triplebutted

So my daughter saw a picture of a mixte bike and said she'd rather ride a bike like that to school than her cruiser.
Then I realized, I don't really know much about mixtes.

Which ones, (I've seen old white Peugots) have the double top tubes? I see them on CL all the time with single top tubes. Usually a Schwinn or something like that.

triplebutted

Oh duh! I just read on Sheldon Brown that a real mixte is exactly what I just described, not a "girls" bike. Okay, so now I just need to look...
On Sheldon's site, there is a Raleigh mixte. So there are Raleigh, Peugot, anything else?

cb400bill

Lots of mixte bikes have the twin top tubes.

Peugeot, Motobecane, Suteki, Miyata, Fuji, Raleigh just to name a few.

cb400bill

Check out the Mixte Gallery for more.

https://themixtegallery.wordpress.com/

ColonelJLloyd 

I don't believe a mixte must have twin top tubes. Most do, yes, but I've seen plenty bikes I consider mixtes that have three pairs of stays yet don't have twin top tubes. Just about all of the marques had a mixte in the lineup at some point.

triplebutted

Oh I like that mixtegallery site.

mkeller234

Miyata 210 mixtes have twinn top tubes. The Miyata that I had was a pretty nice bike.

CMC SanDiego

I've got Bridgestone and Nishiki Mixtes, with twin top tubes. Check out this link to see some beauties

https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...+us+your+mixte

michael k

carefull...

Thats how it starts

miamijim

triplebutted

That's how it ALL starts!!!

MrEss

Oh, wow! Quoting the picture because we can all stand to see that again.

Why, on such a beautiful bike, use a sidepull rear brake? A centerpull brake with extra long wraparound straddle wire is so elegant!

Also, why do most people build mixtes with townie bars? Here's some 'saved from the grave' drop-bar mixte love:

Sigurdd50

I love the way Mixtes look with townie bars. They just look like elegant cafe cruisers and commuters. *plink plink*

triplebutted

I agree. That's what I'm gonna do. I have the velo-orange porteur on my commuter and just love it. But for the mixte and my daughters, its gonna be a niagaracycle el cheapo thing...

mkeller234

Here are a couple of the Miyata 210 I flipped a couple years ago. It was a pretty nice bike.

Doohickie

Thank you.

I got busy with things and shut it down for a while. I recently got it going again but want to work through my backlog before opening it up for new submissions.

Just hosting the gallery doesn't make me an expert, but to me the thing that distinguishes a mixte is three sets of stays: Chainstays, seatstays and what I call midstays. The midstays should extend all the way to the headtube, either as two stays or (as on older Schwinn and the newer Rivendell Betty Foy) as a single top tube that continues the line of the midstays.

triplebutted

I NEVER noticed a difference until I started looking into it. I had no idea. I thought they all looked like women's bikes. I appreciate the design more now.

SJX426 

Is this the original sloping top tube design?

bbattle

No, this is:

Doohickie

No, actually. It came about as a compromise. "Mixte" translates as (more or less) "mixed" which is what the French apparently use to denote "unisex".

3speed

Womans or not, I don't really care. I actually don't even care about riding a straight up single top tube womans bike. But why is it that so many people don't think that a mixte is a womans bike? Look at a mens bike, now look at a womans bike, and then look at a mixte. Just because someone says "Oh, see this womans style bike? I know it's designed exactly like a womans bike, but it's somehow not a womans style bike because I said so." doesn't make it not a womans style bike. That's just silly. It would be more appropriate to just say "Hey, I realized that a womans style bike has some benefits and I prefer it sometimes." If anything I think it's more manly to just ride the womans bike and be confident in the fact that you like it and who cares what others think versus trying to deny the fact that it's a womans bike.

EDIT: Just saw Doohickie's post. Did the French have the same womans bikes with dropped top tube that we did?

Bionicycle

It seems with bicycles that almost nothing is ever new under the sun, and trying to find out who did what first is almost impossible. While I was just doing some personal (curiosity) research on the origins of the Mixte frame, I did come across this https://www.rijwiel.net/kruisfre.htm web site that links the Mixte to a group of frames refereed to as Cross frames, or Girder Frames.

If you go to the opening page of this site and look at the hand drawn frame designs, please note that number 33 resembles a Mixte, although it is hard to tell whether it has twin top tubes or not because of the hand drawing. The picture date is 1901, so it does show the history of the Mixte frame going back at least that far.

But, I would be likely to guess that the first "Step through Frame" was more likely a U-frame/loop frame design... But, I will admit I have no evidence to know for sure.

Bionicycle

One could just as easily ask, How did we get to this stupid Men's vs Woman's bike idea in the first place. I know that the step through frame was made so that women of modesty could ride a bike in a dress without hiking a leg over a top tube. I also know that the diamond frame was developed because it was (for the time period) the strongest design that used the lightest tubing, (thus good for racing) a male dominated sport.

But, who was the idiot that ever decided that therefore a man can not ride a step through, and a woman can never ride a diamond frame? The woman diamond frame thing has all but died, but this outdated idea that a man can not ride a step through seems to be doggedly hanging on in the American Bicycle Marketing Department.

When the Mixte frame came out, most families could not afford a "Gender Specific" bicycle... Why buy two bikes when one will do just fine. Unisex bikes made a lot of sense around the turn of the 20th century, where the woman and man both needed to ride the bike for travel.

PS... could you imagine if that would have translated to motor vehicles? Men would only be able to drive pickup trucks, and women would only get to drive pink or light blue sedans.

But, to answer the original statement... no one is saying a Mixte is unisex to make it not a woman's frame, we call it unisex, because that is what it was and is, and was designed to be from the start. It's resemblance to a woman's frame is what most likely drove it to be associated as such.

blaise_f

The mixte with the key to my heart:

scozim 

The '84 Trek mixte I had last year for a short time was a really nice bike. I'm working on a Shogun mixte right now and am looking at the different styles of bars. Anyone use an mtb bar on a mixte or is it pretty much drop bars and "townie"/cruiser style?