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Fastest
Is Best as Messengers Pedal in Pursuit of a $100 Day
New York Times, December 2, 1983
By William E. Geist
It was Ray. "Ray!" shouted a dozen young men, eager to call him by name.
"Ray," yelled Mike Nelson, popping the question of the day at the Early Bird
messenger service, "how many'd you do today?" Without looking up, Ray Williamson
answered quietly, "41."
"Ray," Mr. Nelson said, shaking his head, "is my idol. Ray can fly."
In a city where speed is of the essence, Early Bird sells the stuff and Ray
delivers -
stocks and bonds, artwork, alimony checks, legal briefs, fashion models'
photograph albums, goldfish, you name it.
He is among the fastest of the thousands of bicycle messengers in the impatient
city and something of a hero in this frenetic office on West 49th Street,
an office that is wall to wall in ringing telephones and battle-scarred bicycles,
the fastest known way through the morass of Manhattan traffic.
"You have to ride offensively," Mr. Williamson explained, mounting a 10-speed
and darting in front of an accelerating yellow wall of taxis on Seventh Avenue.
He made straight for the center lane. To ride timidly near the curb, the
25-year-old rider said, is to invite collision with
pedestrians, with opening cab doors and with turning cars.
"Avoid collisions," he said, 'they slow you down."
Mr. Williamson picked up a parcel at SteveBurnett Graphic Communications,
330 West 42d
Street, and, in a display of instancy, delivered it seven minutes later to
Major Printing, 135 West 20th Street.
As traffic thickened and slowed it the garment district, the rider bolted
ahead - zigzagging neatly between car bumpers to change lanes; racing on
the eighth flash of the "Don't Walk" signals; swerving instinctively for
bumps and potholes not yet in view, and slipping through chasms formed by
buses and trucks, spaces do narrow that he shrugged his shoulders or ducks
his head to avoid side mirrors that smack many messengers off their bikes.
He did not know or care what he was delivering. His is the pursuit of the
$100 day - take home - and he had just earned $3.60, 60 percent of the delivery
charge.
Veterans of the trade recall messengers carrying everything from live ducks
for television commercials to Yogi Berra's uniform from a tailor shop to
Yankee Stadium. This day, an Early bird messenger delivered a slice of pizza,
no questions asked.
Mr. Williamson next barreled up the Avenue of the Americas to 57th Street,
slowing only at Herald Square to look for a police officer known to ticket
cyclists who run red lights. To save time, Mr. Williamson uses a quick-action
lock and carries tools and tire patches to keep the bike rolling. While obtaining
a signature from a receptionist, he sends the elevator up a couple of floors
so he can catch it on the way down. There is no lunch break.
"Speed," said Kenneth Peyser, vice-president of Early Bird, "is the name
of the game in
New York." The messengers, nearly all of them men, work on commission and,
he said, "make as much as they dare,"
There are about 200 messenger services in the city, sporting such names as
Atomic, Fireball, Jimmy-Split, Supersonic and Zoom. Some, like Bullet Messenger,
have found bicycles too dangerous and now use vans and foot messengers instead.
"We don't want kamikazes," said Mr. Peyser of Early Bird, "but we do hire
risk takers. There is macho involved."
"You can't be wimpy," Mr. Williamson said. "You ride scared, you get hurt."
He has grown a beard to look a little more intimidating, and he tries to
look stern. Helmets? They would sooner wear petticoats.
Mr. Williamson is on his seventh bike in less than two years. After one was
stolen, he began wrapping his bicycle in black tape and leaving the seat
torn to make it less appealing.
The five others were destroyed in action, one crunched in a collision that
propelled him over the car in front. He needed surgery to remove bone chips
from his ankle. Another high-speed accident involved what cyclists call "eating
the back of the bus."
Few riders last more than a few years in the job. Geza Fekete retired to
an inside job at Choice Courier after suffering a broken collarbone. He does
not miss sucking in the exhaust fumes or having his ears ring from the roar
of traffic.
"The good side," he said, "Is the exhilaration of flitting in and out of
traffic like a dragonfly."
Mr. Nelson, 19, is just beginning. Sitting in the Early Bird office, having
recently recovered from a work-related concussion that kept him in the hospital
for several days, he spoke about his experiences.
"Eight hours of riding," be said, "drains you physically and mentally. It
takes intense concentration. You learn that taxis don't like you because
you make better time and maybe more money. Pedestrians are unpredictable,
our worst problem."
Pedestrians, many of whom are injured each year in collisions with bicycle
messengers, complain about the cyclists, particularly about those who run
red lights - "a necessity to make any money," Mr. Williamson said- and ride
on the sidewalks.
A biting wind kicked up as Mr. Williamson called the dispatcher from a pay
telephone on 57th Street. He does not mind that winter is coming on; it means
many messengers will quit, leaving more work for him.
He hung up and said, "Time to ride" -all the way to the Battery.
He said he could be there in about 17 minutes, faster than anything or perhaps
anybody else in the city could. He would ride on reflex. With the speeds
at which he weaves through the hurtling steel of Manhattan traffic, he cannot
reasonably expect to ask the brain a question and receive an answer in time
for it to do him any good.
He pumped away effortlessly, disappearing into traffic down Second Avenue.
When the traffic lights on the avenue turned red and everything else stopped,
Ray Williamson appeared, a speck lit the distance, darting and moving at
35 miles an hour, over a rise and out of sight, in hot pursuit of a $100
day.
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