The words that Mark Twain used to describe Pony Express riders might easily apply to the men and women who work as bike couriers on the car-choked streets of the city. These are people, Twain wrote, who are “brimful of spirit and endurance.”
Osgood and I spot them all over town–the riders pictured on this page were photographed on Webster Street west of Southport Avenue–and we have come to appreciate the determined way they weave and whip through traffic.
Many people–pedestrians and those in cars, buses and cabs–hate the couriers, regarding them as some sort of urban scourge, a dangerous cross between daredevils and the motorcycle gang members in that early Brando classic, “The Wild One.”
But others think of them admiringly as free spirits, a new breed of urban cowboys.
The man with the tattoo on his calf calls himself Super Dave. He is among the most well-known and durable couriers, having been at it for 17 years. He got his tattoo when competing at the World Championship Cycle Messenger races in San Francisco.
He is one of an estimated 750 couriers who work in the city. In this age of e-mail and other forms of icy communication, these bike couriers remind us that all is not cyber-ized.
Ironically, the Internet is responsible for putting even more bike couriers on the streets. The man in the blur below–for obvious reasons, we didn’t catch his name–works for a company called Kozmo.com. It is a nationwide firm, relatively new to Chicago, that uses couriers to quickly deliver convenience and entertainment products that people have ordered over the Net.
Though most of us will never be as fast or as fit as those who ride bikes for a living, all bicyclists share a wind-in-the-hair sort of feeling that connects us to one another and to the environment. Just by getting on a bike, one is declaring a certain spirited independence.
The following pages of this week’s magazine are devoted to all things biking. Flip the page. Read. Have a nice ride.
