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Track Bars

TODO R CASPELL

Maximum Pace
Jan 27, 2009
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What is up with those just a bar bars. I saw some at Bike Paradise. They are just a very short dead straight bar. Various colors, anodized aluminum. Nicely rounded ends. Seem machined out of a solid chunk of Alu. Heavy. If they ARE hollow it is really thick wall stuff. I would have bought one just because it's a beautiful chunk of metal but they were quite expensive for something I wouldn't put on a bike. They must be for the trendy cafe bike messenger fixie bunch. But what is the theory behind them ? WHY ?
 
Are you referring to actual deep bend Track drop bars like Nitto B123(which can be had for cheap at Cycly in Shibuya) or some fashioned anodized narrowed straight bar(expensive) meant for urban fixed gear/singlespeed setups?
 
If you are referring to the narrow straight bars, I have a theory. I am from Chicagoland and from what I noticed in comparison to riding here in Tokyo is that riding there is surprising tighter than here. Cars are much closer to you. You feel squeezed riding on the road and find yourself fighting with vehicles for the same chunk of road space, mostly, instead of just riding your line. Many of the fixed gear bunch originally found themselves riding Track Drop bars which are narrow and have deep bends for aero sprinting which unless you have open space in front of you being in a sprint position well is not necessary. Anyway since most of these riders rarely or never actually found themselves using any other position but on the tops of the drops with their hands close to the stems that because of the whole minimalism mentality of the fixed culture they cut what was not being used. Then instead of buying at the time hard to find or expensive track drops to chop. People started buying easier to find and cheap, mountain bars, and chopped away at those. Key words, cheap and easy, now they've become this trendy thing. No longer, cheap but still easy to find and coming in matchy matchy colors. Never my cup of tea but I did understand what was going on, at least, in Chicago but here, not so sure.
 
That makes sense. But hacking your own bars would not only be cheeper it would be much lighter too. You could club a BB seal with the bars I saw. They WERE beautiful hunks O metal though. The operative word here being hunk.

Nice tip on the Nitto bars thanks. I need a pair for my fixie that I am going to Keirin out. Just how cheep is cheep ? I should go to Cicily anyway. I love bike shops.
 
Cycly, yo. and usually at the cycly in Shibuya they can be found for 3000yen newish and aluminum or 1500ish very used and steelhttp://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&u=http://www.cycly.co.jp/&ei=K7K1Sf-RCti5kAXvtszqCQ&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dcycly%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26channel%3Ds%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:eek:fficial%26hs%3D4e%26sa%3DG%26newwindow%3D1. Honestly 1500 yen to me is a decent deal very used or not. With some new bartape, you won't be able to tell the difference anyway. BTW. I saw in a tread you were thinking of going to the Kawasaki Velodrome, there is a Cycly there too which has some track stuff too.
 
OOO I like your avatar. Campy Record cranks milled and polished. Beauty. The second most beautiful cranks ever made.

I will get the steel if they have any wide enough and not too harshed.
Thanks for the link. TODO





PS. Campy C Record first type fat star fish arms.
 
Sugino Super Mighty and yes they are beautiful
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