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In Gear
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Celebrating bike-messenger
style, accessorized by blood, bruises, and bandages.
By Brian Miller
Seattle Weekly, May 31, 2006
Like most towns, Seattle has ambivalent feelings about bicyclists
jockeying on city streets among the cars. Inevitably called a "bike
friendly" city in the national press, the perspective is a little
different from the road. I ride most days to work (not the same thing
as riding for a living), and I've had my share of close calls. I
developed an aggressive riding style in New York City, where I
considered taxis a menace and bike messengers the ballsiest species on
the planet-doing things I would never dare. Seattle's messenger
community seems comparatively sane and courteous (particularly toward
pedestrians), less diverse, a little behind the Manhattan fashion
curve. That's where bike messengers were first discovered by
fashionistas, where cleated shoes were first worn on the catwalk, where
messenger bags became ubiquitous even for the footbound. It's one of
those ephemeral New-York-in-the-'70s things, now an article of retro
cool celebrated both in the book/DVD set Pedal (powerHouse, $29.95) and
at the Design Commission Gallery exhibit of those images.
Photographer and filmmaker Peter Sutherland documented New York's 2005
Cycle Messenger World Championships (CMWC) in his book Pedal, which
shares its title with his 2001 bike-messenger documentary (it has
played on the Sundance Channel and elsewhere). He plainly admires these
two-wheeled tribalists, most of them young, pierced, and tattooed, all
of them bearing various scars and scrapes in varying stages of healing.
They ride and race hard, but the asphalt is harder.
Although action shots figure in Sutherland's color images, this isn't a
Sports Illustrated gallery. The actual messenger race is more like a
road rally than NASCAR's neat laps. Competitors zig and zag from A to B
and C to Z to deliver their parcels. The affair is governed less by the
stopwatch than one's own internal GPS system-setting the most efficient
route between multiple waypoints, allowing for traffic lights, one-way
streets, and potholes.
It's the cyclists in repose who really catch Sutherland's lens, some
dozing on the grass (empty cans of Bud and spoke wrenches strewn around
them), some staring straight back at the camera in formal portraiture.
A commercial shooter for XXL and VICE (among other Gen-Y publications),
he has an eye for the unpretty model's indifference that invites you
in. Urban athletes, these messengers are somewhat awkwardly still off
their mounts (those cleated shoes certainly aren't meant for walking).
There's an impatient quality in the suspended air-"Don't bother me,
I've got someplace I need to go. I'm paid to deliver things, not stand
around." Sutherland captures these riders with a certain lankness, the
sweat just dried, the pose not quite settled. Just as most of his
subjects were born since the '70s, he's working in the tradition of Nan
Goldin by way of Dov Charney's American Apparel spreads.
Then there are the accessories, the pure fashion aspect. All
bicyclists, from Lance Armstrong on down, are obsessed with gear.
Messengers have developed their own anticonsumerist mix-and-match
aesthetic which, of course, Pedal is now selling back to us. (Seattle
bag manufacturer R.E. Load is also an event sponsor.) It starts with
the bikes-mostly minimalist fixed-gear models that amount to little
more than bare frame, wheels, and chain. (A front brake is optional,
and not always effective-hence the many oozing bandages, also a fashion
accessory.) There can be no such thing as no-logo in biking;
traditional brands like Campagnolo, Sidi, and Cinelli mix with vintage
T-shirts and race jerseys from obscure European events and sponsors.
One's lock and chain must be worn around the waist. An enormous dangle
of keys must be tethered to one's forearm. The bag, buckle, and strap
must be adjusted up high on the chest. Designer anything is a big
no-no, even if you've got a carbon-fiber road bike secretly stashed
inside your Brooklyn basement apartment.
IF THE DVD version of Pedal isn't about consumerism, it's certainly
about money. Riders are paid by delivery, and their dispatchers charge
extra for express jobs-like "a triple rush." Most of the messengers
Sutherland interviews go by their street names (one even sleeps down in
the subway tunnels), and they've got a New Yorker's mercantile bravado
about them. "Look at the legs, man! You can't keep up with me," says
one guy. Exactly-his legs are money. But another laments, "I'm turning
into a spinning robot," which any working stiff can relate to.
Moreover, nobody here likely has health insurance. (Although the New
York Bike Messenger Foundation, see www.nybf.org, and other groups are
lobbying for union benefits.) This is all the more remarkable and
frightening when Sutherland sends his frame-mounted camera in pedaling
pursuit behind some of the city's most skilled and fearless riders. It
shows what his still photos can't-slaloming between delivery trucks
(some riders trim their handlebars to be no wider than their pedals to
make the tightest squeezes), running most every red light (again, not
always with benefit of brakes), and engaging in "the battle" with each
and every taxi cab. ("They're a menace," one driver grouses.)
That's not to suggest there isn't joy among this fraternity. The rush,
the "flow" (as many call it) of riding so seamlessly in traffic goes
along with the risk. Says one guy, "There's nothing like coming down
Ninth Avenue from the 50s, all the way through the fucking teens, on
one green light." So light and fast, they're like vectors of
information, electrons on the great computer chip of Manhattan. E-mail
and the Internet haven't eradicated this tribe, though technology may
have culled it, made it even swifter.
Seattle's own hearty messenger community will likely be represented at
the Heavy Pedal group ride, organized in conjunction with the gallery
show. It's open to the public (helmets are strongly encouraged), but
don't call it a race (I think). Though messenger races have been
conducted here (including the 2003 CMWC event). Among the pedaling mob,
you might even see Christine Pacheco and Vanessa Alarcon, locals who
placed among the top 10 in New York last year, then find their
portraits on the gallery walls.
Outside the gallery, it may be impossible to find a place to lock your
bike. Chain them all together, of course, and the local messenger
community becomes that much stronger. But please-no Lycra, no carbon
fiber, and none of your fancy-ass wraparound sunglasses. That would
give messengers a bad name.
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