Manhattan's streets are aswarm with "bikers" a death defyingnew breed of urban messenger
Newsweek, 1985
by Peter McHillop
"Gridlock. I love it!" shouts Mark DiSalvo, 27, as he squeezesa bodywide crack between a commuter bus belching black smoke and a stalledgarbage truck. Eyes bulging, muscles taught, he jerks his bike across SeventhAvenue, brushing the bumber of an oncoming cab and forcing a less seasonedcommuter in a green stationwagon to jerk to an abrupt halt. "Thatwas close!"
Meet New York's fastest paper pusher - the bicycle messenger. With twowheels and a will, these young men are proving that a low-tech piece ofmachinery still plays an important role in moving information in a high-techera. A far cry from the crisply dressed Wester Union cyclist who pliedthe same streets 30 years ago, today's bike messenger, often dressed inItalian racing silks, is a young entrepreneur riding a $300 10-speed clverlydisguised in tattered tape and soot. Businessmen love their speed, butpedestrians - especially old ladies - dread their antics. "It's bookieon the crosswalks," says Larry Riley, a concerned official of theNew York State Department of Transportation.
The past decade has seen an explosion of two-wheeled messengers servingManhattan's booming white-collar industries. Five years ago there wereonly 500 comercial bikers roaming the streets of New York. Now there aremore than 4,000. Faster than a foot messenger, immune to gridlock, ableto park for free and impossible to tow, the messenger and his bike arean obvious solution to making quick deliveries in Manhattan's paralyzingtraffic.
In a city where cars run red lights routinely, pedestrians jaywalk andmight makes right of way, bikers are never far from the prospects of grievousbodily harm. There is no greater fear than that of being "doored"into oblivion by some unsuspecting shopper stepping out of a cab. But worsethan the fear is the grind of nine hours a day in the saddle, suffusedin bus exhaust and four letter abuse by angry New Yorkers. Bikers mustslide and spin through the slush and ice of frigid February mornings andchoke in the whithering heat of an August afternoon.
Good Money: Ninety percent of the commercial bikers never make it pasttheir first year. Most don't make it through first month. But for thosewho do, there is money to be made, sometimes more than recent Ivy Leaguegraduates can command on their first jobs. Phil Wohlers dropped out ofgraduate school and now makes more than $35,000 a year churning up anddown the streets of New York; he often stops midroute to call his brokerfor stock an option quotes. The more typical bike messenger averages aweekly take home pay of $350. a good salary, especially for New York'schronically underemployed minority youths. "I used to be a drug seller.I was a hustler. I got tired of going to jail," says Steve Vicars,27, of Harlem. For Vicars, biking was his first chance to make some "real"money. "Where else is a kid from Harlem going to make $400 a week?" asks Earlybird Express vice president Michael Fiorito. "Aguycan come here and see he can make money - good money - and not have tobe on the streets committing crime for a living."
Vicars colleagues are an assortment of stugling actors, poorly paidmusicians, bicycle junkies and even a burned-out stockbroker or two. EdLeonard, for example, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania threeyears ago wanting to be a lawyer. One year of paralegal work at a top NewYork law firm convinced him otherwise. Working full time Leanord can make$600 a week at the Streetwise Messenger Service. Now spurred by the factthat former bike messenger, Nelson Vials won a silver medal at the LosAngeles Olympics, he splits his time delivering packages and practicingfor the 1988 games.
Vails is already one of the legends of this fledgling profession. Anotherhas no name, at least none known to his peers. He's simply the Masked Man,a mysterious biker who wears a white hockey mask and takes risks that makeeven seasoned veterans wince. "He's a wild, wild man, a crazy rider,"says Vicars, who has seen him grab hold of a police cars to catch a rideup Broadway. Listening to some of Streetwise's riders talk as they sitaround a long table littered with empty orange-juice cartons, spare partsand copies of The New York Times, one realizes that delivering the goodfor Manhattan's movers and shakers can offer a kind of job satisfactionjust not found inside four walls from 9 to 5. "You get adrenalinerushes every day," says Ed Leonard. "You get into the flow, youweave in and out, you're flying, you're in the groove."
If you have comments or suggestions, email me at messvilleto@yahoo.com