By Jon Anderson,
Chicago Tribune, August 22, 1997
"Ever see that part in `The Wild One' where Brando is asked, `Whaterya rebelling against, Johnny?' And he fires back, `Whatcha got?' " Captain Jack was asking at Bike Messenger Night, a weekly gathering in Bucktown.
"Some people see me like that," he said, over the roar of a band at Phyllis' Musical Inn, at 1800 W. Division St., and it is "partly true.""
But "not fully," he quickly countered, steering a visitor toward a better understanding of these modern hummingbirds of the urban traffic mix..
"A lot of people don't realize, or wouldn't expect, that two-thirds of the messengers they see riding around are completely in control, as crazy and dangerous as it looks," he said, a thought seconded by another bike messenger, a 14-year veteran known to colleagues as Super Dave.
"You gotta have eyes all around your head," Dave said. "You're shooting through traffic, see a pedestrian, go to avoid him, miss a car door that just jumped out, or swerve around a car pulling out from the curb..
"Some people say it's like surfing."
To outsiders, bike messengers often seem to combine the lesser qualities of anarchists, Hell's Angels and the troops of Attila the Hun..
In big cities, amid people whose nerves are already a-jangle, they dart among pedestrians, cars, cabs, buses and, these days, Rollerbladers. They move in their own whirl of rush, where scrapes, bruises, broken limbs, even an occasional roll under a bus, are among the daily job hazards.
But to the sinewy men, and not a few women, who perform what they see as an essential service--speedy delivery of small packages, mostly documents, from Point A to Point B--the art form combines skill, pluck and sport.
And, as they were saying at the musical inn the other night, at an evening sponsored by the Windy City Bike Messengers Association, a support group dedicated to "Courier Pride," they just love to ride bikes..
Few insurance brokers, for example, would consider spending a weekend coming into an office to run through, for fun, a simulated underwriting.
But last Memorial Day, some 30 bike messengers, egged on by cheering crowds of relatives and friends, roared around deserted downtown streets in a competition that involved dropping off envelopes and getting signatures at sites ranging from a Loop doughnut shop to an adult bookstore inn Old Town..
The winner, known as Bobcat, hit all six checkpoints in 26 minutes.
"Anybody can do it, as long as you like to ride a bike," said John Greenfield, co-leader of WCBMA, talking shop before going onstage to play in one of the evening's three bands, all featuring one or more messengers..
Being a bike messenger, he said, is a "good day job," with flexible hours and per-piece pay from $2.50 a package to $8 or more for long hauls. One friend of his, he noted, recently rode from theLoop to Kenilworth.
Typically, they rush materials too precise for faxing, such as legal documents or advertising copy, a niche service largely unaffected by the recent strike of United Parcel Service employees who ride around in trucks..
On the down side, you can fall and hurt your strumming hand.
For bike messengers in Chicago--and there are 600, compared with 1,000 in New York and 400 in San Francisco--bad spills are part of the game.
"I've been in three different wrecks. Hit by a BMW. Went through a guy's windshield. Hit a car door," said one messenger, noting that he now wears shoulder pads.
"I was a good messenger," added Kristen Diehl, coming in to party with buddies. But she quit after 18 months "because I got hit too much." Her final straw came when "a cab driver looked me in the eye, stepped on the gas and ran me down, right in front of the Daley Center."
Well, allowed Captain Jack, "everybody has to get knocked down a couple of times--to learn." To survive, as he explained to a visitor, "you don't stick your arm out to brace yourself. You clear yourself from the bike, get your shoulder out, check what's around you--and roll."
His own worst experience, he said, came several years ago just west of the Loop. A turning bus, failing to signal, squeezed him. "I lost control, rolled all the way under the bus and came out the other side," he said..
He was unhurt. His bike was totaled.
What it takes to be a bike messenger, as others in the crowded bar noted, is a combination of riding fast, being efficient and knowing shortcuts.
For example, in a profession where seconds count, good messengers know that, at 2 North LaSallee St., if they duck through the Federal Express office instead of using the main door, they can avoid guards who, as one said, "will force me to sign in, leave an ID--and my messenger bag."
He did that once, he recalled, and "from my bag, right under the guard's nose, my two-way radio got stolen," a loss to his company of $750.
"I've slid on anti-freeze. Saw it. Couldn't avoid it," reported one messenger, recalling common hazards. Others mentioned bridge gratings and drain openings. But to most messengers, the call of the open street, even when fume-filled, traffic-clogged and weather-beaten, is a siren song.
"I love dancing around traffic in the Loop," said Captain Jack, waxing eloquent. "I relish strong rains and wind. It's violently beautiful. When I'm out there on the bike, I feel like a small dinghy on a tossing sea. I just love that feeling. I roar and I bellow out, `YEAH!!!' "
As he admits, he often startles pedestrians.
"They're pretty nice guys," said Clem Jaskot, manager of Phyllis', a family operation, once a hangout for writer Nelson Algren, which was started in 1954 by his mother, Phyllis, an accordion player.
"This is a place for them to meet every week. Some play the drums. Some recite poetry. " said Jaskot, a former bike messenger himself who remembers his cycling times, 50 miles a day, for "the best shape I was ever in."
Nor do bike messengers necessarily have to get up all that earrly.
"I like living around here," said one messenger, at the bar. "I can roll out of bed at 8:15, zip down Milwaukee and be at work by 8:30."
A job that sweaty, he allowed, pretty much rules out a pre-work shower
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