If you ride a singlespeed and no one sees you, is it still cool?
In 1996, I went up to the little town of Yreka near the Oregon border to do a race called the Humbug Hurryup. We pulled into the campground on a Saturday night and as we set up our tents, I couldn't help but notice a group of about twenty or so "racers" whooping it up together off to the side. By all appearances, they didn't seem too concemed with the usual "race prep" that all too often accompanies such an event. Instead, I heard and saw what can only be described as a party and wondered why I was sitting jealously in my tent instead of partaking in the festivities. My only consolation was that come the next morning, I would be well rested and ready for battle. The rest of thern, well...
As I awoke the next moring and moseyed over to the flatbed-trailermounted Honey Huts, I noticed some of the group tooling around on their bikes.Turns out I knew a few of them and as we made the kind of preoccupied small-talk that you make while trying to hold in the previous night's free spaghetti dinner, I spied something that would change my life: they were all riding bikes with only one speed. I saw Rock Lobsters, Ventanas, converted Konas and Bridgestones, and all types of rigged-together machines. Some were beat up wrecks, while others were every bit the up-to-date race rigs of the period-save for the lack of gears. After the shock and awe wore off, the next thought I had was, «How the hell can you possibly ride one up a hill, let alone race one, and do it all while appearing to be hung over?» The answer to that question was answered many times over that day as most of the group of one-speeds kicked my ass all over the Klamath National Forest.
I can say honestly that Fve been blessed to know and become friends with many of those folks I first saw partying all those years ago at the Humbug. They are truly a unique group and they deserve a lot of credit for sparking the modern singlespeed movement. I say "movement" not in the heavy way that people fought for civil rights or equal pay, but as an effort by many to achieve something. That "many" being about 25 to 50 people and that "something" being an antidote to the all too serious nature of bicycle racing in general.
So when did this all start? And by whom? The best recollection by those involved goes back to '91 or'92 when Mike Ferrentino and Eric Richter were racing singles at places like the Humbug and Revenge of the Siskiyous. Out of frustration with broken drivetrains and curiousness about a Rock Lobster with a 24" rear wheel that Paul Sadoff had built himself in 1988, they had transformed their bikes. Eric has fond, if not slightly distorted, memories of that first race on Paul's bike.
«So I asked Paul if I could try his bike, and went to the Humbug. One minute I was at the crest of some big ol'hill, 300 or so miles from home and rolling a 40-foot wide fire road with a single gear in 100+ degree heat. A few hours later while high on mushrooms in a pretty park full of toothless hedonists, 1 got a check for $500 and ended up talking about UFOs with a kindly man in coveralls while the grooviest Neil Young covers were playing in the background.»
Ferrentino humbly remembers when the light bulb went off for him. «I also remember thinking one-speeds were the way when a 50-something old guy who I'thought' was Dave Gray, but was on one of those aforementioned 24" rear Rock Lobsters, kept crushing past me going uphill at the Lemurian, 1989 or 1990, and then stopping to bash his Bullseye crank back on with a rock since it was loose, and then taking off again. He beat me by about 20 minutesâ¦Â»
Over the next couple years, as singlespeeding started to get a little bigger, Ferrentino and Richter talked some local race promoters into having a specific singlespeed category that turned into the "Califomia Crusty Cruiser Cup," or simply, "The Crusty" The way it worked was that the promoter would give them their own class, but the racers were responsible for prizes. The first series was 1994 and kicked off at Boggs Mountain. All told, five people did every race in the series. A couple years later it went outlaw, as Ferrentino says. That's when it becarne $5 to race, no insurance, barely any course markings, no crappy t-shirt, and free beer at the end. These were the golden years of the scene and, as the community grew and solidified, advances in the equipment began cropping up. Robert Ives at Ventana had convinced his boss to make some singlespeed frames in '95 and Paul Components (with multiple phone calls from Robert and his buddies) made special 135mm hubs to go along with the frames. Matt Nyiri at Ibis got one of the framebuilders there to graft an eccentric BB into a frame, which later became a production model for Ibis. Retrotec began building limited runs of singlespeed frames all their own. To many involved in those days, "Lollapajama" at the 1996 Sea Otter was the pinnacle of the whole singlespeeding ethos and to some, the end of the innocence. Lollapajama? You never heard of spending all weekend in your PJ's at the Sea Otter? Steve Smith remembers. "I showed up to Lollapajama and there were really nice singlespeed bikes laying all over the place, and drunken, half awake bodies everywhere. it was like a bomb had gone off. All of those people not only turned out to be extraordinarily fast folks, but really nice people to boot. After all of this time floating along rather anonymously and doing this thing 1 thought 1 was kinda solo in, it felt like id finally come home."
Part of the scene that year at the Sea Otter was a protest of the exorbitant entry fees in the form of a massive, mid-course poach. Imagine paying $50 to race your singlespeed and just as you transition from the race track to the first dirt section, 40 or so people on singles charge down the hillside and onto the course, right in front of you. To the spectators, it was breathtaking; to the paying racers who took it all too seriously, it was more than a little aggravating. With that poach came the first cracks in the devilmay-care foundation on which the whole scene was built. The race promoter got pissed, the guys who paid to race their singles complained that the poachers ruined it for the "professional" singlespeeders, and some people actually got fired from their jobs when they got home. Until then, being "professional" was the furthest thing from anyone's mind. This was a group that prided itself on being able to tie one on and still kick some ass the next moming, hangovers be damned.
Over the next few years, the Crusty continued with various races around the Bay Area. All the while, the bigger bike companies began to get whiffs of their next big thing. As singlespeed bikes began to flood into bike shops, so too did customers-and the coopting of the movement had begun. You could see the changing of the guard at those last Crustys in '98 and '99: new blood, on new production bikes, without much knowledge or concem for how or where this thing had started. They would race and then go home. They didn't come to the post race BBQs. They didn't really contribute to the culture that created this wonderful, organic event. As the original group grew older and began to fatigue from running a race series for so many years, no one stepped in to fill the void. The Crustys dried up and died. But what was so appealing about singlespeeding to the original group was bound to be appealing to a lot more people. That original group never claimed to be the arbitrators of where the scene should go, what it should look like in the future, and certainly not who was worthy and cool enough to do it, so they watched silently as the singlespeeding scene took on a life of its own.
Fast-forward twelve years to the 2008 Singlespeed World Championships in Napa. Boy, how things have changed: four hundredplus riders from all over the world meeting up to race singlespeeds, EMTs and medics, sponsors, water stations, a blog, shitloads of schwag, and on and on. In the olden days these guys were lucky to have their own race class; now baby's all grown up. The Worlds was a State of the Union" of sorts for the singlespeed scene and I'm still not too clear on what that state is. Our own beloved Curtis Inglis played host and organizer this year and deserves huge appreciation from the local cycling community (as well as every liquor store in Napa). Being a race promoter is a thankless job but at least he only had to deal with laid back singlespeeders, right? Wrong. While most racers (the ones who got in) were cool, there were some who bad-mouthed Curtis because they missed the cut on registration. This whining sparked some reminiscing and discussion on where the movement had gone and if it had lost its irreverence and lack of selfimportance.
As I surveyed the scene on that Sunday, I saw most of that old group of the original singlespeeders I had seen in '96. Some were racing while others blended unnoticed into the crowd. it seemed important to me that everyone knew who these people were, so that they could thank them and to see what a laid back group they are. Not that any of them want any credit or thanks or that they even think they did anything worth mentioning in the world of singlespeeding. For me, IT say thank you right here: riding a singlespeed has given me a load of great memories, lifelong friends, and a job I love. Without these originals, who knows where Iâd be.
To be sure, singlespeeding has always been about cool. Cool because you weren't part of the masses, cool because the bikes were so simple, cool because it made you tougher, cool because it helped you find likeminded people. But it was never about cool for the sake of cool. just riding a bike with one gear wasn't going to change the fact that you were a hypercompetitive asshole at heart. It was more than the bike. It was about what it wasn't about: about not being so damned serious and concerned with all the crap that gets people so uptight. So some guy with a beer in his hand got tangled up with you while you were battling for 10th place and you got 15th. So what? So you had the wrong gearing. No shame in walking. So you didn't get into Worlds? Does that somehow define you and make riding a single less fun? These days, singlespeeding is too big to say why anyone does it and it's pointless to try and figure out the scene, let alone label it. None of that original group has walked away from riding a singlespeed because someone else took it too seriously or because they think it's become un-cool. But as we all experience at some point in out lives, whether with a band or an author or some other thing in which we invest ourselves, there's a bit of apprehension and sadness seeing it evolve and, in some cases, become unrecognizable.
Gone are the days when you would stop someone else on a single to talk because you were part of a smallish clan, probably no more than two or three people removed from them by common friends. No more secret handshake. No more decoder ring. Nowadays, you are just as likely to encounter someone on a single who doesn't want to stop and talk.
They're riding a bike, an object. It has no meaning other than being a vehicle, a thing. It doesn't make them want to get drunk and race on three hours of sleep. It doesn't make them want to get together with a bunch of friends in pajamas and it certainly can't give you a nickname like "Loudass." These folks came to the thing through a salesperson, not through the lure of late night laughs and beers shared around a campfire... and that's OK.
In the end, it doesn't matter if they know where the whole thing started. The original group of singlespeeders doesn't really care. When their favorite bands became famous and they couldn't stand the new music or the new fans, they didn't abandon those old records. They sound as good as they ever did, no matter how many times they get.played and even if no one is listening but them.
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