light in doing a simple task — making a 
delivery — and never feeling that it 
somehow could be done better. David 
was a student of political science when 
he turned to messengering to support 
himself. Today he has a Ph.D. from Co- 
lumbia University, and he publishes 
academic articles on psychohistory and 
totalitarianism. But he disdains univer- 
sity work: 
I did this one library job at Columbia where 
I was correcting conference papers. And I 
always had guilt feelings about the job be- 
cause I never felt that I was doing it right. 
There was always more I could do. Whereas 
messengering, you pick it up and you deliv- 
er it. That’s it. It’s over. 
Nonacademic types, such as Joe, also 
appreciate the detachment from re- 
sponsibility: 
I feel in sync with it, if you can call that sat- 
isfaction. I don’t feel anything emotional at 
all. It’s simple, it’s like a very simple proc- 
ess: bing, bing, bing, that sort of thing — like 
a pinball machine, bouncing off the thing. 
Bing the right thing, racking up the num- 
bers; that’s exactly how I feel. 
Remaining calm despite aggravation 
can be difficult for those who consider 
the job a step down from a previous po- 
sition. My own sense of resentment at 
being treated as a messenger by clients 
made me all too ready to use my title, 
Dr., as a weapon, to shock the people I 
was serving. When I asked David how 
he dealt with the problem, he agreed 
that his own career expectations had, at 
first, made him sensitive to possible 
slights: 
The thing I found about messengering is, if 
you let things like that get to you, you screw 
up. It’s dangerous. It’s literally dangerous. 
You start thinking about it. You start talk- 
ing to yourself, and that’s when you lose 
concentration riding and you have acci- 
dents. So I found that I really have to “swal- 
low bitterness,” as the Chinese say. And I 
do it pretty well. I’ll talk to myself, you 
know, for the length of time it takes to get 
down the elevator, and then I wipe it out. I 
go on to what I was doing before. I find that 
if at the end of the day I made a decent 
amount of money, it’s all forgotten. 
The possibility of death is never far 
from the minds of bicycle messengers. 
Most long-term riders have seen other 
cyclists seriously injured on the road. 
Although, he dismisses the gravity of 
most injuries, Bob, the manager of 
Hank’s messenger company, says there 
are two kinds of cyclists — “those who 
have gone down and those who are go- 
ing to go down.” The danger might be 
lessened if cyclists wore helmets, but 
few messengers will do so. “I have to 
admit,” one messenger responded, “I 
see people wearing helmets on bicycles, 
and I feel sort of contempt for them. A 
snickering contempt.” For some, the 
refusal to wear helmets is like wearing 
an elite uniform. It adds drama and ex- 
citement to life, and it does so by em- 
phasizing the nearness of death. 
Every once in a while a truck comes out of 
the shadow. I don’t know where from, but it 
almost takes my life. And you know, it’s in- 
teresting — it’s nice to feel alive again. You 
get that rush. You look at the sky, and you 
realize you could have cashed in your chips 
right then and there. It’s a nice feeling. It’s 
like being on the edge. 
The sense bicycle messengers have of 
being an elite probably has a lot to do 
with the danger they face. They are like 
the pony express riders of yesteryear. 
For some, jumping a light is like a dar- 
ing dash across the plain to the moun- 
tain pass. Even the weather plays a role 
in shaping their image. Long-term rid- 
ers see themselves more in harmony 
with the weather than battling against 
it. 
Bad weather sets the stage for the he- 
roic aspects of messengering. “The 
worse the weather, the better,” says one 
messenger. “Snow is better than rain.” 
In bad weather, the hero-messenger is 
in great demand. “Somebody’s got to 
do this stuff,” says David, “and if I 
wasn’t doing it, there wouldn’t be any- 
body to take my place.” David’s most 
heroic moment occurred several years 
ago when the city’s surface transporta- 
tion system was virtually paralyzed by 
snow: 
There was one other bike along the road. I 
had to take three or four runs down to the 
Battery [Manhattan’s southern tip]. I got 
down to the Battery, and it was like Antarc- 
tica. Nothing was visible, and the snow was 
drifting four to five feet. Finally, I began to 
try to come back uptown, up Third Ave- 
nue — it’s called the Bowery down there. 
And I just said, “Screw it!” and collapsed 
into a snow drift. I was just going to go to 
sleep and die. Fortunately, a man in a snow- 
plow came along, and he saw me waiting 
there and he motioned to me. And I just fol- 
lowed behind him back to midtown. It was 
really lucky. 
On Friday evenings I would sit in the 
basement of Nathan’s Delicatessen on 
43rd Street and Broadway and trade 
stories with other messengers. One Fri- 
day I sat drinking beer and massaging 
the toes that I had twisted in a fall from 
my bicycle several hours earlier. I was 
worried about my tape recorder, uncer- 
tain how well it had survived the fall, 
Able to weave through traffic at 
high speed, bicycle messengers derive 
satisfaction from competing with 
heavy vehicles. The dangers of 
street traffic and poor road conditions 
add tension and excitement. 
and I was worried about myself, uncer- 
tain how much longer I could face the 
hazards of riding. Cochise, a long- 
haired hippie type, sat at the opposite 
end of the table eating a bizarre combi- 
nation of packaged health food and gar- 
ishly colored pink cotton candy. His 
jaw still bore the scar from a fracture he 
received in a collision with a taxi. I had 
heard about Cochise from the other 
messengers. I introduced myself, and 
he responded by pointing to his sock- 
less feet — his trademark. “Why don’t 
you wear socks?” I asked, horrified by 
the thought of riding in winter without 
them. 
I don’t like socks. I don’t like putting them 
on. I don’t like taking them off. I don’t like 
going through them in the morning. I don’t 
like buying them. They rip. They shrink. 
They pull. You sleep overnight somewhere, 
you got to put the same pair on the next 
morning — ugh. You wear them over- 
night— ugh. And another thing: No matter 
how damn cold it gets, no matter how high 
the snow is, it’s a little bit of summer. I’m 
not wearing socks, man. You understand? 
It’s a little bit of inner strength too. 
Perhaps a need to show inner 
strength has its roots within a deeper 
sense of defeat. Messengers are general- 
ly acquainted with defeat before they 
become messengers, and their vulner- 
ability to cars, mechanical breakdowns, 
bad weather, and company mistreat- 
ment makes them continually familiar 
with it. But messengers also have a 
sense of victory, a sense fierce enough 
that once it is achieved, they will not 
part with it. “Do we all like going to 
work every day?” Cochise asked, deter- 
mined to put an end, once and for all, to 
my questions. 
We don’t all like going to work every day. 
It’s something you gotta do. I just look 
around this restaurant. There’s not another 
job anyone has in this restaurant that I 
would want. You take me outside. Look up 
and down the street. All these people got oc- 
cupations that they’re doing, right? All 
right, some of them are just walking by, we 
don’t know what they’re doing. But you 
show me just about anyone who’s working 
out there. I don’t want any of their jobs. If I 
gotta work, I’d rather keep this. 
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