The Red Hook Criterium is a unique nighttime bike race in Brooklyn, New York. Each March, more than 80 amateur cyclists – business owners, artists and bike messengers by day – descend on Red Hook’s industrial streets, bringing with them their fixed gear, brakeless, single speed bikes (and a hefty dose of courage) to race on a techinical course. The athletes are as different as can be, but they’ve all got the same goal in mind: winning the famed cobblestone trophy.
This is a story about one rider’s journey towards his first-ever Red Hook Crit. Frank Warren, owner of the Breukelen Coffee House in Crown Heights, is a passionate amateur cyclist who dreams of making a podium finish and cementing his name on the fixed gear circuit. But running a successful business while training for the biggest race of his life is a difficult balancing act. Can he do both?
Through Frank, we learn that fixed gear cycling is more than a hobby, a sport, an exercise. It’s a lifestyle, a culture, a worldwide movement. And if the criterium race format catches on and explodes likes he knows it can – fixed gear riding may very well take over skateboarding’s role and become the next big urban sport.
