Given my erudition and sagacity it may surprise you to learn that even I am not immune to the pernicious pull of the popular culture, and so it was that I recently found myself watching a salacious documentary series about disgraced hip hop impresario Sean “Puff Daniels” Combs on the “Internet Flicks” streaming service, the first episode of which begins with him riding a road bike and wondering how to shift it:
Not only that, but further to yesterday’s post, some discussion ensued regarding the various merits and de-merits of sundry bicycle shifter configurations, or something. And so, for the edification of Mr. Daniels (should he have access to a computer wherever it is that he is currently incarcerated), as well as to hopefully provoke further arguments among my fellow cyclists, many of whom base their entire identities around which shifters they prefer to use and where (on the bicycle) they put them, I shall now undertake a by no means comprehensive survey thereof. [Keep in mind the following is drop bar specific; I don’t care about your “alt” bars, and frankly I resent the term.] So let’s begin.
Downtube Shifters
The downtube shifter is the classic road bike configuration, and can be had in both indexed and friction varieties. While not the most convenient (you have to reach down in order to use them) they are by far the simplest shifters to install and maintain, and you can even do an entire bicycle cockpit transplant without having to so much as touch your drivetrain, allowing you to transform a racing bike into an upright commuter in a matter of minutes (see slideshow below):
Few new cyclists will even consider downtube shifters, since the prevailing notion seems to be that if you attempt to remove your hand from the bars in order to shift your bicycle you will die, and the bicycle industry has no incentive to disabuse consumers of this. However, the fact is that you remove your hands from your bars to do all kids of stuff (drink, check your phone, reach down the front of your shorts and “rummage around in the basement” if you know what I mean) so using a downtube shifter isn’t really a big deal.
Plus, some configurations even allow you to easily shift both with one hand:
Though the cables do run through the bike’s frame, which sort of undermines the whole simplicity thing:
But no matter how they’re configured, downtube shifters are an important reminder that cyclists today are coddled, spoiled, entitled “woosies” who shift their bikes way too much, and if you need to push a bigger gear for a little bit longer because you need both your hands on the bars for some reason then just suck it up–or maybe just stay home with your whale sounds and your adult coloring books instead:
Bar End Shifters
Like downtube shifters they’re mechanically simple and can be either indexed or friction, but unlike downtube shifters you don’t have to take your hands off the bars to use them. The cables do preclude instant cockpit swaps like the one depicted below, but normal people rarely need to do that anyway, so who cares? The only real drawback to a bar end shifter is that you’re a little more likely to bump it accidentally while riding, especially if you’re a Sponeed model with freakish proportions and a wayward knee:
Combination Shifter/Brake Lever Thingies
Shimano calls them STI, Campagnolo calls them Ergo, SRAM calls them DoubleTap…I say call them anything you want, except for “brifters,” which I don’t like, but you’re going to call them that anyway, aren’t you?
Whatever, I give up.
I love downtube shifters and I love bar end shifters, but it was all over for both of them when the integrated shifter came out, and it’s easy to see why: they’re comfortable, and they’re easy to use. Still, they have their drawbacks–the obvious one being they limit your ability to mix and match components, but the real one being that most people shift too much and never take their hands off them, clutching them at all times like the reins of a runaway horse. In a sane world the bar end shifter would have instead become the standard, and people would still set up their bikes so they could actually ride in the drops, but here we are.
Integrated shifters also made bicycles more like cars, in that the shapes are always evolving so you can now date them instantly just by looking at them:
See?
They really have evolved like some organism in nature, haven’t they? Note how early Campagnolo Ergo levers still had the vestigial point left over from where the brake cable used to come out in the days of non-aero brake levers:
Why was that? In nature it takes generation after generation of breeding, and physical features take thousands and thousands of years to disappear completely, which is why we still have tailbones. But why the hell was Campagnolo still putting points on top of brake levers in the late ’90s? Did their engineers’ pencils not have erasers? There’s really no explanation for it, unless they were actually growing the shifter in a lab. Presumably they mated shifter after shifter over the course of 20 year until the point finally became a pommel:
However, not everybody has the patience to allow nature to take its course, and some riders impose their will upon their integrated shifters, with disastrous results:
And yes, there are integrated friction shifters…
…but I am morally opposed to them and refuse to officially acknowledge them. In fact I may even be more opposed to them than I am to electronic shifting–which I have used, by the way, as it came with my erstwhile Renovo:
[Electronic shifting on a wooden bike. How’s that for irony?]
The main worry with anything electronic is of course whether you’ll be able to get parts for it in the future. At this point the components on the Renovo would be about eight or nine years old, and as far as I can tell the battery at least appears to be readily available:
And a very brief consultation with a popular search engine suggests prices are fairly reasonable, at least as higher-end road bike parts go:
Still, I could never quite understand the point of a shifter that you had to charge occasionally when instead you could have a nearly identical shifter that worked brilliantly and never had to be charged at all.
I give it a year before Growtac comes out with an eletronic integrated friction shifter.
Finally, there’s one more option, which is no shifters at all:
You really can’t go wrong with that.