»No, fixie.

Bike Portland reports that a Multnomah County judge has fined a fixed-gear rider for not being equipped with brakes. The judge additionally censured the rider for having a store-bought trucker cap, faux alleycat cards in her spokes, powder-coated rims, and for not living in the Mission.

The ramifications for San Francisco, where forty percent of the 15,000 new fixed-gear and track bicycles were sold last year, are tremendous. No-one wants to look like a sissy, stopping at traffic controls or using a caliper instead of a skip-stop -- or simply going hell-for-leather through traffic.