Wanna be trendy? Smaller is better?

As with just about everything in this world, trends come and go. Right now, the trendy BMXers are all wearing super tight (girls?!) jeans and T-shirts. Is it just for looks? Or does it actually serve a purpose? Sometimes it's hard to tell. I guess having super tight jeans means you'll never have them chewed up by your sprocket and chain...

Go back a few years and nobody was ever worried about weight. Things seemed to have changed a bit since then, and there are probably just as many weight freaks out there as your girl jeans loving rider. Someone said to me a few weeks back that he'd yet to see a Pijin bike that wasn't light... I guess that statement is probably true... As can be seen from the table below, most of us are running biscuit sized gearing... It saves weight... it's nice and small so there's loads of clearance and you don't have to worry too much about bashing your sprocket up... But is smaller better? Maybe... but the downside is that making things smaller and lighter places more stress on the components. Things will wear out or fail before their larger counter parts. There's no real answer to what's best. You decide for yourself! (I really wouldn't recommend wearing girls jeans... they hurt too much!)

	Gearing	T-shirts	Jeans
Carlos	25-9	super tight	mens - tight
Jake	25-9	tight	girls
John	25-9	loose	mens
James	27-10	tight	mens
Dave	28-10	super tight	mens - tight
Joe	28-10	tight	girls
Slosh	28-10	super super tight	mens
J.P.	33-12	XL	mens
Flo	39-14	never	girls

Jake's very chewed up 25T sprocket...


Farmer Dan's 2T (originally 9T) titanium driver...