OldSkoolTrack.com OldSkoolTrack.com


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Don't try this at home.
Intro

This site is dedicated to everyone out there riding their track or fix on the streets. If that includes you, we want to hear about it. If you ride or there's a scene going on where you are, let us know.
Track Bikes on the Street

Track bikes are light, fast, and extremely responsive. They have no brakes, and don't coast. They have only one gear, a direct-drive fixed-gear. They were designed for the enclosed space of the velodrome, where they create an exciting, beautiful, and fairly safe sport.
And now more than ever, people are riding these bikes on the street. More than ever, manufacturers such as Fuji, Bianchi, Gunnar, Cannondale, Surly, and KHS are making affordable track bikes or street-fixes. Who's riding these bikes? In the U.S., many new riders are coming from extreme sports such as BMX, MTB downhill and freeriding, biketrials and aggressive skating. Bicycle road racers, in the off-season, improve their cadence on fixes. Many bike messengers go for the no-hassle low maintenance of bikes with no brakes, no cables, no shifters, and only one gear.
Other riders have been at it a long time. Ten, twenty or thirty years ago, they raced at the velodrome or worked as a messenger. They came to love the elegance, simplicity, the connected feel of riding a track bike on the street. And once they rode track, they never went back.
And then, at least on the East Coast, you've got the Caribbean influence. For over half a century, the everyday ride for kids in the Caribbean would be a "fix" or a "track." Maybe they raced nationally or internationally. And then they brought it to the U.S. The owner of New York City's "Second Avenue Bicycles Plus" tells me that he remembers riding a fix back in Jamaica - in the 1940's!
Enough of these various elements are coming together that there's a small subculture forming. It's got its own fund of knowledge about bikes, street survival moves, bike-handling techniques, riders, frames, components, vendors and shops. Among the wealth of bicycle information in print and online, there's almost nothing written down about track bikes used on the street. Most of this information has been handed down from the Old Skool riders, the ones who've been riding since back in the day and who have kept it alive all this time.
This site, inspired by the Old Skool riders, is for to everyone riding track bikes on the street.
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