Fancy some singlespeed fixie action German style? No not Fixie inc (we’ll check them out later) – here’s some Bergamonts that caught the eye. Not sure about pedalling the pink and white number down Peckham High Street but there’s also this classy looking flat bar version or a tougher looking urban effect black and green number – I’ll try to nip back later and get a shot of that baby in focus… 

Something altogether more radical on the technical front – at least in the sense that it’s come back into fashion again – is belt drive, in the form of these two new belt driven Treks. Apart from being different and probably silent, not sure exactly what the great benefit there is of powering your bike with a plastic belt. Unless this is very special plastic, which I’m sure Trek will tell us it is, there is no way that a belt is as efficient at transferring your power to the back wheel. Even without the belt drive the new Trek District is an eye-catching bike. Sporty looking semi-discs look great but this isn’t a performance machine – and I wouldn’t fancy catching one of those urban crosswinds that blast out of sideroads. The clock is nice, maybe it’s for timing your run into work – and the chainguard makes a lot of sense. It’s weird, but I like it. 

Slightly less weird is the ’09 version of the Soho which combines belt drive with a rear hub – and still gives you somewhere to carry your coffee. 
Street classicism from Salsa (try saying that with a mouthful of würst in a bun), the Casseroll has been around for a while, but I haven’t spotted one before with a chainguard – could be I wasn’t looking hard enough. If the Trek and the Salsa are anything to go by Chainguards could be something a mini-trend on ‘performance’ commuters – Mike Burrows will feel vindicated and so he should – not everyone wants to ride around town fast with one trouser leg rolled up or your jeans tucked into your socks (hurts my knee eventually). As ever with Salsa, nice detailing around the dropouts. 

- News

Street bikes are go…

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@mdavidford I can see how it confused you when I pointed to the reviewer at the bottom. but hey if you cant read an entire comment before getting all keyboard warrior blah, kind of like you usually do that not my fault. I should have guessed the first person to reply to a comment would be you, you cant help yourself.
@chrisonabike It never ceases to amaze me how drivers consider public land to be their private parking spaces.
Erm - it has - as per the item above: (Technically, a 'budget cap' and a 'team salary cap' aren't quite the same thing, but given how much of the costs are paying riders, it would have a similar effect.)
A lot of pro sports leagues have team salary caps. Curious that hasn't been mooted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salary_cap
Well your original comment did rather suggest that was your understanding. The bit 'critiquing' the pros and cons was sandwiched in the middle of railing against the makers. And the amount of ill-thought-out tripe that gets posted under some of these reviews, it wouldn't surprise me at all if someone thought the manufacturer provided the pros and cons.
JB may not bé Mr Nice but in this case he's 100% right. I thought when Lappartient was elected he knew sod all about pro cycling and his real ambitions were related to running thé Olympics.
@mdavidford Well duh, is a manufacturer going to put negative comments on their own products? did you really just try to explain that?
Surely Fred Wright's going to win a race in his career that isn't the national champs. He's been close so many times now.
Awful human slags off Machiavellian politician -shock horror.
The pros and cons come from the reviewer, not the manufacturer. And they do explain in the review why they think the lack of MIPS could be viewed as either/both a positive or a negative. Less so with the shape, but it's easy to see how that could be considered a good or a bad thing, depending on whether it suits your head shape. If anything, it's a deficiency of the review template - that it doesn't have a section for something like 'other considerations' that aren't pros or cons.