Spoke Aesthetics
Remember when all spokes were silver? I thought black spokes were stupid when they first came out…now I’ve got this fetish for them. Here’s a picture of a straight-pull Sapim “CX” 2.0/1.5mm spoke against a wheel built on DT “Alpine III” spokes (2.34/1.8/2.0mm).
And what happened to those colourful plastic spoke sleeves kids used to put on their bikes? Did those disappear from the market when The Partridge Family went into syndication?
While I was in Japan, I saw bags of spokes for sale at bike shops, powdercoated in a variety of neon colours. It’s only a matter of time before the fixed gear crowd stateside gets ahold of them. It’s occurred to me that fixed gear bikes are developing from velodrome speedsters to trick bikes in a manner that parallels BMX’s transition to flatland freestyle bikes. Hopefully I’ll have more later to write and maybe video.