Nick Ginster, co-founder and general manager of Fyxation Bicycle Company, discusses his product line and the upcoming Fyxation Open Fixed Gear Street Criterium held June 24-25 in conjunction with the Tour of America’s Dairyland (TOAD) in Milwaukee, and July 23-24 in conjunction with the Intelligentsia Cup Prairie State Cycling Series in Chicago.
Tell me about your company. Do you specialize in fixed gear bikes?
We’re a local bicycle company. We do our own design right here in Riverwest. We also do a number of parts and accessories and sell them through our retail store, which is only about a year old. But bicycle dealers all over the country and internationally carry our brand.
We specialize in transport cycling. We have two single-speed models that can be set up fixed gear. We also have five carbon fiber road bike models. We started off in single-speed fixed gear but we’ve migrated to cover most transport cycling and urban commuting.
Riverwest is a very cycling-centric community, so we also do full service out of this location. We do repairs. We carry other bikes that fit with the neighborhood that we don’t do in our brand, like cargo bikes. We have a couple of electric bikes.
Tell me about the upcoming races.
This is the third year we’ve held the Fyxation Open. The first two years it was just one race in Downtown Chicago. The TOAD series is the 10 days of racing that’s held in southeast Wisconsin and there’s a similar series in Illinois called the Prairie State Championship and for the last two years we’ve held the Fyxation Open Fixed Gear Criterium during a day of racing in Downtown Chicago.
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Criterium races are a closed course on the road, typically less than a mile. The cool thing about this style of racing is it’s very spectator-centric. People line the whole course. You can be very close to the action, you can hear the racers, you can feel the breeze go by when the whole group—that’s called a peloton—comes flying by. They’re going 25-30 miles an hour as a group. The fixed gear criterium is interesting because instead of riding traditional road bikes, which is what the rest of the day of racing is, they actually are running brakeless track bikes. What the open format means is that it’s open to any class of racer.
What do you believe sets fixed gear bikes apart?
For someone who’s never ridden one it sounds kind of wild. You have a bike with no brakes, which we never recommend off of a closed course because you need brakes to be safe in traffic. But when you ride one of these bikes you quickly realize that the bicycle’s a very simple machine. When you’re connected to the pedals without a free wheel you are really part of that machine. If that bike is moving, your legs are moving. You will find a rhythm and if you forget that you can’t freewheel, that bike will remind you instantly. But once you get used to it—when you use your legs to slow the bike, to accelerate the bike, when you’re coasting—you feel like it’s an extension of your body. It’s somewhat difficult to explain but anyone who’s ridden a fixed gear bike long enough will tell you the same thing. You’re a part of the machine.
Fyxation Bicycle Company is located at 2943 N. Humboldt Blvd. To learn more about the company or the upcoming races, call 414-372-7223 or visit fyxation.com.
