Have the Islingtonites stopped butchering classic steel frames?

[julianm]

Or is the fixie craze set to run for a bit longer?

[landsurfer]

Not while people like us keep selling them for silly money on eBay !

[mercalia]

why are you picking on Islington?

[Paulatic]

Not while people like us keep selling them for silly money on eBay !

Have you suceeded?
Must be over seven weeks now.

[landsurfer]

Not while people like us keep selling them for silly money on eBay !

Have you suceeded?
Must be over seven weeks now.

2 sold, happy buyers , even happier me lol ..... Paid for the replacement for my best bike stolen on the 24th Feb .....

[nez]

Hackney surely. You have to go uphill to the Angel.

[goatwarden]

Depends what you mean by "butchering". I once spent a night in Islington and have just built up an old Falcon frame, pulled from a scrap pile, as a two-speed. I never want to visit London again if I can help it and I don't feel I have butchered anything; better an interesting and useful bike than a collection of bent rusting tubes awaiting the next financial boom to be turned into bottle caps.

[drossall]

I work a few doors down from the lights at Angel. Fixed wheels (can't bring myself to call them fixies, horrid modern term) are quite popular throughout London, as in many cities. Can't say I'd noticed that numbers in Islington were special. There are probably far more Bromptons than fixeds; I've no idea how Brompton ever found time to make all the bikes of theirs that I see in London.

The approach from Finsbury Park to Angel isn't noticeably uphill. I do it every day on a folder (not a Brompton!) Going home, I travel via Kings Cross, only partly because it's downhill all the way

[nez]

I work a few doors down from the lights at Angel. Fixed wheels (can't bring myself to call them fixies, horrid modern term) are quite popular throughout London, as in many cities. Can't say I'd noticed that numbers in Islington were special. There are probably far more Bromptons than fixeds; I've no idea how Brompton ever found time to make all the bikes of theirs that I see in London.

The approach from Finsbury Park to Angel isn't noticeably uphill. I do it every day on a folder (not a Brompton!) Going home, I travel via Kings Cross, only partly because it's downhill all the way

You are quite right. Londoners are full of topographical prejudice. I was brought up in the very centre of London so to me the Angel is 'up' the City Road while Finsbury Park is a distant suburb. Yes I know it's inaccurate but the map was etched on my childhood mind in the 1950s.

Can you cycle down that bus lane from the Angel to King's Cross now? I used to do it illegally in the 70s for self preservation purposes and used to get a lot of aggression from bus drivers as a result. But outraged bus drivers were a small price to pay for protection when I was the only cyclist making my way from the Angel to Euston Rd.

[drossall]

Can you cycle down that bus lane from the Angel to King's Cross now?

Very much so. It's a bus and cycle lane, so half a mile of freewheeling downhill with no traffic, in the middle of London You have to get through a couple of sets of lights at the top, and a triangular one-way system at the bottom, but they are OK. A year or so back, they widened the bit outside the old Kings Cross Thameslink entrance. I'm not really sure why. I assume it was to make room for a bike and a bus, as the buses can get stuck and block the thing, but they didn't mark out a lane for bikes, so the buses just slew themselves across the widened lane, and you still have to manoeuvre through. However, given that the lights are very predictable, there's no particular danger (the pedestrian crossing acts as a warning signal for when the lights will change).

The really odd thing is that, on the way up, it's the old-style, narrow lanes that disappear in all the places where you want them most. I assume, therefore, that the idea is to encourage cyclists to travel in one direction only, creating a net transfer of cyclists from Islington to Camden*. Or something. Hard to see otherwise why you'd build a transport system that only worked in one direction. When passing that way, I now use the parallel side streets just to the north.

* Maybe the council in Islington are trying to get rid of all the butchered frames, to go back to the OP's point

[nez]

Sounds much better. I used to commute from Shoreditch to Jupp Street by 'charging' that blinking hill both ways until I could afford a decent bike. By the way my Dad rode a fixed wheel round London in the 30s. I don't think there was any question of trendiness.

[drossall]

I've occasionally ridden into work and back on fixed (from North Herts). I don't think my Pompino is particularly trendy, at least not among the set who buy trendy bikes.

But, as I said, I don't think Islington has more fixeds than anywhere else.

[bovlomov]

I haven't done a survey, but my impression is that the bicycles of Islington and Hackney are generally more utilitarian than those of the London suburbs.