When I got into wrenching on bicycles, I primarily worked on 90’s and early 2000’s mountain bikes, because that particular time period caught my interest. I liked the frame geometries offered, a nice blend of slackness and aggressive raciness. There was a lot of experimentation going on as well, but in spite of that there were definitely some set standards. And purists stuck to them – and still stick to them. We’re talking the classic NORBA geometry with the arse pointed up at the sky and your back extended to the point where you wonder if, given another hundred years, would we see an evolutionary leap occurring in retro mountain bike enthusiasts and roadies, doubling the 33 spinal bones that the human body already lugs around?
Probably not.
That said, I am one of those folks that quite like the look of a stem long enough to be used as a jousting pole combined with a very narrow handlebar. I rode that for ages, and I particularly liked the twitchiness of narrow bars. I felt I had a level of control that the current trend of sluggish wide bars simply cannot offer. For some that twitchiness is scary, and most people advocate against narrow bars for off-road now, but for me it allowed me to make very incremental changes to my steering, and I didn’t have any worries about bashing myself into stuff during particularly narrow sections of trail. Unfortunately that doesn’t change the fact that the NORBA tradition did my back in. Still does.
Hoping to find a way to rekindle things with my spine, I did some research. After many encouraging statements from various users on a plethora of online bike forums, who voiced similar concerns, I was inclined to begin experimenting. I felt the stars had aligned, as around the time there even seemed to be a fair few cycling YouTuber’s chanting a whole new mantra; “A bike should be comfortable“. Comfort? Eugh, what’s that? Won’t that ruin the unspoiled aesthetic of the bike, making my toes curl up in utter cringe as I take the obligatory mid-ride sideshot? Yes, possibly. You will probably be laughed at by purists, driving them to making silly newspaper cutouts with your name alongside horrendous threats of great violence. Alas, that’s the price we pay for being different.
I ventured into the dark side of things when I decided to put risers in combination with a longer stem. With this bike, I didn’t mind the reach so much, but the drop itself from saddle down to bars was a bit too much. The result was a Surly Sunrise bar setup with a 100mm-ish Thomson stem on my Surly 1×1. It felt great. And when I realised that the world didn’t spontaneously combust in front of me, as I tightened the clamp down, I was hooked. I knew I had to try a different setup on another one of my bikes, because the night is young and I always have great ideas when I drink. I am a changed man, I now believe a bike should be a fluid, everchanging thing. I don’t believe in staticness anymore. It’s boring and it is limiting. In this day and age we’re told to buy 10 different bikes for 10 different disciplines, but we’re forgetting the fact that at the end of the day we’ve got a frame at the heart of everything, and if we dare, we can put just about every component we wish unto it. In other words, seeing the bike as more of a tool than a fashion statement greatly increases its versatility and allows us to experience many different ride qualities without having to buy a new bike. And remember, although there are many proprietary standards in today’s industry, many older industry standards still prevail, and as such even your old ride can be treated to just about any component of today.
Oh dear, went off on a tangent there didn’t I? Of course we’re not going to talk groupsets and other nonsense today. We’re specifically focusing on bars, because they can truly transform your riding experience with very minimal effort on your end. But even though that is the case, and even though the leisure cycling industry is booming, there’s still a reluctance to stray away from ‘what everyone else is doing’.. What happened to the unique, the individual? What happened to punk rock?! Aaargh!
But all hope is not lost, because when you look online for handlebars, you’ll eventually run into a fringe of nutters that traverse all the different riding cultures, they blend and bastardise as they see fit to get something rideable and comfortable. The terminology used to describe is “xbikers”, and although I’d love to sum them up with words – a picture speaks a thousand words, so I refer you to this subreddit. The xbikers alongside the bikepackers are very much the driving force behind the “alt bar” (alternative bars) movement online, which consists of everything from BMX, MX bars, backswept bendy bars, altered drop bars and other funky things. The market is still very niche, probably due to the general belief that making your ride, say, more upright, is going to make your bike incapable of riding anything but the street by your gran’s sheltered accommodation. But that’s not the case. Sure it can have negative impacts on climbs, by not allowing you to weigh down the front end enough, and dependent on width it can make steering sluggish. On the flipside it may also have a positive impact on your overall riding comfort by giving you a more relaxed position on the bike and more hand positions to spruce things up a bit.
For me, high rise and backswept bars has been a winner. I’m loving the more upright riding position, and when I say upright it doesn’t have to be sitting on the porcelain throne Dutchie riding. But it can be, to each their own. I’ve found that being able to sit upright allows me to take in more of my surroundings, which is one of the main reasons why I cycle, and honestly the bike feels no less capable. I still troop through the root infested singletrack, I still (try to) climb steep inclines, I ride all the things I used to ride, with the only difference being that, at last, I’m actually comfortable. Another positive is that it has allowed me to be a lot less picky about frame sizing, and I now rest easy knowing that I can get a good fit simply by playing around with various different bar and stem combinations on my builds.
Now, I should note that although I am kind of promoting the ‘alt bar’ movement here, I do have some reservations about it. The reason being that to me, alt bar, refers to any handlebar that doesn’t conform to the norms and traditions, so alternatives to low rise, flat bars and drop bars. But it’s important to understand that what we refer to as “alt bars” include many handlebars that were commonplace on commuter bicycles going back a century. The homogenisation of handlebar setups is a relatively recent occurrence. My concern is therefor that the ‘alt bar’ is just another attempt at profiting from reinventing the wheel, where instead of promoting the use of the many cheap commuter bars out there, we have a determined bunch of companies essentially selling basic backswept cruiser bars, or porteur bars, at an incredibly high price, marketed as something ‘new and groundbreaking’.
But with that said I’m happy that people are taking the fight to traditionalist, purist views within the bicycle world. And I am all for the experimentation. A project I’m personally hoping to realise soon is a MTB with Porteur bars. The extreme backsweep of those will allow me to go ultra-upright and I’m curious to see how they’ll do offroad. My theory is that the long backswept handles will function a bit as a bouncy lever, with a suppressing effect over bumpy terrain. I’m basing this on my experience of the Porteur bars on my ’49 German Randonneur, which have a lovely natural flex to them.
Last but not least, another important aspect of handlebars to consider is that they come in various different materials. You’ve got your aluminium, steel, titanium, carbon, and if you’re feeling a bit exotic, magnesium handlebars. I run a mixture of aluminium and steel myself, and have a preference for steel handlebars. But I also have bikes where I think aluminium works better. Aluminium is more rigid, and steel has a natural flex to it. I’ve found that stiffer frames (aluminium, lightweight steel) benefit from steel bars, to soften the ride a bit, as very stiff frames have a tendency to bounce too hard on bumpy trails. In contrast a more flexy, heavy steel frame such as my plush, flexy Karate Monkey or 1×1 feels great with a set of MX aluminium bars, because they stiffen the front end and allow for greater control and a better, more direct, feel of the ground in front of me.
So, to conclude, stop being a bore. Stop sticking to traditions. Try things. A bar swap is one of the most basic bits of wrenching a person can do, it takes the same amount of time as downing that bottle of lager you’re holding in your hand. It’s a simple thing that can completely transform your riding. It can even save that old frame you’ve outgrown and make it rideable again. The world is yours.
And don’t get me started on the beauty of bar-ends.. We’ll tackle that in a separate post sometime..
