Fact: Hipsters love bikes. Fact: most of the bikes hipsters love are fixed-gear, or “fixies.” Fact: Even though most of us don’t understand them, hipsters love statistics. Especially HJs. How are we going to rule the world if we don’t understand our demographic?
Even if you suck at stats, this will be easy to understand: Manhattan is more hip than Brooklyn, and Orange County is more hip than San Francisco AND Portland.
Don’t believe me? Let’s look at the numbers.
According to the Priceonomics blog, which tracked fixie sales per capita, fixies are almost twice as popular in Manhattan than they are in Brooklyn. According to the post, “There are more bikes offered for sale in Brooklyn than Manhattan, but only 8.3% of them are fixies versus 9.5% in Manhattan.”
This data was then accrued for all US cities. Turns out, fixies are more than twice as popular in Orange County than they are in San Francisco! And where is Portland on the list? 14th. I know Portlandia is all you’ve been watching, oh naive HJ, but maybe The O.C. is more your speed.
There’s more info in the blog about regional bike culture in general, but who cares? Bikes with gear shifts are so 2007.
I believe Priceonomics sums it up best:
Despite our best efforts to paint Portland as a bunch of hipster bike snobs, the data simply does not support such a conclusion. The people of Portland just seem to really like bicycles, but not ones that are particularly expensive or difficult to pedal up hills. The same goes for the denizens of Brooklyn, who aren’t the fixie-fanatics they’re made out to be. It seems that American cities that are growing and highly educated tend to have thriving bicycle communities. Perhaps it is because these cities fill its inhabitants with a sense of adventure and optimism to try alternative forms of transportation. Or perhaps in these cities, parking is a pain in the ass.
Do not fret, dear HJs. Ride on. And good luck finding cheap rent in Orange County. It’s definitely where old people go to retire.(Incidentally, the least hipster town in America, according to bike sales, is Allentown, PA. Suck it, Amanda Seyfried.)
pinto
01/19/2012
those silly bloggers dont understand that hipsters dont buy fixed gears, they build them out of old steel frame ten speeds they find at the dump. only ppl in manhattan and oc would be so clueless as to think they could PURCHASE a CREDIBLE bicycle !!!!!!!
Ben G.
01/22/2012
Yes, Hipsters love stats, but stats can be misleading. It’s been a long time since I’ve lived anywhere hip (unless Jerusalem counts), but from what I gather the vast majority of fixies owners are going to be in their 20s (and I guess late teens and early 30s), so to generate a good ranking, I don’t know how helpful per capita stats are going to be. If in a certain city 40% of the population is in that age bracket, and in another city only 25%, that’s going to throw the results way off.