oh, MAN!!! no way, I just abandoned a post about that cos i was desperately trying to think what that line was from. And there's me, a massive Sanders head too.

Larry Sanders - sublime.

During my brief foray in to comedy writing EVERY tv producer we met would mention Larry Sanders, it was the gold standard, the one show that everyone was in awe of. No flicking

Will Self wrote an article expressing, in his peculiar way, how fixed wheel bikes were the antithesis of the passive, automated, utterly dehumanising and stultifying culture of the motor vehicle.

Iain Marshall wrote an article in which he pointed out that front brake+fixed wheel = road legal (more or less), and offered some basic, but accurate advice on the perils of running too low or too high a gear.

Both of them wrote article for mass-market papers which probably count a large number of non-cyclists amongst their readers (but yet still try to offer cycling-specific content).

Of course, neither of them captured the whole of it. They couldn't. They didn't have enough word count and weren't involved enough in the actual scene.

Which basically goes to prove: if you want something true to what you believe the scene to be, don't read the mass media. Read something niche written by someone who knows it well.

Accept that the mass media will always be superficial and will often be wrong.

But be grateful that some of those who write for the mass media have gone to an effort to portray the subculture in a sympathetic way, and try to support them in that.

It's not like either of them called for cyclist registration numbers, mandatory back brakes or compulsory helmets. They said how much riding fixed fascinated them, not how it appalled them.

Be reasonable, basically.

i was waiting for the backlash and for once it hasn't been too vitriolic. good!

and the sooner people get over this obsession with "fixie"/"fixed" the better, imho. obsessing over it is a first-class ticket to sounding like an elitist wanker.

That was Rebecca Loos wasn't it?

don't know about the elitist wanker bit - just a ticket to sounding like you've got a bee in your bonnet about something not very important.

saying that Shinscar and Chris Crash are held in some esteem by the Society of Elitist Wankers of Westminster and the Bordering Parishes.

i don't want to appear pedantic but i think you'll find the correct terminology is "jewy".

There's nothing negative in that article.