[^ dondi ^ / track bikes: a hip hop history]

Two stories of kids from the Caribbean in New York in the ‘70s. A few guys in the Bronx start bugging out at block parties when the DJ loops the breaks on funk records; meanwhile, others, working as messengers all over the city, take to riding their track bikes in the streets. Two street cultures are born.

Track bikes have a fixed gear: when the back wheel turns so do the cranks, so riders must constantly pedal or risk being thrown from the bike. In the beginning, all bikes were like this – the first Tours de France were ridden fixed – and there is a long history of riding fixed-gear bikes (with brakes) on British roads, but it was the NY messengers who kicked off the current urban phenomenon.

‘Fast’ Eddie Williams, messenger since 83, remembers the Jamaicans, Guyanans and Trinidadians working the New York streets when he started. “They were the first,” he says. “I was young, like 22, and these guys paved the way. Track bikes were normal for them.” Many had raced for money in cut-throat island races, or had ridden fixed-gear bikes because they were the simplest thing to assemble from a jumble of spare parts – and because they impressed the girls. They took their bikes with them when they crossed the water, and started making money with them couriering packages round the city.

Slowly the habit spread among couriers: the bikes are mechanically simple, capable of riding thousands of miles through potholes, grime and rain without failing. They were also attractive because (unlike today) they weren’t a target for thieves, and, you suspect, because riding fixed is a challenge, a game to break the monotony of long days on the road. Track bikes have evolved for the velodrome, where their lack of gears and brakes is an advantage. Of course, on a velodrome there are no hills, so to transplant the track bike out of its natural habitat to places where ups must be taken with straining sinews and gritted teeth, and downs with wildly flailing legs, seems an exercise in perversity. But riding fixed in a city – spinning out on a wave of green lights down Fifth Avenue, fighting gravity in San Francisco, or negotiating the tight streets of London – is a real experience. Asceticism in the name of aesthetics, beautiful madness.

The minimal frame of the track bike, a blank canvas, seems naturally to attract designers and artists: Dondi rode one, as did Futura while a messenger, the latter designing a limited edition frame with Colnago in 2007. Yet it’s Ben Wilson, a British industrial designer, who articulates the track bike’s connection to the cross-pollinating forces of New York street culture best. His studio, the Wilson Brothers, produced an Air Force One bike for Nike, to commemorate 25 years of the iconic trainer: “Originally, AF1s were worn by basketball players, who played matches throughout New York’s five boroughs,” he explains. “They hung out with hip-hop artists, b-boys and graffiti writers, so the trainers became legendary because of the social circles they were moving in. We thought the analogy with cycle messengers was apt,” he says, conjuring up the spirit of the kids crossing the city, dropping in to monied Manhattan from Harlem, Queens, the Bronx and Brooklyn to hustle some dollars on their bikes, spreading their style along the way.

These days, the culture has taken hold in cities worldwide: San Francisco, Taipei, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Paris; new generations have arrived, with different perspectives, and are playing polo or performing tricks influenced by BMX or skateboarding. It may now be too commercialised for some of the old school, but spending time with the track stars, tricksters, polo players, hill bombers, framebuilders and artists around the world is to watch passion in motion and a vibrant culture speed in a hundred different directions at once.

My contribution to next month’s Shook Magazine.