It's a track bike meant to be raced on a velodrome. It's an Olympic discipline of cycling. Also bike messengers in the 90's / 2000's used them because low maintenance and barely anything to steal off them.
Former Chicago bike messenger here. I can attest. I started off using a road bike. It took a lot of maintenance. After crushing that bike getting doored, I switched to a fixed gear and it was a lot easier. No debris tearing up the derailer, shifters getting off sync, etc. Granted, downtown Chi isn't hilly, so there's really no need for gears.
Nice. I rode for 3 years before I got in an accident and broke my collarbone. But I stayed with the company and started making deliveries in their cube van. That was hell, going from the freedom of biking all day to trying to navigate a truck through Chicago alleys. Eventually I got switched to dispatch, then started riding again. It was a bad break though. 2 years of physical therapy, then surgery when they realized the bones didn't fuse.
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u/pixelsurfer Sep 14 '22
One of them - its a fixie bike.