Wheel Tales of Manhattan's Bike Messengers
New York Magazine, January 13, 1986
by Danitia Smith
He sits alone on the Staten Island Ferry. Immaculately dressed in awhite shirt, red tie, and raincoat with epaulets, he might be a bankeror a lawyer gazing up from his Business Week to glance at the approachingskyline. It is unseasonably warm, and the air hangs thick over the downtowntowers. The traffic will be bad, There will be many pedestrians. Only theman in the raincoat and his comrades will really move today.
The ferry reaches the Manhattan shore. The man disappears into the BowlingGreen subway station. gets out at 59th Street. enters a decrepit-lookingtownhouse nearby, and heads straight for the bathroom. Five minutes laterhe emerges, transformed.
Dressed now in black Lycra tights, black hooded sweatshirt, and blueCampagnolo bicycle hat, he jots down a few notes on his manifest, picksup his Panasonic track bike with one hand. rushes down the steps of thebuilding... and faster than a speeding bullet, skitters into the snarledtraffic and heads down East 55th Street, going the wrong way.
Curtis McCants, the star of the Careful Courier Service, may be thefastest bicycle messenger alive. and he makes so much money ($30,000 to$40,000 a year) that he has incorporated himself. He is king among perhapsas many as 4,000 riders who, in the eyes of irate pedestrians are barrellinglawlessly through the city streets. But perhaps the rest of New York isjust jealous: In a city whose transportation system has largely brokendown these folks get around fast.
"Everybody in New York City has to deliver," says Martin Sterbal,who works alongside McCants. "Only electronic transfer can deliverinformation faster in this city than bicycle messengers"
Bicycle messengers can be seen around the city at all hours, in allkinds of weather: phantom presences sideswiping pedestrians as they hurlthemselves, whistles blasting. against traffic on one-way streets: blurredimages ignoring red lights and signals, exchanging obscenities with cabbiesand bus drivers; demons holding on to the wheel flaps of city buses orgripping the windows of garment-center trucks to get a free ride uphill.You can see them in the middle of the worst snowstorms, hunched againstthe whirling white, pushing along the avenues where the subway lines run,because the heat from the subway melts the snow a little and gives theriders some traction. ("Bad weather sets the stage for the heroicaspects of messengering," wrote Jack Kugelmass, an anthropologist,in Natural History magazine.)
Always, their trademark canvas sacks are slung over their backs. Mostof these rather elegant sacks, with their Velcro fasteners, are made byone man, 76-year-old Frank Martini, of Globe Canvas, on Broome Street Thecraft will die with him, he says.
Bike messengers are the object of scorn, ridicule, and legislative action(New York's bicycle law, passed in 1984, demands that all commercial bicyclistswear little identifying license plates and carry I.D. 's). They have beenthe subject of anthropological studies, documentary films, at least twomovies, "Rush It" and "Quicksilver".The latter, which teams Kevin Bacon and Dan Melnick the star and the producerof the teen hit Footloose, is the saga of a stockbroker who loses his fortuneon a daring options maneuver and becomes a bike messenger. The movie, dueout in February, will feature bike dancing, something messengers rarelydo, although those with brakeless bikes stop by whipping their front wheelsinto the air, which may look like bike dancing to some. Messengers haveeven produced their own Olympic bike-racing champion. New Yorker, NelsonVails, who won the silver medal in 1984 in the sprint competition.
Despised as bicycle messengers may be (by all but their employers),and dangerous as they are. They are fast becoming folk heroes the pony-expressriders of the eighties. The bicycle messenger might even be regarded bysome as the ultimate urban man tough, resourceful, self- contained, ridingagainst the odds, the city stacks against everybody.
The occupation, which has existed in organized form for only fifteenyears, has suddenly become the hip "straight job for aspiring artistsand intellectuals, what cab driving used to be. "It's rather an Aristotelianjob," says Sterbal. "You're like the Unmoved Mover-Aristotle’sGod, himself unmoved, but causing everything else in his path to move."Many bicycle messengers, however, are minority kids (only 3 to 4 percentare women) who've found a calling that pays a lot more than working atMcDonald's or being a bank teller.' Bicycle messengers are independentcontractors. Most get no health insurance and no vacation pay, but theycan often fix their own hours. A top messenger can earn $500 a week.
The first all-bicycle messenger service, Can Carriers, opened in 1970,hauling film cans back and forth between production companies and labs."It was the creative community (advertising, photography) where thebike messengers first became popular," says Concord Courier's NancyArcher, vice-president of the Association of Messenger Services and theunofficial historian of the trade. "They don't look for people wearingties. They are more interested in speed. They differ from the financialand legal communities, who tend to use 'walkmen.’" The are between300 and 400 messenger services in the city today, and about 35 rely primarilyon bikers,
Like generations of street kids, bicycle messengers have carved outtheir own culture in the city. They have their own special road names,their own language, their own -uniforms". Blue Campagnolo bike hats,Darth Vader-like ski masks, and hockey helmets with face guards are bigthis year. Black fingerless bike gloves and black Lycra tights, which massagethe legs,
And of course,. messengers have their own code of the streets. -If you'regoing the wrong way on a one-way street, and here’s a pedestrian crossing,.you don't pass in front of him." says Martin Lasowitz. who rides forWe Are the Best Messenger Service. But, he adds, dead pan, "if you'regoing the right way, you have no qualms."
In many ways, Curtis McCants isn't a typical messenger. He is, at 33,an old man by biker standards and stays competitive by following a stricthealth-food diet Recently, perhaps as a concession to age, he stopped ridingin to work from his home on Staten Island, and takes the subway and ferryinstead. The public may think of bikers as wild, irresponsible kids, butMcCants is a devoted family man with three children aged sixteen, eleven,and a wife, who fears for her husband's safety when he's on the streets."Every day, I worry about Curtis getting hurt, the telephone ringingand someone calling to say Curtis got hit by a taxi and he's in the hospital,"says Phyllis.
McCants, Deeply religious, Curtis grew up poor-his family used to burnold tires for fuel in winter but he graduated from high school on the honorroll. He wanted to be a computer programmer but discovered he could makemore money as a bicycle messenger.
It’s a business," he says, adding that there are three keys tohis success "intellect, consistency, and physical stamina" Helines up his runs in order. That way, if he has three deliveries on 43rdStreet, he doesn't waste time going back and forth. He establishes friendshipswith his customers. He has an excellent relationship with a man he knowsonly as Alan, who works in the mail room at United Jewish Appeal. Alanlets him know when there are a large number of press releases to be givenout at a certain time of day. Then McCants tries to station himself nearbyat the right time, so that he is called upon by his dispatcher.
McCants eats almost nothing during the day. He has no breakfast, stoppingonly to drink a solution of maple syrup, water, lemon juice, and cayennepepper he got the recipe from a book called the Master Cleanser. He drinksit from a glass jar, because a thermos takes too long to uncap. In theevening, he eats for the first time.
I decided to try following McCants one day. But how to do it? ShouldI take out my old English bike with the rusted gears, put on my pink high-tops,and chase after him? I thought about him zipping through red lights againstthe oncoming traffic. I thought about my two kids, for whom I'm partlyresponsible. And I thought about getting killed. I decided to take a cabinstead. Knowing I couldn't keep up with him for every delivery. I arrangedto meet him at his first stop in half an hour.
It was 8:50 A.M., starting time at Careful, on a gray, sultry morning.The walls of the messenger service's office at 157 East 55th Street arestained with grease; a dirty blue industrial carpet covers the floor. Already,the air was rank with cigarette smoke and the ashtrays were filled withold butts. Tacked up around the room were Hagstrorm maps of the city. Aprinter disgorged orders from Careful's main office on 33rd Street. Rockmusic from WBLS sputtered from a radio.
Behind a desk sat Jerome White, the dispatcher. On the couch and chairsvarious messengers - called footmen or walkmen-were reclining as if ina daze. But McCants and another biker were poised for action.
Curtis does one sixth of my work." said White. "Curtis isa self-dispatcher."
After one last sip of Ginseng Up, McCants took off. I followed him tothe street, bent over my notebook to jot down the time, then looked up.He had vanished. I hailed a cab and gave the driver the address on McCants'smanifest. The envelope was to be delivered to a doctor at New York Hospital,at 525 East 69th Street, "No such address," said the cabbie."Try New York Hospital at 525 East 68th Street."
A wrong address! This was really going to screw McCants up. Everythinghe does depends on split-second timing. I reached New York Hospital andconsulted a security guard, who said the doctor worked in the C.V. StarrPavilion, at 520 East 70th Street. I wound my way through the corridorsof the hospital. waiting for McCants in Starr. At 9:34, he hadn't showed.He probably got lost. I went outside and glanced up the smoggy avenue.There, I caught a brief glimpse of a blue cap, and then McCants, poisedto take off on his bike.
"Curtis!" I yelled over the roar of traffic.
He turned, saw me, waved, and took off on York into the oncoming traffic.He had beaten me to it, making his delivery seconds before I arrived.
Central to the messenger's consciousness at all times is speed. Howfast can he get from here to there? How many runs can be made? All messengerslike to tell tale of feats of incredible speed and daring. They rememberruns from years ago, the exact addresses, the time they took.
After work, at the Chick Chack office, an apartment in the basementof a five-floor brownstone on West 15th Street messengers gather to smokecigarettes, sip beer, fill out their logs for the day, and trade war stories."Li'l Joe" Valentin, a daredevil on wheels and one of Chick Chack'sfastest bikers, remembers going "home from 39th and Second to 93rdand Lexington in fourteen minutes - "I'm flyin', man!"
One way of gaining speed is to hold on to trucks and buses "Theold city buses are better for holding onto than the new ones," saysValentin. "You can see the lights better, when he's gonna stop. Theleft-hand side of the bus is safer because the right side is the door.The garment-center truck drivers, they give you a break."
"Speed becomes its own object." says Seth Amgott, a formerWilliams College student and an aspiring writer, "I love the feelingof sheer velocity. I love Third Avenue, the Park Avenue viaduct,"
"Go for the gold, the glory, and gusto!-shouts Omar White, sixteen,who says he lives by himself in Brooklyn and attends South Shore High Schoolwhen he is not messengering.
Says John "Road" Holland, who has curly red hair and the lookof a street urchin, "sometimes you just go nuts. You don't realizeit's just a package"
Many messengers use "fix bikes," which have only one gearand don't coast, the same setup used by bike racers in track events. Themessengers' legs are always working, round and round and round - pure,continuous motion. Many messengers put together their own "fixes"removing gears and brakes. Gears are a nuisance, and, says McCants, "bythe time you've shifted gears, you're there anyway.
Gears and brakes add weight to a bike - they're just more things tomaintain. Gear cables are inclined to pop, for instance, and brakes getjammed during snowstorms - problems for the messenger on the go.
There are other reasons that bicycle messengers sometimes don't havebrakes. "On a track bike you lose your concentration if you have abrake," says Zia "Z" Tarzi of Cycle Service Messengers.Tarzi, who is half French and half Afghan, is sitting with his friend Chamberlain"Chain" Robinson, also of Cycle, in the Moondance diner on SixthAvenue near Grand Street. Zia has ambitions to open a boutique someday,and Chain describes himself as an "unknown artist." They bothwear the Cycle uniform, a dashing yellow sweatshirt with the black Cyclelogo and black Lycra tights.
"It's a standard of excellence if you can go out there on a fixwith no brake," Robinson says. "It's like the black belt of bicycleriding."
If you see a brake on a fix bike, you know the bicycle messenger's achicken," adds Tarzi.
Messengers also often ride without helmets. McCants says helmets aretoo hot to wear all the time. He sometimes wears a hockey helmet, because"a regular helmet is designed for crashes at only three to four milesan hour."
Until recently Amgott didn't wear a helmet either. The absence of ahelmet served as a constant reminder to him that he "could die."
Holland still won't wear a helmet. "I'm the type of guy I figure,I wear a helmet, I'll break my leg," he says.
But of course, accidents do happen. Noses are broken, bikers' sacksare caught in bus doors and the messengers are dragged along the street,cabbies come after them with tire irons and demolish their bikes, or sothe messengers claim. "It's dangerous out there," says McCants,who is in the middle of a lawsuit with a cabbie who, he says, cut him offand caused him serious knee and back injuries.
The accidents are badges of honor, like war injuries. Omar White hasone shaggy-dog story. "I was coming off CPW. I got hit by a LibertyLines bus at 59th and Fifth. I kept goin', " he claims. I had a packageto deliver. Then I got hit by a cab. I don't believe this s---! I had littlewords for the cabbie. But I kept on goin'. I got to 47th Street and gothit by another bus - there was this little old lady who had a cane. I didn'twant to hit her because it would've been on my conscience. I got cut offby the bus I was in the hospital. Ask my doctor!"
"Check it out!" cries Holland. "Cabbies try to run usover. They yell and curse at us. Some receptionists, they sign and throwit your face! You can't use the bathroom. If it weren't for us the economyof the city would go kaput!"
Truck drivers, the messengers say, are especially nasty, even flickingcigarette ashes onto the cyclists' laps.
"Yesterday," says White, "this truck driver in an eighteen-wheeler,wearing a big cowboy hat, he looks down at me. 'Say boy, when your mamatold you to go play in traffic, did you take her seriously?'"
Most messengers see themselves as outsiders, inhabiting a world withits own rules. "It's amazing to me, coming into an office from theroad, where it's free," says Holland. I see everybody clawin' at eachother to get to the top in ten years."
Jack Kugemass has written that messengers are "like the heroesof the West... resentful of conformity and rebelling against. Often theyare loners who have run into trouble while pursuing more conventional careers.For them, the excitement of bicycling helps to counter the reality of defeat."
McCants had several more deliveries to make after the one to New YorkHospital. He had estimated he'd be back at the office on East 55th Streetat ten. So I hailed another cab and rode the fifteen blocks to meet him.
As the cab made its way through the heavy air and snarled traffic, Ithought about McCants riding his bicycle in all this. "Sometimes you'reriding between two buses, so close that your arms rub against them,"he had said.
He always rides in the middle of the traffic. "It's extremely dangerousto ride on the side of the traffic, though by law you you're supposed toride on the far right," he says. "If a cab is going to pick someoneup, it stops on the right. People also step off the sidewalk into the edgeof the traffic. I foolishly used to ride on the side, until one day a yellowcab ran into me and hit me. He pulled out a tire iron and tore my bikeup." Vehicles stopping suddenly in front of him are another hazard.One time a cabbie came to halt in front of McCants. "I went rightover the top of him with my bike in my hand. I did a complete somersaulton Madison. I didn't get hurt that time."
When he rides, McCants carries a mental map of the city. Like most messengers,he has memorized hundreds of addresses. He knows which building numbersare between which avenues, which streets are one-way and which way theyrun. He knows too, the best and worst streets to ride on (the potholeson Eighth Avenue in the Fifties, for instance, make that stretch nearlyimpassable).
As I rode in the cab. I figured I was bound to be back at the officebefore McCants. But then, on East 55th Street between Second and ThirdAvenues, the cab came to a grinding halt. Stuck. "I might as wellwalk!" I told the cabbie. I got out and ran up the block. Just intime to catch a glimpse of McCants bounding up the stairs of the CarefulCourier Service, ready for his next assignment. Living proof that the fastestway to get around Manhattan is on a bike.
Perhaps the two greatest problems for bicycle messengers are "yourbasic bad attitude pedestrian" and "the light on 33rd Street."The biker's worst enemy is the pedestrian," says McCants, whose roadname is B-6 - his license plate. "People have a tendency to walk infront of you, and they get run over," he says evenly. "If peopledon't see you coming, you got no problems. People have patterns of walking.Once they see you coming, the pattern becomes erratic." So, if yousee a messenger hurtling toward you, McCants advises, "don't try toget out of the way."
"Pedestrians are so self-righteous!" complains Martin Lasowitz."When I've got a green, they still jaywalk. Traffic lights mean nothingto them. I don't know why they expect us to be more disciplined. They'relike sleepwalkers!"
Actually, the number of pedestrians killed by bike riders (not necessarilybike messengers - police don't have statistics for them alone) is 2 or3 a year, while 262 pedestrians were killed by cars in the first ten monthsof 1985. In the same period, there were 660 reported injuries to pedestriansby bikers, while 9,739 pedestrians were injured by cars through September.These relatively benign statistics are of little comfort, however to therelatives of people like Rebecca Monk, who was killed by a bike messenger,while crossing Madison Avenue at 52nd Street, reportedly against the lightin November 1982. Or Judith Gold, who in 1981 stepped off the sidewalkat Park Avenue on a green light and was hit by a bicycle messenger; theimpact shattered her pelvis. Or to actress Ann Sachs, who on her firstday in New York was knocked to the ground by a bike messenger and, mercifullygot up unscathed. "What got me is that he didn't even apologize!"she says.
Police Department statistics suggest that pedestrians by bikes mostoften, for some unfathomable reason on Thursdays between 4 and 7 pm, thoughmost fatal accidents happen on Mondays between 4 and 10 pm. So if you areout for a stroll at these times, watch it.
"The problem is not that their actual accident rate is so veryhigh," says Bette Dewing of Pedestrians First, a pedestrian-rightsgroup formed mainly to counter the messenger menace. "The problemis that this kind of riding causes so much stress to those sharing thestreets with them. Especially the vulnerable pedestrian."
The bicycle light on 33rd Street is one effort by the city to curb anarchy.Hanging at Herald Square, where Broadway crosses the Avenue of the Americas,it is a beacon of controversy. Designed to force riders to stop, it ranklesthe messengers because it slows them down. "The only ticket I evergot!" claims McCants. "It's out of sync! When the car light isred, the bike light is green. It's dangerous. And if you follow the bikelight they ticket you." Messengers were further outraged by a recentarticle in the New York Times, reporting that bicyclists were ignoringthe light, with a resulting increase in traffic summonses. The articlewas like rubbing salt in the world. Seth Amgott wrote an angry letter tothe Times comparing the messengers' plight to that of the Jews of medievalEurope - despised by all, but essential to the economy.
Next on the list of obstacles that impede the messenger's progress ashe zaps across the city is the dispatcher. In the mind of the messenger,his dispatcher is like some blind Hamm from Beckett's "Endgame",sitting in the office, barking out irrational orders, making him go allthe way down to Wall Street with one measly little envelope and nothingelse on the way, or worst of all, putting him on hold.
"I was downtown on Wall Street," says McCants. "I calledin. The dispatcher put me on hold. I couldn't get his attention. So I goton my bike and rode up to the office on West 27th Street. When I got there,he still had me on hold! It had been ten minutes. He said, I'm just punchingthe button! I said, "You're costing me money. You're not working meup to my potential."
I realized there was no way I could keep up with McCants all day, soI arranged to meet him at the office at 4:30. Arriving there on time, Iwas told, "Curtis is still in the thirties somewhere." I picturedhim in the traffic, slipping between cars, smiling to himself. Sometimeswhen McCants is riding along, he had told me, his voice serious, he thinksabout how everything we do is for the glory of God."
So now I sat and waited in the office and pictured McCants riding throughthe midtown traffic, thinking about the glory of God, about pedestrians, about the light on 33rd Street...
At 5:35, he arrived, appearing suddenly, like quicksilver, bike heldaloft, sweat running down his face, dark circles under his eyes.
"How was the day?" I asked.
"Great!" he said, smiling. "Sixty-one drop-offs."That would mean about $195. I calculated. And in one day, he had visitedsome 90 places.
"Anything unusual happen today?" I asked.
"Well, I got a good stock tip," he said. "In one placeI overheard two men talking about a merger. I think I'll look into it.It might be helpful. After all, I don't see myself doing this in ten years.It's too dangerous."
If you have comments or suggestions, email me at messvilleto@yahoo.com