Start with the facts: Benefits of messengers Are messengers reckless? When is a license just another label? What is the disguised name for employee? Messenger Appreciation Messenger Memorial The IFBMA
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Urban Cowboys
Typical Boston media, the Pheonix was able to look up articles to get quotes about the 1997 crackdown yet it LIES about William Spring's reckless jaywalking incident by saying he "was struck by a bike messenger while WALKING in the city." He was actually RUNNING against a red light when he slammed into a bike messenger who was travelling through a green light. Shortly after this the city of Boston came out with a campaign (Walk this way) targeting Spring's type of behaviour without mentioning him. See the Boston Crash Controversey for more. The Pheonix also says that"until fairly recently, [alley cats] were also strictly a New York thing." This is completly false . Both Bo and New York have long histrories with alley cats. The first alley cat race took place in Toronto in the summer of 1985. Urban cowboys The underground city-bike-racing scene hits the streets of Boston Boston Pheonix, May 19, 2005 By Matthew Shaer FOR ALL INTENTS and purposes, this June's R7 Rally* bike race is Boston's worst-kept secret. Hundreds of cyclists know about it; 200 of them ' from as far afield as Japan ' are expected to race. And while no major media outlet will likely cover the R7 (so far, only the Phoenix has even noted its existence), the race is a pretty big deal. It will wind its way from an undisclosed location in Boston to an undisclosed location in New York with a fleet of support vehicles. It will award prizes to the winners and give a brightly colored jersey to each day's leader. It will throw a party at each stop and provide accommodations for all participants. So why don't the organizers of the race want you there? Here's the rub: the whole damn thing ' from the course the racers will follow to the event's complete disregard for state and city statutes ' is illegal. The R7 is the latest in a series of urban-cycling events that are revitalizing Boston's bike-messenger culture ' on legs of shaky legality and with a dash of good old-fashioned criminality thrown in. "In this city you have to be careful," says Craig Roth, age 34, a veteran Hub cyclist and one of the minds behind the R7. "In New York, the police have bigger fish to fry than messengers riding through the streets. In Boston it's something they'd be happy to be involved in." This is a supposition no one involved with the race is willing to test. Almost every road the racers will follow between Boston and New York is officially off-limits for cyclists: remember, no farm equipment, animals, or bicycles are allowed on the highway. For this reason, the R7 is being publicized only through a small handful of Web pages and by word of mouth. So unless you're a committed urban cyclist with a taste for fast, scary city riding, you've probably heard nothing about it. The race's organizers say they can't remember anything on the scale of the R7 being attempted before. Following the stage format of professional road races like the Tour de France, the R7 is split into seven separate events, from sprints through Boston, Providence, and New Haven to long-distance endurance pushes and a time trial in Manhattan. Eschewing solo efforts for the comfort and relative benefits of team tactics, racers will compete in groups and arrive in New York in time for many of them to race all over again, this time in the Bike Messenger World Championships, the single-largest testing ground for urban-riding specialists and the annual focal point of courier culture around the world. But for Boston, the R7 Rally is much more than the sum of these parts; it's a way for area organizers to prove their mettle in larger events in neighboring New York. And perhaps more important, it's a litmus test of just how far urban riding has come in the traditionally staid Hub ' and how far it might go. CITY, RALLY, messenger, urban: these are all terms used to describe a similar kind of bicycle riding; namely, the kind in busy traffic. Although not all urban riders are current bike messengers, most are former couriers or have some association with the courier business. This is where the immediate similarities end. From city to city, from Somerville to Chinatown, urban riders blow all efforts to categorize them out of the water. Some wear monster masks to shock passing cars. Some wear tight-fitting road-cycling jerseys to help them go faster. Some are clean-cut. Some smoke cigarettes or pot. They cover their bodies, head to toe, with various tattoos and piercings, and regard their bodies as pure athletic instruments. Helmets are rare, gears rarer. They paint old Schwinns 16 different shades of orange to create an eyesore; they baby their vintage Italian road frames to the point of obsession ' one rider explains, in earnest, that his ride "sleeps over his bed, so [he] can keep her company." Urban riders train all afternoon to compete in various high-intensity, aerobic events like the R7. Most now ride on fixed-gear track bikes, with skinny tires and a single brake on the front wheel. Some ride with no brakes at all, pushing the frame to the side and using their legs to create a skid effect powerful enough to bring the bike to a halt. That particular skill is considered one of the purest forms of city riding in a sport where expression bordering on performance ' from the outfits, to the gorilla masks, to the sharp risks taken in traffic ' is everything. "No one does the shit that we do ' not as quickly, not as dangerously," says one Boston rider at an "underground" race. "And this brings us all together in a way that not everyone can understand." In the end, the shared danger may resemble the shared scars: everyone has a story to tell, everyone has a nasty cut from a cab door or passing bus, and everyone is ready to do it again, a little faster. "I'll do this until I get killed," says 51-year-old courier and spinning instructor Kevin Porter, "or until I die of old age." Porter, who's been riding in Boston for 10 years, calls himself "Boston's deadliest messenger"; he's been involved, by his count, in more than 30 traffic accidents. None has been serious. "That," he insists, "has nothing to do with luck." In the end, the disparate characters of the urban bike scene are bound together not only by their shared sense of daredevilry, but by participating in formal and informal riding events, from the Critical Mass ' a ride that intentionally blocks traffic to bring public awareness to bicycle rights ' to impromptu alley sprints. Nearly everyone who calls him- or herself an urban rider competes in one way or another, and nearly everyone who competes is thoroughly committed to pissing someone off. Boston riders share such provocativeness with other countercultural communities. But it's also a specific response to what many see as a concentrated effort by the rest of the city to get them off their bikes and into a suit and tie. "It's extremely political, very adversarial," says Lucas Brunelle, 33, an urban-cycling cinematographer and former courier. "The mayor doesn't like us, the chamber of commerce doesn't like us, the city council doesn't like us ' it goes on and on." In fact, a crackdown on couriers in Boston was initiated by the mayor's office and the Boston Police Department in 1997, after William Spring, a Boston School Committee member, was struck by a bike messenger while walking in the city. He spent several months in a coma before recovering. At that time, Carmen Durso, a local attorney who'd also been hit by a courier, told the Boston Globe, "There is almost no one who doesn't have a story about couriers. [The] messenger [who hit me] said to me, 'If I was going faster, I would have really hurt you.' ... They have no concern." The action by city officials was quick and wide-reaching: identification and active tracking of messengers was stepped up, and everyone was on the watch for out-of-control urban cyclists. (In Boston, couriers are tracked through a licensing division that requires them to display a plate with an ID number at all times.) But since that first crackdown, one officer says she's witnessed a slackening, with fewer identification plates displayed and fewer active pursuits by the BPD. "It's safe to say that without a motorcycle, we're not going to catch these guys," says another officer, who frequently works around the Mass Ave area. "They're in shape, they're fast. Sure, we get complaints ' about riding the wrong way on downtown streets, all that ' but it's tough to get a hold on them in general. A lot aren't messengers." And if the riders in question aren't couriers, he explains, then tracking them becomes more difficult. According to John Boyle, a spokesman for the Boston Police Department, no arrests related to the "underground" racing scene have been made. "Of course this sort of thing, when it goes on, is a big concern," he says. "But if [the racing] is happening, it hasn't been brought to our attention. Yet." EVEN WITHOUT police interference, interest in the urban bike scene was waning as recently as a few years ago. With riders retiring and enthusiasm dwindling, many began sounding "Taps" for city cycling. Counterintuitively, what might save this anarchic culture from extinction may be organization. Which, it turns out, Boston's urban cyclists have in spades. One weekend last month, Alex Whitmore, 27, jumped the Fung Wah bus from Chinatown to catch Monster Track 2005, an "alley cat" road race through lower Manhattan. Long part of NYC's gritty "fuck the police" courier ethic, alley cats are illegal rides in which urban cyclists race from point to point, toting beers and dodging traffic, generally at an ungodly hour. Until fairly recently, they were also strictly a New York thing: Boston, with its relatively clean streets and puritan ethic, had always seemed a bad fit for the camo-shorts-clad, track-bike crowd. But with the persistence of people like Whitmore and Roth, the Boston urban-race scene has been undergoing something of a renaissance. "Alex called me [after Monster Track] and said, 'I'm having a party next week, do you want to come?' " friend and fellow organizer Scott Mullen recalls. "And I said sure. Then he said, 'And I want to have a bike race afterwards.' " Ten days later, at 1 a.m. on a cold March night, 36 racers pedaled their bikes toward a slow start in Davis Square, Schlitz cans in hand. More than 100 revelers, many of them drunk, looked on. The Midnight Crit had begun. The course ' a race format called a criterium, with short, fast laps ' wound through Davis Square. There was beer and whisky where the Gatorade should have been, and, according to Whitmore, a pair of Somerville cops who wanted to know if "this kind of thing happens every week." (It doesn't.) In the end, the Crit, which was publicized by fliers only 10 days in advance, was nothing more or less than fast, liquored-up, flat-out urban racing. And events like it may be moving ' wipeout by wipeout, illegal ride by illegal ride ' toward a bigger and more active underground cycling culture in Boston. "Things are expanding," Roth says. "There was a period when no one was really doing anything in Boston, but things like [these races] are changing that. There are young kids out there who are really into riding fast, really getting people out on their bikes." But will Boston ever have a shot at competing with the larger, louder Manhattan courier culture? "People appreciate messengers a lot more in New York than they do here," Brunelle says. "People in general in New York, no matter who they are or what they're doing, are more open-minded and more accepting of things that are different. Going through lights and stuff ' great. A lot of people are very accepting of that in New York. It's not nearly as political as it is here in Boston." "In Boston, everyone hates urban cyclists downtown ' it's an unspoken war, waiting to be resolved," agrees Whitmore, a former messenger and self-employed chocolate maker from Somerville. "In New York, races are promoting awareness. Here, we might be a little behind." Brendt Barbur, who directs the successful Bicycle Film Festival, which advances favorable images of bicycling as part of a developing alternative culture, had originally considered making Boston the host city for this year's event. Ultimately, Barbur chose New York to host the fourth annual festival, which took place last week; he hints that the decision was more about pragmatism than favoritism. "The difference between Boston and New York is just density of the traffic and the city itself as a backdrop," Barbur says. "I can relate Boston to being similar to San Francisco, and just the intensity of that city. But there's a lot more riders in New York than San Fran or Boston. The percentage difference between urban riding populations is huge." ON THURSDAY nights, as the last of the runners leave the track, you can see them warming up under the lights ' weaving long, slow circles, stretching their legs for the sprint. Later, toward 11 p.m., after the money is collected and the heats are organized, the racers roll to the start. With a kick, they're off, flying clockwise into the night. These are the Thursday-night races, held on an outdoor track at an undisclosed Boston college, and they're the brainchild of Derek Mabra, Ian Sutton, Jeremy Colonero, and Thomas Sane, twentysomethings with a handful of track bikes and some time on their hands. "We were doing Saturday-night rides from the reflecting pool on Mass Ave, and every time, it would turn into a race," Mabra remembers. "Finally we were like, 'Shit, man, let's do this for real.' " When the group found the empty track, things started coming together: money was collected, beers were amassed, and the racers started to arrive. The Thursday-night track races follow a simple format: a heat of four to six riders rolls toward a designated start line. From there, they push into all-out sprints around the track, completing a series of laps ' in which the excitement comes as much from racing tactics as from pure speed ' before winding up, breathless, back at the start. Although not urban riding per se, the track races take all the gear from the city streets (single-speed brakeless bikes, baggy shorts) and all the standard courier skills (dexterity, acceleration, cojones) and apply them to a closed-track format where most everything, including a pre-ride Miller Lite, is encouraged. And attendance is high: if you're looking for a courier, a former courier, a wanna-be courier, or that guy on a bike who cut you off on Boylston Street last week, chances are you can find that person on Thursday night at the track. Boston cycling veterans and organizers say events like these are where the next wave of urban riders is going to come from ' and that they might have a shot at changing the local biking scene. "We won't get to New York status," guesses Derek Mabra, 22. "But in Boston you can always see someone you know. You can sit at the corner of Newbury and Mass Ave and people are riding by on track bikes and you know everyone. That doesn't happen in New York." But there are downsides to Boston's relative coziness. "Because Boston is smaller, it's harder to put on a race," Craig Roth says. "Sixty guys go flying by in Godzilla suits in New York [and] people don't bat an eye. That shit happens in Boston, someone's going to call the police." On a recent night, a few college-security cruisers circle warily around the track; for a moment, the beers and bikes are hidden. Then someone lets out a high-pitched scream, everyone laughs, and the racers move forward onto the track. "At first there were a few runners on the track, but they usually turned into spectators," says Mabra. "Now, at least 30 kids race and tons are watching, and for something with no official publicity, that's a fairly big deal." But how many riders is too many? "There's a chance this will get too big, that too many people will find out about it, too many good riders," says Sofya, 23, a first-time racer, former messenger, and one of the handful of women involved with urban biking in Boston. "I do worry about too much publicity." Another racer, a skinny kid with tattoos that cover his arms and part of his neck, asks if he can comment without "people being able to track [me] down. "We don't want the spandex crowd here," he says finally. "This is the urban scene; no professional racers, not too much noise. Just us is good enough." So far, it's been exactly good enough. Handfuls of new riders are showing up every week; says one racer, "The worms are coming out of the woodwork." "I'm not much of a punk, I'm not very dirty, I'm not what you might think of as 'underground,' " says Mabra, who arrives at races straddling a perfectly preserved 1978 Mancini Super Vigorelli. "But we've managed to get this thing off the ground for the urban scene in Boston. What does that say?" WHAT IT SAYS is that Boston's urban bike scene is not likely to go away anytime soon. The popularity of the track races and the Midnight Crit, and the interest in the R7, riders say, could foretell the large-scale growth of similar events by a resolute and unified front of Hub riders. "Now there are all these people from Boston showing up at the New York races, to show their faces," says Roth. "I was at a race in Manhattan and 13 riders showed up from Boston, and I didn't know any of them. I was like, 'Who are these guys?' A few years ago, that never would have happened." Mabra agrees. An employee at Cambridge Bicycle, where fixed gears have recently become popular, he guesses that the growing interest in racing in the city will add to the scene's allure. "It's incredible ' we can't keep track bikes in the store," he says. "It's weird that, after where this stuff started, clean-cut guys from MIT are in here to get fixed gears. Forty-five-year-old men with families are riding them every day. The high-end stuff is hard to move, but the track bikes are built and sold within hours. "It's danger as much as hipness," he adds. "I guess it's kind of fun if you're going 30 [miles per hour] into an intersection, you're scrambling to think of what you're going to do. But I think it's also simplicity and beauty, the euphoria of it. I don't mean to be cheesy, but it's about having this piece of art under your legs."
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