No, that’s just a singlespeed. A fixed gear bike has no freewheel. You can’t coast. They have quite a cult. And the front sprocket is more properly called a chainring.
As a slight aside, when visiting San Francisco I’ve noticed that the Supershuttle drivers blithely trust their parking brakes on steep roads; they usually make no effort to crimp the wheels or even pull near the curb. Instead, they just leave the van in the middle of the road, pointed upward, and help the person getting out with their baggage, while the remaining passengers grit their teeth–unless they’re returning San Franciscans who are inured to the experience.
I think that house may be a gas station.
Not that that makes me feel any more secure…
This is by no means the steepest road, but it might qualify for vertical rise vs. horizontal advantage gained - The Moki Dugway in Southern Utah. It rises 1100 ft and you don’t move (what seems) more than a couple of hundred feet horizontally. Most intimidating road I have ever driven.
Some photos:
http://imagesoftheworld.org/GrandCircle/Nov26422.JPG
http://imagesoftheworld.org/GrandCircle/Moki005.jpg
http://marina.fortunecity.com/highwater/419/moki.html
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.carnets-voyage.com/Ouest-USA_etape4b_moki_dugway_008_08.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.carnets-voyage.com/Ouest-USA_etape4b_moki_dugway_008_08_jpg_view.htm&h=640&w=427&sz=30&tbnid=5x5UjRzBxWUJ:&tbnh=135&tbnw=90&hl=en&start=7&prev=/images%3Fq%3DMoki%2BDugway%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26c2coff%3D1%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DN
Okay. I stand corrected. Thanks! Sorry for the bogus information, Chronos.
I’m sorry that I didn’t explain fixed wheel, not realising that its not all that common to many folk.
Fixed, as already explained, means that you must pedal all the time whilst moving, and it also means you cannot change gear, the one you fit is the one you have.
You’d think this would be a serious disadvantage uphill and downhill, as this is when you select differant gears, but, you can pedal far faster than on gears, and uphill you can ride on a larger ratio than on variable gears.
Specialist hillclimb events, where you have a timed run up some nearby monster, are usually won by fixed wheel machines, the advantage is that great.
Fixed seems to somehow reduce the effect of top dead centre and bottom dead centre, the pedals just seem to roll around so much better.
Add to this that fixed machines have significantly less weight, not having all the rear sprocket cluster and the gear changer mechanisms, a decent fixed wheel machine will lose as much as five or more pounds, and much of the lost weight is rotating weight too, which helps enormously.
I had one super track machine, couldn’t have weighed much more than 12 pounds.
Lastly, the chain is in perfect alignment with the sprocket, unlike gears, so you get maximum efficiency, and the wheel construction is very much better too, so you can use lighter wheels(there is a technical reason for this, but I’ll leave that out, suffice to say that fixed wheels are stronger than gear wheels)
It is very strongly advisable to use foot bindings, either toe straps or locking shoes on fixed.
Slight bump - regarding streets built with steps instead of a raodway:
Brit Dopers - anyone else see The Lost World of Mitchell and Kenyon on BBC2? I missed the first few seconds, but the introduction was filmed on a ‘stepped street’ with a Victorian terrace, possibly in Blackburn.
(And FWIW, it’s a fascinating programme, particularly if you’ve any interest in history, or in early cinema, etc. It’s based around a huge recently-discovered collection of c.1900 films of everyday life. BBC World / BBC America viewers, keep a lookout for it. 
)