From one manufacturer came many, many of which are still around today. Pop culture influenced the sport early on, and with stars like Greg Hill, Bobby Encinas and Stu Thomsen, BMX had become the coolest sport around. Then the pros grew up. Some of the riders who were big into BMX discovered mountain biking or freestyle. For the next two decades, BMX grew in silence compared to its reign over the mid-late 70’s and into the 80’s. Decades of rider progression has influenced the design of the bikes to the point that the BMX of today has changed so much that its ancient cousin, the Stingray has vanished.

The modern day mountain bike grew out of another California subculture, this time of hacked balloon-tire cruisers and the will to ride up and down the local fireroads. Through many iterations the bike and riding transformed, and during the explosion of extreme sports in the 90s, took over cycling culture by and large. Road bikes boomed with Lance, but into this millennia it seems by pattern that we’re due for a “new” bike.

Even with the technological leaps and bounds the cycling industry has made over the past 30 years, the fixed wheel bike is as popular as it has ever been. Road racers and messengers may have been riding fixed wheel, or fixed gear bicycles, for years, but not until the 2000’s has there been such a pronounced presence. Films like MASH accelerated the process, and has fueled the growing fixed gear culture we have today. Track bikes have quickly become the hip thing.

Everyone’s aware that its prominence has grown in recent years and with the sheer number of people riding them came those who experimented with their basic mechanical principal. Thomas Edison shot a well-circulated film in 1899 of a gentleman doing backwards circles, barspins and other tricks on his fixed wheel. In recent years, we’re seeing this again. Over 100 years later, people are still toying with fixed wheel bicycles.

In the late 90’s and even early 2000’s track bikes were relatively inexpensive

continued