done their due diligence and included brakes on their model, called the Aristotle (because spending $400 on a send-away fixie is obviously very logical).

Representatives from a couple of local bike shops say $400 isn't an outrageous price for a fixie, although they also say the price is similar ($400 to $650-plus) at a bike shop and you'll probably end up paying a shop anyhow for assembly help and replacement parts. "Steven" of Pedal Revolution says that because fixies have so few parts, those parts see a lot of wear and tear -- i.e. if the parts are cheap and unreliable, it's likely they'll go fast.