Consisting of a stem with a positive rise (I’d like to think there were spacers under it as well, but I’m not sure) and a riser-bar flipped over to give a lower hand position, it was finished off with, well, nothing. No grips or anything spoilt the clean line of the bar, except for a single brake lever.
This raised so many questions. Initially I just couldn’t believe anyone would do this. If the front end of the bike was really too high would you not consider a negative-rise stem (or just flipping the one that was on there over) rather than raising the height to lower it again? Equally a flat bar seems more sensible (or even one with drops, on this fixie style bike) and are riser bars even engineered to be load bearing upside-down (I guess they are, but still)?.
Finally the lack of grips annoys me. I guess the discomfort of riding on bare metal is a personal choice, but in the wet, like at the moment, doesn’t it get dangerous? To be honest it just looks cheap, lazy and a bit rubbish.
Someone who knows a lot more about bike set up than that commuter, or me, by a long way, is Hans Rey. He’s been an inspiration to riders for his entire career and will continue to be one for a long time to come. So far it’s been over 25 years:
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