Philadelphia bike messenger culture

Monday, just as I was leaving work, a rough cut DVD of a video we are revising was dropped off for my review, by a bike messenger. (That sounds more interesting than it is; if you want to see the kind of videos I work on, go here and click on the link “Onsite orientation for Step 2 CS (Video).” It’s an enthralling 20 minutes or so, and you can even see my handwriting in some of the screen shots!

However, what I want to focus on now is the bike messenger.

I had never heard of bike messengers until about twelve years ago, when I began working in medical publishing in Philadelphia. It turns out the quickest way to get an object delivered in the city is via bicycle. These messengers are unbelievably fast. In fact, when I worked at Lippincott, we were warned to have the manuscript or whatever we were sending packaged, addressed, and ready to go before we placed the call to a bike messenger company for pick-up, because the messenger was almost always waiting in the lobby before we were able to get downstairs via elevator to meet them. They are that fast.

(In case you are wondering what kind of object needed to be delivered physically in this age of electronic publishing, usually it was handwritten author corrections or medical art; most of that is done electronically, but there were exceptions. The most exciting instance was when a doctor, in the midst of an operation, wanted to consult an article that was still in the proof stage, about some unusual situation. He needed the proofs and photos delivered immediately to the operating room.)

I learned that there is a bike messenger culture. Most of the messengers are very skinny young men with tattoos and piercings (or perhaps that is the look that sticks in my memory). There are bike messenger bars where they hang out after work. They take a lot of pride in their speed, and because of that are often criticized for creating dangerous traffic situations. At least two pedestrians, I believe, have died after being struck by a bike messenger – but the messengers themselves are also in some danger, as are all city cyclists.

The bike messenger population has declined quite a bit in recent years, but it still seems to be a satisfying way of life for some folks. I think there must be some kind of adrenaline addiction involved. Here’s an excerpt from a 2009 article in Philadelphia Weekly:

The small bicycle-courier community in Philadelphia is overwhelmingly male and young, nearly everybody a dropout from school, career or some other mainstream obligation—the kind of people who enjoy spending a miserably wet fall day crisscrossing the city on bike. And couriers say Philly—with its relatively cheap rents—is one of the last, best places to earn a living.

Brito, one of the leaders of the Philadelphia Bicycle Messenger Association, came to town from New York, attended grad school and taught eighth grade in North Philly for a short spell.

“I hated it,” he says. “The only thing I enjoyed was riding for a living. So now I’m the most overeducated messenger in the city. Even though things are slow now and the economy sucks, I probably make as much as if I were teaching. I sleep better.”