PART I: THE FUNDAMENTALS
In one of my early posts I drew attention to the not-uncommon phenomenon of inverting old 10 speed drop bars as a way of making the bike more comfortable. I said the mere existence of the phenomenon demonstrates that many people find drop bars uncomfortable and impractical. Which makes sense, as drop bars are a conspiracy against comfort. Indeed Rivendell gets so many regular requests for how to get rid of drop bars that they made an instructional post about it.
Before continuing, a necessary caveat: What handlebars one finds comfortable is subjective. Some people love drop bars, and their experience is legitimate.
We need not look to the extreme of inverted drops to confirm that drop bars are not even beloved by many of those who use them. The Bike Sauce recently released a video reviewing two riser drop bars, a type of design that has become common since at least 2019. Whether we postulate that riser drops are necessitated by the inherent discomfort of drops; the design constraints of contemporary bicycles (low stack, etc); or the poor sizing choices of those who would use them, the point remains: One raises drop bars to increase their comfort; and one makes the drops shallower for the same reason. Because nobody really uses the drops except in duress.
We know this because drop bar apologists admit it outright. Everyone knows that they spend the majority of their time on the hoods. Since the advent of saddlebags-as-front-bags even the flats get used less often. The drops are for “getting under the wind,” and sometimes for hard braking. This reality negates the point that is endlessly trotted out on the supposed benefit of drops: Their many hand positions. And yet rarely do people mention the lack of hand positions when it comes to our next foes.
For “alt bars” are not only an alternative to drop bars. They are also, perhaps primarily, an alternative to mtb/fixed gear bars. For all intents and purposes mtb and fixed gear risers the same bars. Risers are just flat bars with a little help. The only difference between them is that modern mtb bars want you to spread your arms out, condor style. And let’s be real, when was the last time you saw anyone not in Premium Rush use bullhorn bars? They don’t count. Just as risers and shallow drops quietly tell us that drop bars are uncomfortable, MTBers themselves admit that flat bars are not ergonomic. Bikepacking dot com’s list of “alt bars” doesn’t just call them alt bars, it calls them “comfort MTB handlebars.” (For a fuller screed against flat bars than I need to give here, you can read Analog Cycles’ piece.)
This series on transportation cycling is attempting to ask two questions simultaneously. What designs suit transportation cycling? And why is it difficult to find bikes spec’ed for this purpose? What we have found, unsurprisingly, is that performance-oriented design determines and limits what is available, because performance norms necessarily leak into recreational riding. So it is in the case of “alt bars.” Hidden in the grammar itself is the assumption that road bikes and mountain bikes are the standard bikes, with their bars to match. All other options are alternatives to what is “normal.” The term “alt bars” ends up covering a melange of styles with no real design consistency. What has been fascinating is the way that even within the orbit of alt bars, certain handlebars end up being excluded from common discussions, in no small part because alt bars have only become partially accepted in the mtb/gravel world to the extent that these alternatives pay homage to what is considered mainstream. They do this by being wide; by being oriented to the trail.
In their old Swept Back Refresher post, Rivendell casually mentions that they used to carry the Nitto Dove bars, but stopped because they “weren’t trail worthy.” I’ve noted before that this has been Riv’s trajectory, but I thought this was revealing for an off-hand remark. It is a point they also make in their defense of plastic fenders. In a similar vein, in his review of the the Pelago Aristo, Russ at Path Less Pedaled critiqued the bike for its “narrow” handlebars, which he felt didn’t handle gravel descents well. He later re-reviewed the bike after partially transforming it into an ATB. I’m thinking here, too, of the Ron’s/Crust collab bars, the Towel Rack and Ortho Bars, which are as wide as modern MTB bars.
Now I don’t bring these examples up as a critique. In a future post I do want to look more at the lingering performance culture in “alt cycling,” but that’s not exactly what I’m trying to do here. Again, I consider myself part of the same cycling world as the groups above. Nevertheless I think it is useful to look closely at where shifts happen. In each case the alternatives are still oriented to trail riding, which is different than urban transportation riding, and even road-oriented touring (including gravel roads). Interestingly Russ, in another recent video on alt bars, suggests that city bars are a third category of bars, so that to his mind alt bars are not only alternatives to road and mtb, but to city as well, distinct from the latter by virtue of their width. This, I think, is pointing in the right direction, but cannot bring us to where we need to go. I used to be nonplussed that every list of alt bars I was familiar with passed over a host of offerings from Velo Orange and Nitto, even in instances where the shape of the bars were identical. I came to see the VO/Nitto bars were narrower and didn’t reach back as far; and sometimes they weren’t heat treated. This neglect made sense once I realized the mtb and gravel world was determining which alt bars were legitimate, and which were not.
Those who follow me on Instagram will know that I recently took a trip to Copenhagen, a city famous for its cycling culture and infrastructure. One of the most delightful things about the bikes there was the fact that road, mountain, and “gravel” bikes were barely to be found. In Copenhagen they are the alternative bikes, with their alternative bars. It was remarkable how the vast majority of bikes there were “city bikes,” for lack of a better term. They had fenders, racks, baskets, and <50mm swept back bars. I was there for a week and could probably count the number of drop bars I saw on my fingers. There were more flat bars than drops by a fair margin, but they still paled in comparison to swept back bars. The reason that there were so many swept back bars was that, in contradistinction to the US, there isn’t a spectre of road bikes haunting Denmark. Absent a dialectical relationship to race bikes, Danish bikes can be optimized for transportation, and what we see is that when a bike isn’t aspirationally a race bike, it will be spec’d with swept back bars. That American city bikes and hybrids are often given flat bars can be chalked up either to mtb infection, or to sheer laziness. Flat bars are a cinch to install and to pack for shipping. They also play nicely with twisting grip shifters.
Yet “city” is an imperfect category. Classically, “North Road” bars were as much “tourist” as “city” bars. And one of the gold standard alt bars, the Riv/Nitto Albatross, is nothing if not a North Road bar. But things will get clunky if we say “city AND touring bars,” especially since it has become received wisdom that drop bars, with their “many hand positions,” are the best touring bars.
Is it the case that only drop bars offer the necessary hand positions for long rides? Definitely no, and on two fronts:
The first is that, contrary to popular opinion, one can comfortably do long rides with “city bars.” Outside of competition, long rides are broken up by breaks. This is true no matter what bars one is using. One of my favorite ride reports from Velouria was of her first century ride, on the Danube, with an upright “city bike” with 7 speeds. She reported no discomfort on the ride; only a mildly sore backside the next day. Speaking from personal experience, I can ride 50 miles in blissful comfort on Velo Orange Left Bank bars, which are “narrow” and do not offer as many hand positions as other alt bars.
And secondly, as it turns out, some alt bars do provide multiple hand positions. Dan Stroud, one of the great minds behind Bike Insights made a simple Youtube video in 2018 in which he visually tracked the different hand positions of his Albatross bars, and how often he uses them on a ride. He notes 4 different hand positions. According to his video he changes positions every 1 minute and 08 seconds on average. And while he did have a primary position, he only spent 62% of his time there.
He concludes with a point I think is essential to a discussion of alt bars. Somehow he had felt that in order to be a “serious” cyclist, he needed to use drop bars. I will say this has been my experience as well. The continued dominance of drop and flat bars has more to do with social pressure than it does with the actual needs of non-racers, who constitute the overwhelming majority of riders. As I noticed above, there is also a subtle, but far less intentional, orientation toward alt bars that are “trail worthy.” I don’t think we need to siphon off “city bars” from “alt bars.” I think the former should be folded in. “Alt bars” would then be alternatives to drop and flat bars, with a spectrum of designs oriented now here, now there, toward individual preference, bicycle geometry, riding styles, and riding conditions. It seems artificial and unnecessary to me to separate city from alt bars. To put the Albatross bars on a “city bike” does not make them a different category bar than when they’re put on a “gravel bike.” I’ve yet to see Velo Orange’s Tourist bars be included in an alt bar list, and yet they’re two centimeters wider than the Albatross, which for some would make them more properly a “trail worthy” bar than the latter. All of which seems silly and fruitless to me. Are we going to so finesse the boundaries of what constitute alt bars that some with a nearly identical shape are deemed categorically different because they are 3 centimeters narrower than a proper alt bar?
At one point I thought that we needed an alternative category of bike for an alternative category of bars. Yet as soon as I thought about the kinds of bikes I would put in this category I ran into problems. What is the minimum, and what the maximum tire width to fit in this group? What about geometry? Would “gravel/adventure bikes” be excluded? If so, on what grounds? And where is “transportation cycling” in all this? Indeed. I think the reason this post in particular has gotten this long is because transportation and recreational cycling have significantly overlapping needs with regard to handlebars. In the previous two posts of this series I was able to differentiate the needs of the two much more clearly. There remains a key difference in that one often rides roads or trails recreationally, and so would in those instances possibly prefer drop or flat bars; and yet in my experience there is room for alt bars even here.
Let’s summarize what has been covered. In the US, road and mountain bikes are considered the norm, and so drop and flat bars are considered the norm. Drops and flats are uncomfortable for general use since they are oriented to specialized cases. “Alt bars” have developed to deal with this discomfort, but for the most part these have emerged in a relationship with MTBs specifically. City bars are not often envisioned as an alt road bar the way that alt bars are considered an alt mtb bar, so much so that some people consider alt bars an alternative even to city bars. But in a cycling culture where bike designs are not determined by road or mtb, the predominant bars are swept back. The only real difference between many “alt bars” and “city bars” is width and sweep, and sometimes heat treatment. In which case I think city bars should be included in alt bars, as both are alternatives to bars designed for performance road and mountain biking.
In conclusion to part one, I think we should make explicit what is implicit in what we’ve covered above. I obviously assume that swept back bars are the natural choice for transportation cycling. Why?
- They are comfortable, both for long and short rides
- They can have more useable positions than drops
- They put one in a position to better take in the environment around them while riding. This makes them safer
- This positioning is well suited to the repeated starting and stopping of urban riding
- They offer more control, especially while braking
PART II: FINE TUNING THE DISCUSSION will have to be another post
The Complete Bicycle 
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