Did I Just Buy a Hipster Bike?

     Yep. I think so.

    A couple of weekends ago I received this text from my wife.

    Daphne was volunteering at UHS's annual Show Choir Garage Sale. Apparently quite a few people had made comments about the bike, but no one was buying. Daph knew who to call.

    I took one look at the bike and one look at the price tag. Then I wheeled it to the checkout where Daphne was working. She asked, "Are you buying the bike?"

    "I'm not sure. I just heard that there's a really good looking woman working at the register, so I thought I'd come over and check her out," I replied.

    She smiled and laughed, "That's not true! Now give me your card so you can donate to our sale."

    I did as I was told. 

    She then walked with me through the school, holding doors open, while the bike tick, tick, tick, ticked along the way.

    

   This was in our driveway twenty minutes later.

        This was a 1992 Trek 2300 road bike in its first life. 

    This is a screen shot of Trek's 1992 catalog. The frame, crankset, and derailleurs (maybe?) are the only original parts left on the bike I bought. 

    The Brooks B67 saddle is the reason I bought the Trek. This seat and the handgrips will be right at home on the Rollfast, my English 3-speed. The rest of the bike is just gravy.

    Fifty dollars won't get you even halfway to a used Brooks B67 on eBay, so this is a good deal. 

    This is what urban bicycle fashion looked like 20 years ago. Here's a 4-minute video from back in the day that shows a process that a lot of people followed -----> Link

    The trend was to take an old road bike and simplify/modify it as much as possible. Typical hipster bike requirements included a leather saddle, flipped handlebars, rims with less spokes, tires with sidewall color, and a bike rack. This bike ticks all those boxes. 

    

    If you really wanted to get into the weeds you'd repaint the frame, fork, and rims a monochrome color. You could also replace the multiple gears with a fixed gear and remove all of the brake components. Then you would have a "Fixie" that was inspired by the bikes used by bicycle delivery people in New York City. I'm glad the previous owner did not go that far.

    I'm not here to mock the hipsters. They were just having fun with their bikes. Can't knock them for that. But I can try to knock some of the 2006 off of here.

  I made some quick changes before I took the bike for a test ride. I flipped the Metropolis handlebars, and added soft grips. Those old-school Weinmann brake levers were also really popular with the hipster crowd.

      Then I made a seat swap, removed the rack and bag, and changed the bottle cage. 

    Hey, that doesn't look too bad.

    The bike wasn't shifting very well, and the chain was noisy. Turns out the chain was just too long. I removed a couple of links and those problems were solved. 

    The front brake was fine, but the rear caliper would only pull from one side. It took me about an hour to figure out it was stripped and missing a spacer. This must have been a problem for awhile because the right brake pad was worn out and the other pad looked brand new.

    

       I bought a pair of period correct brake calipers on eBay. The bike now stops as it should. I also like this look better.

    Hipster bikes were all about high seat posts and low handlebars. Riding in this position gave the biker an illusion of speed, but was pretty uncomfortable. I brought the stem adapter up a bit and added some headset spacers.

    Parts bin saddle. I don't remember where I found this seat, but I'm 100% sure it was in a thrift store. I like the logo's design.

    I had an authentic Trek water bottle cage in the parts bin, so that went on as well.

        The last step was to replace the tires on those Vuelta (hand built) wheels. I wasn't a fan of the red sidewall stripe, and the rubber on the tires was beginning to crack. The tires are sized 700 x 23c. I decided to bump that up a bit to 700 x 28c. There's plenty of room. I went with all-black tires from Amazon.

    When she saw them Daphne said, "Yeah, that looks better than the red." That's all I needed to hear.

    Before and after pics.

    It's gone from a hipster to a commuter in ten days. What a fun project. The plan is to test drive it some more and take it to Marketplace. 

   All of my other bikes are made of steel, so this composite frame seems just so dang light. I'm tempted to keep the Trek, but that just means something else has to go. 

    Thanks to Daphne, my fine line between collecting and hoarding has been crossed.