Our friend Rachel had these ones at home. Trackcycling is way bigger in the UK than in Germany.
So as you see Sir Chris Hoy recommends Bran Flakes for breakfast:)
This is just a random conversion fixed-gear we saw in Brighton. I don´t know why we photographed this one cause in London were so many other really awesome bikes to see.
We saw this pretty sick drivetrain in Brighton. A rack and pinion drive on a bike. As you can see there is no chain! Never seen that before i wonder how it rides.
As you may know London offers several fixed-gear shops and we took the chance to visit them.
First of all we went to Brick Lane Bikes located in the East End of London (as you can imagine in the Brick Lane...). In retrospect i think that would be my bikeshop of choice. They had an awesome huge stock of parts, frames and bikes and quite many used parts and bikes in their courtyard. All the prices where really fair and the employees were nice and not pushy - which unfortunately isn´t very likely in such shops.
Next we went to the 14 bike co. that wasnt really far away from the BLB shop. I have to say that shop is simply awesome. You can almost feel the enthusiasm for bikes of the guys working their. Everything in there is just clean, stylish and elegant - the most fancy bikeshop i´ve ever been into. They put all the parts they are selling in little furbished show cases so the chains, chainrings, sprockets and the other stuff looks like jewelry in a expensive jeweler. Although we couldnt afford to buy something they gave us free stickers. Great!
The last shop we visited was the maybe best known of them, the Tokyo Fixed Gear . I don´t really know what to say about this shop. The shop itself was pretty nice. Upstairs was some bike apparel and (what is kinda cool) you are able to take your own fixed-gear inside where are several bicycle stands. Downstairs were parts, frames and a little workshop. The assortment and prices were ok but i have to say the guys working there were just dickheads. I had the feeling every step i take in this shop was watched, every word we spoke was kinda judged with views of the employees. Maybe we were not cool, hip, known enough or worth in their eyes for being treated better. Up to today i don´t know what their problem was... I´ll never buy there something again.
So what is to say about London? I´ve never been to London before and afterwards i have to admit that it´s simply one of the coolest cities i´ve been to so far. I never, i really never saw that much fixed-gear bikes in a city before. Its highly possible that London is the unofficial "fixed-gear capitol" of europe. I HAVE to go there again - with my bike.
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