D.C. BICYCLE COURIERS BRAVE THE STREETS TO DELIVER WITH FLAIR
By Liz Spayd
Washington Post, September 2, 1991
Connecticut Avenue, southbound, as the morning rush hour winds down:
A heavy rain has turned the streets to a glaze, and car engines roar from behind. Peril abounds, but the mission is clear. A package from MCI's 19th Street NW headquarters must be delivered to a company on Capitol Hill.
For his 22-minute cross-town trek, Derrick Brown will risk life and limb, and be paid $4.40.
Brown is one of about 700 bicycle messengers who ply the streets of the District, vilified by pedestrians and envied by those who dream of climbing into Lycra shorts for a day's work. To the messengers, the job is more than mere work -- it's a lifestyle, a sport even, where the streets are the racetrack and survival the prize.
There are no bosses to pamper, no meetings to attend, no reports to file and no phones to answer. The workplace is a world of packages and potholes, of raw nerve and sheer speed, where success is measured not just by how much you make, but how good you look.
"It's all a big ego trip," said Brown, 23, fashionably clad in faded black bike shorts, $110 sunglasses and a crimson T-shirt bearing his company's logo. "Part of the thrill is seeing how much you can make in a day."
On a recent day, Brown got about $80 for delivering 23 parcels. When not encumbered by a reporter, he and veteran riders like him can bring in paychecks averaging $700 a week, or roughly $35,000 a year.
All the messengers are independent contractors, which means they are hired to do work for a company but have no guarantee of a steady paycheck nor such benefits as health insurance. Typically, messengers get about half of what customers are charged for a delivery, which can range from $3 to about $8, depending on how far the package is going and how quickly it needs to get there.
The business is cutthroat, as the 50 to 60 courier companies that use bicycle messengers in the District constantly try to undercut each other's prices. The amount of revenue generated by the mini-industry is a closely guarded secret, although several companies said that the recession and the advent of the facsimile machine have reduced its size by as much as a third from five years ago.
Still, in a city where paper is king, there will always be a market for getting important, original documents across town quickly.
"If you're a lobbying firm, you're not going to be sending congressmen and senators a bunch of faxes," said Kevin Gilead, president of Apple Courier Inc. and head of the Washington Metropolitan Delivery Association. "A fax just doesn't have the same effect as a hand-delivered original document on nice stationery."
The competition is no less intense for the messengers, who say they not only have to pedal at breakneck pace, but also maintain a flexible definition of what constitutes a red light.
The trick is to collect as many packages going one way as possible, which requires nearly constant telephone contact with the dispatcher, the giver and taker of all assignments.
"Yo! What else you got coming?" Brown asks the dispatcher at every stop.
Being a bicycle messenger, though, is not just about relaying look-alike parcels between nameless office workers. It is more like a cult with a magnetic lure that pulls in whites, blacks, rich, poor, the college-educated and high school dropouts. Their common bond is an obsession with the bicycle and a disdain for the strictures that their desk-bound customers have come to accept.
They know an arcane side of Washington: which water fountains are the coldest, which office buildings keep their bathrooms unlocked and which secretaries are the most willing to part with their phone.
"Where else can I get paid to ride my bike all day?" said 38-year-old Wayne Haynes, who with eight years of experience has one of the longest messenger careers going. "I haven't driven a car in 13 years."
In fact, few of the hard-core messengers even have driver's licenses. Many live in group houses around Adams-Morgan and Columbia Heights, and several are bike racers who use the day job to stay in shape. That's relatively easy because a messenger rides at least 30 miles in a typical day.
Most every courier has a good physique, muscular legs and a lean build, and most have a multi-thousand-dollar collection of neon jerseys, Lycra tights, water-resistant shoes and Pearlizumi jackets.
And almost all have nicknames or trademarks for the show on the street.
Downtown office workers may well have seen "The Bartman," modeled, naturally, after the Bart Simpson TV character. His three-inch-long blond hair is a perfect copy of the animated star's coiffure, and he often can be seen with the stuffed head of a Bart Simpson doll secured to his handlebars.
But Bart, known to his parents as Donald Bury, is most proud of the Sony car stereo and 100-watt speakers he has connected to his bike. Last week, he rigged up an alarm that lets loose a piercing scream at the mere jiggle of his bike.
For the most part, veteran riders have little interest in cozying up to the "rookies," a derogatory label attached to college students who show up in the summer and take away work when business is already slow.
It is the college hot shots, the amateurs, who veterans say give messengers a bad name among pedestrians and motorists.
"They're the ones flying down the sidewalks and barreling through red lights," said Haynes, whose street name is "Wally."
"We may run a light, but only when it's clean," Haynes added, referring to the lights that turn red with no cars in an intersection. Haynes said he has struck only one pedestrian in his biking career.
Determining just how many pedestrians are hit by messengers in any given year is difficult. District police say they do not keep statistics on accidents involving bike messengers, though they regard such incidences as a continuing problem. The messengers say the emphasis is in the wrong place.
"You always hear about the poor pedestrians," said "Beaver" Moore, a messenger of four years. "But it's a lot more common for a car to hit one of us than for us to hit a pedestrian."
Nearly all messengers claim to have been hit by at least one car. Sometimes the accident can be a career-ender, but usually the victims just hop back on their bikes. Haynes cracked three ribs a few years ago when a cab veered into him, and was back on the road within a week. Brown has been in three accidents, none serious enough to make him consider a desk job.
Tales about those and other close calls are traded almost nightly in Dupont Circle, where messengers gather by the dozens at the end of the day. A few unwind with drugs, but most make do with a six-pack of beer. One Dupont Circle regular is a homeless man known affectionately by the messengers as "The Mayor." They give him food and sometimes money.
The messengers say they love their work, largely because it offers a sort of rebel lifestyle that few jobs do. But there are pitfalls, they admit -- constantly racing around, hazards on the streets and the realization that there's no bright career path in what they do. Although some have stuck to it for years, most last no more than four.
"People see us on the elevator in our flashy clothes and skin tights and want to be like us," Brown said. "The truth is, there's a lot of freedom, but it gets old. If I quit tomorrow, I wouldn't miss for a minute pedaling my butt off to deliver someone else's envelope."
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