They couldn’t be any cooler if Steve McQueen were wearing them whilst trying to jump a barbed wire fence riding a MK 1 Raleigh Chopper one-handed with his baseball mitt on the other hand.
The original Adidas Samba has been around since nineteen forty-nine. I’ll do the math for you, that’s SEVENTY-TWO YEARS! They’ve been new, cool, retro, hip, trendy, classic, all depending in which decade you wore them. They even do a vegan version. I can imagine Hipsters loving those!
Adidas has now released a cycling version of their classic trainer, the Adidas Velo Samba that allows you to fit an SPD cleat to them. SPD’s were originally meant for mountain bikes but they are now fitted to lots of different bikes, fixies, hybrids, commuter and even Road Bikes.
Now I’m afraid I’m a bit of a pedal snob when it comes to my Propel Road bike, I don’t use SPD’s on it. To be fair, rightly or wrongly I don’t even use Shimano SPD-SL. I use Look, for no particular reason apart from I wanted to be different from the crowd, even though I slipped on a floor at work and crunched my knee and broke my seat because the plastic cleat and shiny floor didn’t work well together – see Slippery when dry. And I know that SPD metal cleats are bulletproof when compared to road cleats that seem to wear as if they were made from meringue – but it’s a road bike.
Now if I was to buy a cool Fixie (which isn’t going to happen unfortunately anytime soon) either a straight bar or drop bars. I’d put SPD pedals on it just so I could own a pair of Velo Sambas. I’d probably even go for the extra cool yellow ones (What? I like yellow okay) and then when anyone commented on them I could in true Hipster style casually say, “What these old things?”
Now if Adidas are reading this and would like to send me a pair to review then I’m sure I can re-address my pedal snobbery.
