| Bicycle messengers (also known as cycle couriers) have carried
packages by bicycle for more than a century, but it wasn't until the 1980s and 1990s that bicycle messengers became cultural icons. With its combination of high risk and low payoff, bike
messengering is often seen as the quintessential youth culture job. The
urban antihero overtones and sleek fashions
(such as Lycra shorts and rugged shoulder satchels) are emblematic of bike messenger
sub-culture.
Commission-based compensation encourages risk taking among messengers, who are conversely not party to medical benefits or job
security, although some in the messenger community blame a media profile which highlights the outlaw image and fails to focus on
the many long-term bicycle messengers who are neither young nor reckless.
There have been sporadic attempts to organise messengers beginning in the mid 80s with the Independent Couriers Association in
NYC which was formed to beat the mid-town bike ban in that city. Since 1993, messengers of the world have come together to
celebrate messenger culture and remember their dead (http://www.ahalenia.com/memorial/) at
the annual Cycle Messenger World Championships (http://www.messengers.org/ifbma/history.html). In the '90s fax machines and modems began to cut
into the bicycle messenger business. Anecdotally, in the mid-1980s, Manhattan, New York City had
7,000 bike messengers to navigate its crowded streets; by 1994, this anecdotal number had
shrunk to 2,000, although part of the story is that a race to the bottom amongst messenger company proprietors seeking market
share at the expense of price led to a fall in price per job, leaving many messengers to seek other employment. Average gross
earnings reportedly fell from $600 to $300 a week.
Nerves of Steel (http://www.iplayoutside.com/Articles/2001/03/29-Nerves.html) was published in 2000 by Rebecca
'Lambchop' Reilly and is a compelling anthology of interviews with messengers from all over the USA.
There is a great yet not well-known documentary called "Pedal" (2001) that documents New York-based bicycle messengers.
External Links
|
