This is especially puzzling when you consider what little news that would be of interest to the typical cyclist actually emerges from these shows . Sure it's important for shop owners and bicycle companies and those sorts of people to meet and discuss business on a regular basis, and of course the people who sell bicycles should know what colors the new ones will be before they actually receive the boxes, but for the layperson the last genuinely interesting product development was probably the integrated brake/shift lever, or the clipless pedal, or the derailleur drivetrain, or the "safety bicycle" (depending on who you ask and how retro-grouchy they are). Otherwise, pretty much everything else recently has involved Making Stuff Bigger.
Basically, the way Making Stuff Bigger works is that bicycle designers move clockwise around the bicycle and determine which "interface" is ripe for a new injection of collagen. In the last few years they've been focussing on the bottom bracket and headtube, but for 2011 it looks like they're going back to the handlebar. After all, it's been over 10 years since the 31.8 handlebar clamp "standard" was established, and while it once seemed huge it now looks positively spindly next to the "beefy" bottom bracket shells and headtubes of today. Fortunately for us all, Deda is inflating it once again:

So will people actually buy this? Of course they will. The new Deda over-oversized bars are apparently good for "people with big hands, and people with a need for massive stiffness." Logically, this means that people who use them are big and massively stiff in other areas too, and by extension that people who ride using the now-puny 31.8 size are genitally inadequate, or at best are unable to handle "massive stiffness." At this rate, I fully expect Eurobike and the Sex Toy Expo to combine operations by 2020.
Speaking of putting your hands on throbbing things, a reader informs me that pants behemoth Levi Strauss recently decided to "get their finger on the pulse of the fixed gear and commuter bike movement in an authentic way," presumably so they could sell them more stuff:
Apparently, Levi Strauss decided to do its pop-cultural "fingerbanging" in Denver and Boulder instead of New York, San Francisco, or Los Angeles "because the scene is still young and developing organically in Colorado," and its worth noting that some lonely middle-aged men hang around schools and playgrounds for exactly the same reason. Here's actual video of the Levi's employees asking the unwitting scenesters if they'd like some candy and inviting them into their metaphorical Econoline of Consumerism:
It's a sign that says, "I'm willing to buy into anything, even if it kills me."

Levi's + The Public Works from The Public Works on Vimeo.
By the way, if you're ever looking to take advantage of a naive and malleable consumer, you can generally identify them by their cigarettes:
In any case, it looks like things got pretty wild--so wild, in fact, that at one point they even broke into a spontaneous freestyle market research "session:"

Of course, if Levi's really wanted to do some cutting-edge "fixie" market research, they should have gone to China, where a reader informs me that fixed-gear cycling and juggling are coming together in new and exciting ways:
Yes, for Beijing "fixters" the light-running antics of America's "urban" cyclists simply cannot rival the excitement and agility of circus-like riders such as the great Serge Huercio. Also, they forego skid-patch calculators in favor of juggling patterns:


This is not to say, however, that cycling without coasting and circus behavior do not coexist in the United States. However, it isn't so much an urban subculture as it is an "extreme sport." Consider "extreme mountain unicyclist" Terry Peterson:
"Unlike a bike, you have to pedal every inch of the way. You can never coast," explains Peterson, who is apparently the only person left in the United States who has not heard of the "fixie" trend. Peterson does appear to use a brake though, and the lever is mounted underneath the nose of his saddle:
If you're wondering what makes his brand of unicycling "extreme," the sight of him barreling down a technical descent as he waves one hand wildly and uses the other to repeatedly squeeze a lever located in the vicinity of his genitals should give you some idea. He looks like he's "foffing off" while competing in a rodeo.


However, Peterson's brake lever is not nearly as fascinating as this incredible setup, spotted by a reader in Oslo, Norway:
A closer look reveals that this is the very rare "puppeteer" setup, in which the brake levers are actuated by wires:

