http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,24548787-5006784,00.html

Brendan Shanahan | October 25, 2008

Fix yourself up with a new life cycle

LOOK mum, no hands. Nor brakes. In the strange world of cycling snobbery, the latest trend is called a "fixie" -- and it might just be the BMX for grown-ups.

Unlike the standard bicycle, a fixie, short for fixed gear or fixed wheel, has no gears and the sprocket is locked to the hub, so the rider has to pedal constantly.

And some fixie purists ride their bikes without brakes, controlling the speed with leg power only.

Normally a training or velodrome bike, the fixie is popular with bicycle couriers and has soared in popularity in the US and Europe. Now they look like taking off here.

Piero Pignatti Morano is the bicycle development manager at Sydney motorcycle and bicycle shop Deus Ex Machina. "In the US and UK, the fixie thing has blown up ridiculously," he said.

"I'm definitely getting a lot more interest. Cycling is booming, and fixies have an appeal to people who haven't cycled in a long time and are now getting back into it. Fixies have the same appeal as a BMX."

Mr Pignatti Morano builds fixies at the Deus workshops, and is one of an elite group of brakeless riders.

"Traditionally a track bike is ridden without brakes," he said. "I'd only ride without a brake on a short ride, about town usually, when you'd never get over 30km/h."

So what advantage could there be in riding a bike with no brakes -- other than a need to die quickly?

Deus general manager Ben Monroe, a former mountain-biking world champion and fixie fanatic, said: "You ride with a different mindset without brakes. It's gentleman's cycling. We're interested in the cultural and aesthetic side of fixies. There's something simple and naked about them."

The law is perhaps less impressed by the "gentlemanly" qualities of the fixie. In all states it is illegal to ride a bike without at least one effective brake, and although Mr Monroe and Mr Pignatti Morano are keen to emphasise that all their bikes meet legal requirements, they admit that stopping people modifying them is impossible.

Brake-free riding may be of limited appeal, but the burgeoning interest in fixies seems to be hurting one of the bike's more universal charms: the ease of building one from old parts.

Julian Somosi, a former bicycle courier and founder of the Sydney Bicycle Messenger Association, said: "A fixie frame you could buy on eBay a few years ago for 10 bucks is now $150. Building steel-frame fixies is making a huge comeback."