The Resistance of Fun: Fixed-Gear Cycling in Urban Public Spaces

Even though it seems that riding a fixed-gear bike is to take the line of least resistance in search for the optimal flow in between cars, or with respect to traffic arrangements in general, in doing so, fixed-gear cyclists simultaneously reject social conventions of interaction with and within the urban space. Hence, the question emerges: how far can resistance, practical critique, or even social change be detected in fixed-gear cycling and related practices? A motto like you own a car, not the road indicates that some fixed-gear cyclists insist on a specific right to the city; a claim that particularly criticizes the relationship between drivers and cyclists and also touches upon the further issue of personal mobility centered on the term urban cycling. Two practical examples will be discussed to show that such claims are inherently critical meanings of the idealizedstill bodily enactedfixed-gear rider and to show the ambivalence and limits of such a critique's potential.