BIKE MESSENGER CHRIS SAMARTANO REALLY GETS AROUND

by Mark Muro

Boston Globe, June 18, 1985

At 8:07 a.m. Chris Samartano is at 815 Boylston St.

Five seconds later he's not.

Instead, he's half a block farther down Boylston, peddling furiously.After that he's puffing hard around a turning Maytag truck, then back tothe right, but not so far as to slam into a woman exiting her Honda Civic.Twenty seconds after that he's not there either, but up in an office droppinga "Hello" and stuffing a manila envelope into his bag. And then, he goesspinning again.

Pumping toward a Park Square jam, he eases left past a cement mixerand straight toward a wall of gridlock beside the Public Garden. Shy ofdisaster, he squeezes into a crease between autos and construction barriers,zig-zags, swings up onto the brick sidewalk edging the Common, gets freeto cut across the green lawns under the trees. Then he breaks into trafficagain. He angles across Tremont with its idling tour buses and drops fastdown Winter Street on the brick, fast through repetitive turns and blearystrolling secretaries, the buildings overhead shifting and tilting as thecracks of the street rattle under him, the turns rolling toward him, thewhole road flattening across Downtown Crossing, then down past the departmentstores, along a corrogated concrete ramp and then - BUMP! - up the curbto a stop. Then Samartano's on the 29th floor. Two minutes after that,he's back on the street with four envelopes. Cars squonk, trucks roar.Samartano slings a leg over his saddle, pushes off, is gone.

"Whoa," he says when next he's in earshot, and one can't but agree.

For Samartano, a sinewy young man with pink plastic glasses, hustlesfor his pay.

As an employee of Back Bay's Marathon Messenger Co., Samartano is oneof some 150 hearty souls in Boston who, carrying packages and envelopesmarked ''HOT ITEM" and "URGENT URGENT URGENT," negotiate Boston's obfuscatorystreet arrangements equipped with nothing but native guile and a trusty10- speed.

Indeed, though he remains essentially a delivery boy, the 29-year-oldSamartano operates as something more. He is no dumb jobber. He's not somepoor hang dog scrabbling pathetically along the trade routes collectingpittances. He's out there hustling with the cabbies and the florists' drivers.He is, in fact, jaunty.

"I think bike messengers are right in line with the romantic cowboys,"Samartano says once he comes to rest, and what's funny is he's pretty convincingwhen he says it.

"We've got our metal steeds and we cruise the roads," the victim ofonly four accidents continues happily.

"It's all movement, what we do. All speed and movement."

Consider what Samartano does.

Part of a Boston resurgence of that mode made famous by Western Union'splucky delivery boys, Samartano, by flying past gridlock and speeding thewrong way on one way, practices a trade long familiar in New York Citybut new to the Hub. Dispatched by his employer, paid half the deliveryfee, which ranges from $2.75 to $9.75 depending on the nature, urgencyand destination of the cargo, Samartano rides 30 to 40 miles a day, averagesfrom 35 to 40 stops, garners a paycheck of from $200 to $350 a week. Toearn this, he picks up, and he drops off. He moves. He hustles.

As he does, Samartano and his sort fast grow familiar at downtown trafficjams and reception areas. With Marathon, the Boston bike messenger pioneernow making a thousand deliveries a day in its seventh year and wheelingtoward an $800,000 year, rivals flourish as well. Boston Bicycle Couriersdispatches 20 riders to make some 400 deliveries a day. Several additionaloutfits offer bicycle service along with more traditional deliveries. PaulPoveroma of Boston Bicycle Couriers expects additional competition soon.

At any rate, their purpose grows ever more obvious these days.

Hour by hour the streets get fuller, the downtown taller. But no difference:the messengers perform their rounds, get through quickly. They will carryyour resume to State Street, haul your blueprint to Back Bay. They'll takeyour color negative to the Prudential Tower, bring your page proofs tothe North End. But to them it's not what they carry that matters. It'sthe simple getting from Point A to Point B. It's the here-to-there at whichthey excel.

"It's cheaper to hire a bike, with cabs costing $6 or $7, to go theshort distances we need, and bikes can squeeze through the traffic to getthings out quicker," attests Deborah DiNardo, the receptionist who sendspackages for the State Street law firm Kaye, Fialkow, Richmond & Rothstein.

Adds Stewart Tabakin, owner-founder of Marathon, "As more office buildingsopen, we just get busier. It's a trend now," he adds, dropping the magicword. "It's the most sensible way to get things around this city."

And so it seems, as one follows Chris Samartano, a graduate of Amherst
College, on his only mildly hair-raising day's work.

From Summer Street he heads to the Franklin Street Copy Cop, and fromthere he swings through pedestrians, around a manhole, onto Devonshire.There are no stops, no waits. He times perfectly a backing TBI Corp. truck,zooms past its receding hood, bangs a left onto Milk and hits Congress:the Copy Cop at 13 Congress. Then he hits an alley, ducks through a hotelgarage, calls his boss. Then he's off again, to the New England Mutualmailroom to drop an envelop, to the Copy Cop at 815 Boylston to drop offfour boxes, to the Prudential Tower to drop two more envelopes at the GilletteCorporation and Boston Edison. At Edison the receptionist produces a nicesmile and signs on the line. Samartano calls his boss.

As the sky threatens, more stops.

One-twenty Boylston. Fifty-nine Temple. One Post Office Square. ThenAmaprop Development. John Leonard Temporary Employment. E. Vernor Jacksonand Associates. Up, down. Elevator, hall. "Good morning." "Thank you."

By 10:30 puffy clouds brood outside the 35th-floor windows of BostonBay Capital, which proffers Samartano two envelopes to two bank vice presidents,and when he unchains his bike at the building's base the rain begins. Donningwool racing sweats and a yellow windbreaker, the messenger presses on.Downtown is like some dark forest. Tops of buildings are lost in fog, andonly the massive bases, like the trunks of giant trees, are there for Samartanoto wind and sweep around beneath the bruisy clouds. He flies past the huddledarmy on the sidewalks, the shifting patterns of their umbrellas, the carsswishing through the pothole puddles. The streets of the North End gleamlike mirrors, like acres of raindrops. Traffic lights blink one after anotherthrough the rods of rain, plumes of steam rise.

"Business always picks up in the rain," Samartano says. And it does.He soars, wheels, careens his way across town. Near North Station men leanover blueprints in a huge light-filled room as he stows four rolled setsof plans in his grimy bag. Locking his bike back at Post Office SquareSamartano talks about office interiors, a subject about which he knowsa thing or two. "Sixty State has real excellent lobbies," he says. "It'slike visiting God there. At the John Hancock Tower the security guard hasthe best seat in town. He sits on clouds. Some lobbies are really gaudy,though. I know a tacky office when I see it."

After a Whopper, a cheeseburger, a shake, a coffee, a fries, an applepie at Burger King on Boylston, it all blurs.

There he is, judging perfectly the lag time between stop and go. Orthere - isn't that him? - slaloming stalled cars and laggard people, flying,wheeling, careening his way across town while others await lights thatnever change. And isn't that him, passing pleasantries in his tatteredsweatshirt to the silky receptionist back of her bunker-like desk? Yes.Yes. Yes. Two Center Plaza; 262 Washington; 225 Franklin. The ChiofaroCompany. McNamara/Salvia Consulting Engineers.

By day's end he's made 38 stops.

Earlier, this sharp-muscled veteran of a year had said what he likedabout being a bike messenger.

"It's the movement," he said. "The speed. The movement. That's an excellentfeeling."