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Under the
Bridge, Into the World of Bike Messengers
Los Angeles Timwa, December 9, 2000
By Joe Mozingo
Mario Lopez is coasting toward the towers on Bunker Hill. The low, dreaded
drone of an MTA bus has crept up behind him as he glides on his mountain
bike. He hates buses--constantly edging him into curbs and belching fumes
in his face. Like some big, breathy predator, the thing hovers on his tail
before it passes. In the world of the bike messenger, buses are the enemy.
Lopez is 24 and riding in the glare to the outdoor office for bike messengers
in downtown Los Angeles. His backpack is filled with documents he has to
deliver for the district attorney's office. Spry, with a kid's face, he wears
a Thrasher skate cap and ragged Adidas shoes.
He's had a busy morning. He launched off a favorite sidewalk hump in the
Wilshire District and almost ate it on the pavement. He dodged people and
ran red lights. He tried to serve a summons on some guy in an apartment building
on Alvarado. But the guy wasn't there.
So now, on this humid December day, he's headed to hang with his fellow couriers.
He swings a rapid U-turn between moving cars and hops the curb into the shade
of the 4th Street overpass at Flower Street. The smell of pot hits first,
then urine. Gnats hover in the shadows. Bike tires and inner tubes dangle
from a eucalyptus tree that has had its lower branches snapped off. Trash
is everywhere.
For years, this spot of concrete and battered tile has been where the hundred
or so bike messengers have gathered to wait for dispatches coming on their
pagers and cell phones. On national bike messenger Web sites, "The Bridge"
is listed as the place to hang out in Los Angeles.
That is not to say the couriers love this dark corner of the city. Just a
couple weeks ago, as they were kicking a hacky sack around or playing cards,
a man's body fell from the bridge. He landed on the rocks behind them, his
head split open. No one knew if he was dead. Emergency crews came and removed
him.
Although their hangout is about 50 yards from the sparkling Bonaventure Hotel,
the bikers' makeshift office feels like a forsaken cave. It is always dark,
backed by a bank of river rock, gunite and concrete columns.
Homeless people sleep in dirt recesses and leave their syringes in the morning.
Occasionally, the messengers have tried to migrate to more pleasant, sunnier
terrain at a corporate plaza a block away.
"The thing about over there," Lopez says, "The girls are beautiful. It's
like a fashion show."
He and some close friends still spend part of their days at that bank plaza,
soaking up the sun, joking and commenting on the passing parade. But whenever
they start to gather en masse, security guards and police send them back
under the bridge. "They just leave us alone right here," he says.
After Lopez arrives here, he starts winging a football over traffic on Flower
Street to a fellow rider. Others drink beer. They are loud and messy. Passersby
put their heads down and walk fast. Don't make eye contact, they seem to
be thinking.
"They see the trash and all the loud noises and try to stay to the other
side of the street," says Jonas Lanford, 30, a veteran messenger and bike
racer. He has tried to get his buddies to keep the place clean, he says.
Lanford is a hard-core courier. He has crashed through a windshield and a
van door. The nerves in one arm are shot. A foot-wide tattoo of his nickname--Broken
Spoke--crosses his back. And thick, puffy scars line his arms where he branded
himself with a scalding-hot bike cog--a symbol of brotherhood between himself
and five courier friends.
This is not just a job, after all. In many ways, bike messengers are an underground
culture. Or mix of cultures. Lopez is a skater who used to do his runs on
a skateboard. Lanford is a cyclist all the way. There are a few gangbangers,
some jocks, some stoners and some hip-hop dudes. And hairstyles run the gamut.
There are dreadlocks, Afros, shaved heads, ponytails, plats, cornrow braids
and--the old standard--short back and sides. Almost all are men, mostly in
their 20s.
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