In 2012, Lucas Brunelle released Line of Sight, a compilation of high-octane, helmet-camera footage documenting his experience riding in some of the most notorious unsanctioned urban bicycle races across the globe. More than just a montage of hair-raising alleycat races and traffic-defying stunts, Line of Sight emerged as a cultural artefact,a raw and unflinching love letter to a global tribe of cyclists who ride by a code of defiance, precision, and minimalist ideology. Among them, the fixed gear (or ‘fixie’) riders stood out not only for their mastery of the bike but also for their distinctive philosophy.
The Genesis of Line of Sight
Lucas Brunelle, a Boston-born videographer and long-time fixture in the global messenger and alleycat scene, began filming urban cycling races in the early 2000s. His footage captured the intensity and rawness of unsanctioned races that snaked through the world’s most congested cities,from the chaos of New York traffic to the labyrinthine alleys of Tokyo. Shot predominantly with helmet-mounted cameras, Brunelle’s work offered an immersive first-person perspective that had previously been absent from portrayals of cycling.
By the time Line of Sight debuted, Brunelle had accumulated years’ worth of footage from events like the Cycle Messenger World Championships (CMWC), Monstertrack, and various local alleycats. The film stitched together moments of nerve-wracking close calls, brilliant tactical riding, and absurd confrontations with both police and passers-by. It was not a documentary in the traditional sense,there was little exposition, no overarching narrative, and certainly no effort to sanitise or contextualise the footage. Instead, the film thrived in its rawness, letting the viewer viscerally experience the world through the eyes of riders living on the edge of legality and velocity.
Alleycats and the Urban Cyclist’s Playground
To understand Line of Sight, one must first understand alleycat racing. Born in the early 1980s, these races were initially created by bicycle messengers in North American cities as a way to hone and display their navigational and riding skills. The events typically consist of a series of checkpoints scattered throughout a city, with racers choosing their own routes between them,emphasising both speed and urban fluency. There are few rules, and those that do exist are more often regarded as flexible guidelines.
While alleycats are open to all types of bikes, fixed gear bicycles have long been a dominant presence. The fixie’s stripped-down design,a single gear with no freewheel, meaning the rider must continuously pedal,mirrors the ethos of the alleycat. It rewards technical mastery, real-time decision-making, and physicality. It also demands a high degree of trust between rider and machine.
In alleycat races, success is not only measured by speed, but also by courage, creativity, and a willingness to blur the lines of traffic law. Brunelle’s Line of Sight exemplifies this spirit. He films riders dodging between buses, bunny-hopping kerbs, and gliding through red lights with a kind of artistry that evokes parkour or skateboarding. But unlike those sports, where obstacles are designed or contained, the fixie rider’s canvas is the open city,a stage of unpredictability, law, and motion.
Fixed Gear as Philosophy
To the uninitiated, riding a fixed gear bike in a city might seem masochistic. With no gears, no freewheel, and often no brakes, the fixie demands continuous physical engagement. There is no coasting. The rider’s legs are in perpetual motion, and the only way to slow down is to resist the motion of the pedals,by ‘skidding’, a technique requiring both strength and finesse. This may seem impractical, even unsafe, in modern urban environments. But for many, that is exactly the point.
Fixie culture developed a reputation not just for daring but for a kind of asceticism. This is not about Ludditism but about purity: stripping the experience of cycling down to its most fundamental elements. In this way, the fixie is not just a bike but a symbol,a conduit for a philosophy rooted in discipline, control, and a deep intimacy with one’s environment.
Line of Sight does not explicitly preach this philosophy, but it exudes it in every frame. The riders are not framed as rebels for rebellion’s sake but as ascetics navigating the chaos of the modern city with grace and resolve. Their interactions with the city,improvised, intuitive, confrontational,are poetic expressions of freedom.
The camera doesn’t lie. There’s no CGI, no editing tricks. Just sweat, steel, and split-second decisions. It’s here that the fixie becomes an extension of the rider’s body. In scenes where Brunelle and others dance between lanes of traffic, the bike is more than a machine,it’s a partner in a fluid, dangerous choreography.
The Messianic Figure of Lucas Brunelle
Brunelle is a controversial figure within cycling. Some laud him as a chronicler of underground culture; others criticise him for glorifying recklessness. What’s undeniable is his commitment. He doesn’t just film alleycat races,he participates in them, camera strapped to his helmet, riding as fast and aggressively as anyone. His footage is not voyeuristic but participatory. He is of the culture, not merely adjacent to it.
In interviews, Brunelle has described his aim as capturing the “truth” of the street. Not a cleaned-up, policy-friendly version of urban cycling, but the raw, unmediated experience of riding hard and fast through a world not designed for bicycles. He often juxtaposes his footage with grandiose music,opera, classical, or electronic,elevating the act of riding into something transcendent.
His critics argue that this approach borders on self-indulgence. But within the fixie community, Brunelle is regarded with near-mythic status. His videos became canonical. Brunelle inspired a new generation of riders to pick up fixed gear bikes,not for fashion or nostalgia, but for the experience of control and surrender, discipline and danger, all at once.
Fixie Culture: From Subculture to Symbol
In the years following Line of Sight, fixed gear culture experienced a strange double evolution. On the one hand, its aesthetic,minimalist bikes, rolled-up jeans, cycling caps,was appropriated by mainstream fashion. Fixies became trendy, adorning the windows of boutique shops and gentrified cafes from Shoreditch to Williamsburg. The bike messenger look became commodified.
But at the same time, the core of the culture remained fiercely underground. Alleycat races continued to operate in a grey area of legality. The “true” fixed gear riders,those who rode brakeless not for trend but for technique,retreated further into the depths of subcultural authenticity.
Line of Sight became a sort of litmus test. Those who “got it” saw in the film an expression of their deepest ideals. Those who didn’t saw only chaos and danger. In this bifurcation lies the heart of fixie philosophy: it’s not meant for everyone. It rejects safetyism and the regulatory impulse of modern life. It asks riders to be fully responsible for themselves and their machines.
In this way, fixed gera culture intersects with a number of broader philosophical currents: anarchism, Stoicism, even existentialism. The rider confronts the absurdity of the city, its indifference, its hostility, and chooses to ride through it,not with brute force, but with style and mastery. The fixed gear rider does not wish to be governed,by gears, by brakes, by traffic laws, or by common sense. They seek to express agency through total commitment.
Critique and Consequence
Not all reaction to Line of Sight was celebratory. Urban planners, safety advocates, and even some cyclists decried the film’s glorification of illegal and unsafe riding. The sight of riders speeding through red lights, weaving between cars, and skitching off trucks seemed to some like a recipe for tragedy.
And indeed, alleycat racing has had its share of fatalities. The death of a rider during an alleycat race in 2008 led to greater scrutiny of the scene. But for many inside the culture, these dangers are not to be hidden,they are to be acknowledged as part of the compact. Riding a fixed gear brakeless bike through city traffic is not meant to be safe. It is meant to be real.
The question, then, is one of consent and context. For the riders in Line of Sight, the city is a consensual battlefield. They know the risks. They embrace them. For others,pedestrians, motorists, bystanders,the dynamic is more complex. Can one person’s quest for freedom impinge upon another’s safety? These are questions that still reverberate in urban cycling policy debates today.
What Brunelle offers is not an answer, but a perspective. A lens, quite literally, through which to view the city differently. To see it not as an obstacle, but as a game. Not as a danger, but as a dance.
The Legacy of Line of Sight
More than a decade after its release, Line of Sight continues to be a reference point in urban cycling culture. It is shown at underground film festivals, studied in media classes, and passed like sacred scripture between new fixie initiates. Its influence can be seen in the rise of helmet-cam cycling YouTube channels, and in the global messenger community’s persistent pride in their art.
It also helped shape how urban cycling is understood,not merely as transport, not merely as sport, but as philosophy and resistance. For the fixie rider, the bike is not a vehicle; it is a practice. Riding is a discipline. Every skid, every traffic-dodging manoeuvre, every near-miss is a kind of meditation on mortality and mastery.
Line of Sight made that practice visible to the world, without explanation or apology. It showed what it means to be a rider, in all its terror and triumph.
Final Thoughts: The City as Canvas
In the end, Line of Sight is not about bikes. It is about how one chooses to live. It is about how, in a world designed for conformity and control, one can find spaces of wildness and expression. The fixed gear rider, captured in Brunelle’s kinetic lens, is not running from danger but toward something,toward purity, toward presence, toward a form of freedom that cannot be commodified.
Their art is ephemeral. Each ride is unrepeatable. There is no finish line, only flow. And in that flow, in the blur of lights and horns and breathless speed, the fixie rider finds something many spend their lives searching for: meaning, mastery, and the edge where self and city collide.
Fiefdom Tracklocross 
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