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Vicious
Twist Takes a Wild Ride
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by Vicious Twist
a/k/a
Manuel Jimenez
April 2005, Mess Media
Bicycle messengers are cool. Naw, man. I mean KEWWWL.
Bicycle messengers are the infantry of the financial district.
They are the surly soldiers on the front lines. They are scarred
with tattoos and piercings. All garish and grudge, they swagger
and speak in exaggerations.
I quit my civil litigation job. I couldn't take it any
more. I needed a break. Litigation attorneys sit at desks
all day, reading severely dry material, pushing paper and conducting
ritual abuse on each other. Your body weakens as your mind
focuses on other people's problems. Even in well-lighted offices,
you breathe artificially processed air in temperature-controlled
environments. I quit one litigation job just to take
another. But in the interim, gave myself a few weeks of
freedom. I'd planned it so that I had a month to just kick
it. So started the events that would evolve my self-unemployment
into a working vacation, and taking me from white collar professional
to working class stiff.
For the first few days of my self-unemployment, I hit the frigid soup
of the Nor*Cal surf, using my self made 6'1 thruster (a tri-fin
potato chip of a surfboard), or my "long" board, a 7'6 hybrid
(too short to be a long board, too big to be a short board). I
would rise after dawn, and drive across town to Ocean Beach. I'd
look over the horizon, rising sun to my back, and look at the green
waves crashing into the perpetually abandoned beach. Too
small? Blown out? Closing out? If the surf was good
I'd, wetsuit up and dunk myself in the treacherously dangerous
rip-tided currents near Noriega Street, which on a good day has
world-class waves. If Ocean Beach sucked, I'd prepare to dip in
the beginner’s beach at Linda Mar down in Pacifica with the 7'6
hybrid board.
No matter where you surf, by early afternoon the west winds would come,
blowing over the waves and junking up the surf. My liquid
vacation ended each day after only few hours. I'd sit around the
rest of the day, wasting time. It was because of this oppressive
free time that I began to realize that sitting around most of the day
with nothing to do, blows. A few days of this and I decided to
make my self-unemployment a "working vacation."
When working as a civil litigator I fantasized about something other
than an office job. I wanted a different reality. The
fantasy had began to form well before my law career. After I
graduated from Berkeley in 1994, I worked for Morrison & Foerster
(MoFo) as a paralegal. I lived in the Sunset, San Francisco's
misnamed, terminally overcast beach community. I took the 'N'
Judah train into the Montgomery Street station to get to work.
I'd get off the train and walk up Sansome Street toward California,
passing through the intersection where Sutter and Sansome form a "V" as
they begin life from Market Street. There is a granite wall that
curves from Sansome to Market at the place where the two streets meet
at a 45-degree angle. Bicycle messengers refer to it as the
western wall. Every day messengers sat on the wall. Every
morning I walked passed the mess of eclectic couriers to my
climate-controlled cage. I envied them.
I left San Francisco in 1995 and moved to New York to go to law
school. I lived the American Nightmare of upward mobility through
myopic focus. I worked as a prosecutor in the Organized Crime and
Rackets Bureau of the Queens County District Attorney's Office. I
transitioned to civil litigation in New York and then moved back to
California. The resulting financial stability and freedom is
good, the fight to get to that point sucks. I
fantasized about a different reality. Bicycle "messing" was my
fantasy.
Now, as a newly self-unemployed attorney surf bum, I decided to live
out my long held fantasy. I decided to become a bicycle
messenger. Why? Bicycle messengers are cool. Naw,
man. I mean KEWWWL. Bicycle messengers are the infantry of
the financial district. They are the surly soldiers on the front
lines. They are scarred with tattoos and piercings. All
garish and grudge, they swagger and speak in exaggerations.
I searched the internet, looking around at a lot of small courier
outfits with crazy names like Spincycle, Black Dog and Dragracer
Messenger Collective. How hard could it be to land a messenger
job? Damn hard is the answer. The community is cliquish and
suspicious. I would later learn that the small outfits are
staffed by people who know each other. With no luck I headed up
to the messenger Mecca at Sutter and Sansome. I found a messenger
there. He was a Latino thrasher looking dude. I asked him
if anyone was hiring. He told me to try to hook up with one of
the big outfits like Western Messenger. I walked away from that
conversation and made my way to Western Messenger.
Western messenger is located on Columbia Street, between Harrison and
Folsom. It's housed in an old warehouse. The entrance is
vandalized by visitor pass stickers issued by security desks from
buildings around the city. There is a bike rack, and four junk
chairs. The building is not just nondescript, it's ugly. I
entered and I walked into a dark hallway, up a few stairs, and was
confronted with a counter topped off with security glass. I spoke
with Pattie, a severe woman standing behind the glass. She gave
me an application and pointed me to the break room back down the
stairs. There was a messenger inside the room, sleeping on a
bench. I filled out the application and handed it back to
Pattie. She asked me some questions. I gave her some
answers. "There's nothing right now," she told me. "When
the weather's nice, people deliver their own packages. If something
comes up, I'll let you know." That was the end of my bicycle
messenger ambition. I thought nothing more of it.
A week later, or about ten days into my self-unemployment, I was
instant messaging a friend while sitting in my home office. She
is a goth girl, kind of a girl noir. The phone rings. I
pick it up. It's Pattie from Western Messenger. She tells
me that there is an opening for a messenger position, if I was still
interested. I abruptly take the offer over the phone, then set
out to prepare. Eighty-five dollars for a Chrome brand messenger
bag (on sale); $420 for a new bicycle; $35 for a bicycle rack over the
rear tire, and $27.90 for a velcro cell phone holder that fits on the
bag, a seat binder to prevent theft, and a cable to go with my
Kryptonite lock. I start work as the best-equipped messenger
around. I could tell that some of the other messengers were
suspicious of me, thinking I was a narc or something.
The first day, I begin by filling out paperwork. I am issued four
blue polo shirts with the words "Western Messenger" embroidered in
yellow, one similar sweatshirt, and a lightweight jacket of similar
ilk. I am also issued a text beeper, a bicycle license plate, and
an identification card. Pattie gives me a brief overview of
the messenger process, and BOOM, I'm sent out on my first
mission. In spite of my preparation, I begin working with some
notable gaps of knowledge. For instance, I don't know how much I
get paid until over two weeks after I start working. I never
thought to ask. Two weeks into the job, I forgot to pick up my
first paycheck.
A Day In The Life
"The first thing I discovered is that no job, no matter how lowly, is
truly 'unskilled.'" (Ehrenreich, Barbara; Nickel and Dimed; On
(Not) Getting By in America 194) How hard could it be to pick up
and deliver packages? It ain't easy. First things
first. Once you become a messenger, you stop being a
person. You are not Manuel, John, or whatever. You are
assigned a number (mine having been 922) and are identified by that
number.
The process goes something like this. You sit around downtown,
usually in one of three spots intersecting Market where messengers from
the various outfits congregate (The Western Wall; Battery and Bush;
Montgomery and Post). You watch the people drift to work.
The courier community is small. A lot of socializing goes
on. But the down time is minimal at the beginning, and nearly
nonexistent for the rest of the day (I never knew that people could
strenuously work for over eight hours a day). As you sit talking
with the characters of this surreal tribe, it comes; the first tag (I
had a text pager, as opposed to the radio that most messengers
have). You are told the name of the pickup client, the client’s
address, the delivery company. You transfer the information into
the manifest, and you're off. As you head off to the first
pickup, you start receiving additional tags. Two, three or even
four other destinations are coming in. But you can't review the
information because you are in flight. As you move through the
city, you pass other messengers who surf the asphalt waves on the way
to their destinations. Messengers acknowledge each other with a
subdued, knowing nod, and move on; no pretense.
There comes a time when you have retrieved the specified parcels, and
have no additional instructions to get anymore. At this point you
call in, to be told to either clean up or retrieve additional
pickups. This process continues almost non-stop for the rest of
the day. If you, reading this, work at a desk job or otherwise
take for granted being able to use the restroom or take a smoke break
when the need arises, imagine being so pressed for time that it makes
such niceties difficult. Granted, at some point, you'll get a
lunch break. But the timing and duration are uncertain, and if
you need to piss at eleven in the morning, lunch at 1:17pm is a long
time away.
Get Off My Freeway
When I say messengers are in flight, I'm being facetious, but just.
There are, of course, rules of the road. Cars stop at red
lights. People cross the street when permitted. Traffic
moves according to the direction required. These rules don't
apply to messengers. Messengers run red lights, go diagonally
through intersections, cut off cars, ride on the sidewalk, and ride the
wrong way down one-way streets with oncoming traffic. Messengers
move with a liquid fluidity that transgresses the dangerous place in
which they work and scares the drivers and pedestrian with whom they
travel. Why do they do this? Because the job demands it and
the infrastructure encourages it.
When you start at Western Messenger, you're handed a couple of
pages from the Caltrans web page delineating bicycle safety
practices. The information tells you things like, "Stop at stop
signs and red lights"; "Use proper hand signals when turning, stopping
or changing lanes"; and "Ride in the same direction as the flow of
traffic." The pace of the work and the expectations of the dispatcher
make following the rules folly for those who want to keep their jobs.
There is no way to keep pace and follow the traffic laws. The
situation is exacerbated by the fact that San Francisco's streets,
especially in and around the financial district, are laid out to
facilitate commuters, driving their fat ass SUV's from faraway suburbs,
to aggressively travel at dangerous speeds in and out of the
city. This means a lot of one-way streets that act as dangerous
inner city freeways. This conscious policy decision explains the
existence of dangerous streets like 19th Avenue in the very residential
Sunset, both Oak and Fell Streets, and almost all of the Streets in the
Financial District and SOMA. Whoever is in charge must forget
that people live here. Would you let your kid play along 19th
Avenue? The liberal use of one-way streets means that cyclists
have to travel twice the distance to get to a road going the right
direction. This may not mean much for a car, but if you spend
your day cycling those streets under time constraints, it means a hell
of a lot.
Because the roads are set up to facilitate automobile traffic to move
fast on surface streets, drivers resent bicyclists because they see
them as slow moving obstacles. Regardless of the fact that
bicyclists have a right to a full traffic lane (a 1996 amendment to
California Vehicle Code section 21202, entitled The Safe Bicyclists
Protection Act states "Bicyclists are entitled to the full use of the
state's streets and highways, unless otherwise prohibited, including
safe use and passage on the roadway." Section 2(c).) I
can't count the number of times some indignant, self-righteous,
irrationally frustrated driver (invariably on his way home to Petaluma
or Alamo or somewhere) has tried to force me out of the way by
positioning his urban tank dangerously close to me.
SUV's and other big vehicles give the driver a status. I'm not
talking about social standing, I refer to the power the drivers
feel. Drivers of big, power vehicles believe that the vehicle is
reflective of their status as powerful people. It's like people
who drive slowly in the fast lane. They feel that if they are in
the fast lane, they must be going fast. Often status is a crutch
for some area of accomplishment. No matter that most bike
messengers could beat the crap out of the vast majority of office
workers (from executives and lawyers to mail room clerks and
receptionists), it is the vehicle that gives the office worker the
feeling of being tough. That's why even the most diminutive women
in a SUV becomes an aggressive and dangerous driver on the city
streets. It also explains why messengers are so surly and
aggressive on the road.
Think I'm exaggerating? In Chicago, on April 26, 1999 in a fit of
road rage, a man named Carnell Fitzpatrick driving an SUV,
intentionally chased down a bicycle messenger named Thomas McBride,
swerving behind the bicyclist over several blocks, he then accelerated
his Chevy Tahoe and ran over McBride. Fitzpatrick fled the scene,
leaving McBride dying on the street. (Scharnberg, Kirsten; "SUV
driver accused of murdering bicycle messenger finally goes to trial",
Chicago Tribune, 11/28/01). On November 17, 2000, in San
Francisco, Christopher Robertson was riding with 15 friends in a
funeral procession for fellow bike messenger Joseph Woods, who had been
shot and killed in his Mission Street apartment. He was riding
down 4th Street in the South of Market area of San Francisco. The
procession was a tradition of the San Francisco messenger
community. When a messenger dies, his fellow messengers take his
bike on a ceremonial ride to Mission Rock and throw it into the San
Francisco Bay. Chris Robertson never made it to the water's
edge. A tractor-trailer came up behind the procession.
Enraged that the group was occupying the lane, the driver began weaving
his tractor-trailer side-to-side and blowing his horn. He then
pulled alongside the group and shouted at them, before swerving into
the group and crushing Chris under the right front wheel of his
rig. Christopher Robertson died on the streets of San
Francisco. (DeMocker, Judy, "When Good Drivers Go Bad", San
Francisco Examiner, December 11, 2000 C1)
It is not only the abundance of SUV's and other vehicles on the road
that create the circumstance. Riding a bicycle on the streets of
the city makes clear that San Francisco has no uniform, safe, and
effective bicycle lanes. It is unsettling that even San
Francisco, the alternative Mecca for any and all causes, populated with
a health conscious citizenry, has failed to facilitate bicycle and
other less hazardous forms of transportation.
This mixture of circumstances has created the perfect situation for the
messenger employers and the corporations that utilize them. Say
for instance that a messenger is maimed or wasted breaking some traffic
law. Everybody, except the messenger, is off the hook. The
driver that creamed you has an "affirmative defense." Yeah, he
killed you, but the accident is actually the messenger's fault.
The messenger's employer is shielded by the fact that they gave you the
Caltrans bicycle safety instructions and never explicitly told you to
break the traffic laws. The corporation that demands the speed
and efficiency of the messengers is shielded by "proximate cause"
defenses to the situation, in that the accident was not a foreseeable
consequence of utilizing the service. In the end, the large
institutions that rely on and benefit from the service, do so partly on
the back of the messengers. "To be a member of the working poor
is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone
else." (Ehrenreich; Nickel and Dimed, 221). The
beneficiaries of the messenger's circumstance turn a blind eye toward
these inherent problems because they bear no associated costs.
Men Behaving Badly
Once the beeps stop coming, and you've loaded up with envelopes and
parcels, you call in. "922 with six to go," means that you're
carrying six pickups. The dispatcher on the other end speaks to
you with the civility of a drill instructor. You are either
told to deliver some of the pickups (often in a specified order), told
to "clean up" or given a new address for a pick up. The
instructions come fast and the dispatcher makes no effort to make clear
the instructions. If you miss some vital detail and ask for
clarification, the repeated instruction comes in a condescending,
hostile tone, conveying the message, "Listen up moron. I have no
time for this."
As a messenger, there is no room for mistakes, and no thinking
allowed. Take for example my experience on a particular
day. I was at the intersection of Sutter, Sansome and
Market. My first beep was at 9:38am, directing me to a business
on the fourth floor of 230 California Street. I was subsequently
beeped with two more pickups in short order. At 9:45am I had
picked up the first envelope. I then made my way to the seventh
floor of 475 Sansome, where I picked up a second parcel at
9:51am. I then made my way to the sixth floor of 930 Montgomery,
where I picked up a third package at 10:02am. I then received a
beep at 10:03am. I called into dispatch, "922. Three to
go." The voice on the other end started yelling, "What's going
on? I gave you those tags over half an hour ago. What's the
problem?" Now, my math ain't good. But even I, a lowly
attorney turned messenger, know that the elapsed time from 9:38am to
10:03am is only twenty-five minutes.
The dispatcher's transgression of the facts is less offensive than the
basic disrespect he demonstrates for the work of the guy in the
field. Think about it. Once you get that first beep, you
have to record the instructions, cycle to the location, park and lock
the bicycle, get past the security guard (sign in, leave an ID, get a
pass or whatever), take the elevator to the appropriate floor, transact
with the receptionist (who may tell you to take a detour to the mail
room three floors down), get the envelope, make a notation of the
pickup time, place it in your bag, go back down the elevator, deal with
security, unlock your bicycle and make your way to the next
destination, and start all over again. Each of these little
events takes time.
Not only are you under tremendous time pressure, but you cannot take
the initiative to relieve the pressure. For example, my first day
on the job I had a round trip pickup at 101 California Street (one of
the buildings that require messengers to use the freight elevator in
the back of the building, which I'll discuss later) to go to 650
California. I am then instructed to deliver to 650
California. I also happen to have a deposit to a bank at
590 California, that I picked up earlier but have not been instructed
to deliver. On the way from 101 California to 650 California (you
can see where I'm going here), I take the initiative to make the
deposit at 590 California.
This rather innocuous detour might be seen as an efficient use of ones'
time. Yet, when I called in "clean" instead of "922. One to
go," the dispatcher went ballistic. "What happened with the
deposit?" When I told her that I already made the deposit, you'd
have though that I pocketed the money in order to buy crack. The
tirade that followed was abusive. If this is the way your own
side treats you, can you imagine how you are treated by the rest of the
people you deal with? This brings me to my next subject;
disrespect.
Being treated with disrespect is an every day, several times a day,
experience for messengers. I assume this is because most of the
messengers are young men without much life experience, resources, a
network of support, or are from the fringe elements of the social
fabric. Disrespect is shown by a wide range of persons on the
front lines of the business establishment. From security
personnel, to receptionists to mail room clerks. Am I being
thin-skinned? As a former Marine, I know the difference between a
rough and tumble work environment and the subtle (and not so subtle)
attacks on one's very humanity.
One common situation that arises is exemplified by a pickup I had to
make to a major California bank, let's call it...Wells Fargo. I
was directed to 525 Market Street and entered the lobby toward the
security desk. A pudgy little man briskly moved towards me.
"You're going to have to go to the back of the building through the
freight elevator," states the pudgy little security guard, in a tone I
wouldn't put up with from my mother. He pointed me back out the
front door. This change of plan is a waste of my time. "I
have a pickup on the 12th floor," I respond courteously. "You
have to go to the freight elevator," he repeats more
aggressively. The freight elevator is located on the Stevenson
Street side of the building. I walk around the building, sign in
with the unenthusiastic security guard, and wait for the one, slow
moving freight elevator.
Even though the violation of building etiquette is totally innocent on
my part, the violation of human respect on the part of all those
security guards, receptionists, mail room clerks and all their low
level ilk that messengers have to deal with every day is not innocent,
but malicious. This maliciousness is tacitly approved by the very
tenants and employers in these buildings that create the circumstances
to make such behavior acceptable and routine.
When I walk into a building to deliver an envelope, I'm obviously not
carrying freight. It's not like I'm holding a couple of
two-by-fours. Freight elevators are for freight, since freight
tends to damage delicately decorated elevators or interferes with
ingress or egress by the tenants and visitors. Envelopes are not
freight. Secretaries, receptionists, executives, lawyers,
visitors and even mailroom clerks carry envelopes and similar parcels
through the lobby every day. The requirement that I use the
freight elevator is based purely on my appearance as a working
person. The statement is analogous to, "You have to sit at the
back of the bus." When security guards require messengers to use
the freight elevator, what they are doing is relegating low wage
workers to the "servant's entrance." That's un-American.
Messenger Down
Who were my fellow messengers and what were they like? They are
all decent human beings. Most were men. There seemed to be
no gay messengers, or at least none out of the closet. A few were
women, not many though. They have more street smarts than you or
I will ever have. Most messengers fit into one of several
archetypes. Many look like competitive cyclists who belong in a
velodrome rather than on the street. They have high performance
road bicycles and all the proper gear to do the Tour-de-France.
There are the Thrasher dudes, who look like skater kids who grew
up. Then there are the stoners. These are the same type of
stoner dudes you went to high school with, the long hair grunge crowd
twisted with chemicals. Of course, some don't fit into any
category. The messengers I thought looked bizarre were the ones
that looked like me, clean cut, well-groomed Republican looking
dudes. I always looked at them and thought to myself, "What the
hell are you doing here?"
Messengers look out for each other and they feel free to tell you when
you're doing something stupid. At the end of the day various
messengers gathered in front of the building and trade verbal jabs,
joke and mess around. Every day someone lit up a blunt and others
drink beer. Not small beers, mind you, but large bottles of
beer. This initially surprised me, in that I had to take a
physical, including a piss test to get the job.
One day after work, JP, an eight-year messenger veteran, stops me,
blunt in hand. "I saw you on Market hopping over the tracks," he
states, " Keep clear of the tracks man. You'll catch a rail and
spill."
For those unfamiliar with San Francisco, Market Street is a
disaster. It has two lanes in both directions. Even though
Market is a major thoroughfare, its lanes are not wide. Traffic
on market is heavy, with automobiles, commercial trucks, streetcars and
buses squeezed together. The tight fit is exacerbated by bus drop
off islands between lanes at various points. The center two lanes
of Market have streetcar tracks running down them. At various
points there are metal grates that look like shredders, which allow for
the circulation of air for the subway trains that run under the
street. Not just one subway mind you, but two subways systems run
under Market; Muni and Bart. Market serves as the meridian for
the streets that intersect it, meaning that the further you go from
Market, the higher the address. Market intersects every street
north of it at a forty-five degree angle. Each northern
intersection has two streets that meet at market. The streets to
the south of Market are perpendicular. At any given intersection
you can have upward of four streets coming together at different
angles. These intersections are dangerous and unpredictable, as
is Market Street itself.
As if to vindicate PJ's warning, the next day I am riding fast down
Market when a pedestrian sprints in front of me. I swerve to the
left, and straighten before I ride into oncoming traffic. As I
pull straight, my front tire catches a rail and I go down, tumbling
onto the opposing traffic lanes. By the time I hit the ground,
traffic going the other way has thankfully already cleared. I
live another day.
Deliver Me Home
My first week is drawing to a close. It's 4:45pm on the Friday
before the long Memorial Day weekend when I'm dispatched to make one
more pick-up. Ironically, the tag is for MoFo, the firm I left
ten years earlier after a year long stint as a legal assistant.
The destination is to the building in which I live. I'd be
delivering the envelope to one of the doormen I pass by every day to
and from my condo on Third and Folsom. A nervous energy passes
through me when I get the call. I make my way to the pick-up.
I pick-up the envelope on the thirty-second floor of 425 Market.
I get into the elevator to descend back to my bicycle. Joining me
in the elevator to my right is a man I vaguely recognize. Two
middle-aged women stand to my left. He starts speaking with the
two women about having to drive his kids to their various sporting
events over the weekend. He talks about his three year old, who
is apparently the only calm one of his children.
I realize that the man on the elevator is partner at MoFo, who worked
on a case on which I worked as a legal assistant. The case was an
appeal to the District Court of a Billion dollar arbitration award made
against a Japanese company, which MoFo represented. The litigation was
so important to the client that they sent out a full time overseer, in
the form of a diminutive and very polite Japanese executive, who spoke
poor English, but whose English grammar was excellent. This drove
the attorney's writing the briefs insane. I was introduced to the
executive by one of my fellow legal assistants is "copy
boy." The name stuck, and he forever referred to me as "copy
boy." It was during that time that the partner, now on the
elevator, was scandalized because of a rumor that he had an affair with
a legal assistant, which ended up breaking up his marriage. The
legal assistant involved in the affair was the same one who branded me
"copy boy."
There I was, a newly minted bicycle messenger, standing there with my
helmet and sunglasses, right in the middle of this conversation as if I
were not there. The strangeness of this anonymity continued
when I delivered the package to the doorman at the building in which I
live, a person I see several times a week, without him registering even
the slightest hint of recognition. I felt like John Howard
Griffin, author of the book Black Like Me, who went unnoticed as a
human being by the southern white population after he had changed the
color of his skin from white to black in the late 1950's civil rights
era. "[T]hey looked at me, but did not see me."
Conclusion
My life as a bicycle messenger was nasty, brutish and short. At
the same time it was definitely cool. Unfortunately, the
spiritual benefits of the job were outweighed by the ugliness of being
a low wage worker who interacted with a contemptuous corporate
world. I think of the middle class riff-raff, commuting
unbearably long distances in their urban assault vehicles, worried
about joining their low wage contemporaries if they are displaced or
outsourced by a business community only too happy to do it. Is it
their fear of this close proximity to their low wage brothers and
sisters that produces the aggressive treatment bicycle messengers
receive on the road and in office buildings?
It is a shame that the work done by the messengers is not only
undervalued, but unappreciated. I would like to personally thank
the people at Western Messenger, including Pattie and JP, and my fellow
messengers from all the different outfits, for the privilege of working
with you as a bicycle messenger. I think I would make a career of
being a messenger if I could afford it.
The next time you try to push a bicycle messenger out of your way with
your Hummer, think about the fact that the messenger may not only be in
better shape than you, but also wonder if he may be better educated and
more accomplished than you, as well. Even if he is not, remember
that he's a human being. Back off and show a little respect.
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