NYC Fashion Week, like many other things, impossible without bike messengers

February 22, 11:18 AMNY Bicycle Transportation ExaminerMeredith Sladek

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Hey guys, who totally loves Fashion Week, right?

If you answered yes, or one of its common incarnations, thank a bike messenger.  Odds are, it wouldn't have happened if not for them.

Bicycle messenger is one of the most difficult, most underpaid, and most underrated jobs in New York City.  Over two thousand couriers a day ride through the streets of Manhattan to provide a unique and incredibly necessary service to businesses and individuals: the guaranteed same-day (sometimes same-hour) delivery of non-digital cargo.  Even in this age, many documents cannot be sent via email or reproduced in a short span—documents such as contracts, catalogues, posters, piles of fliers, boxes of menus, originals of legal documents, or blueprints.  

Or garment bags, gift baskets, bottles of wine, thousand-dollar suits, portfolios, bags of coffee, payroll envelopes, reels of film, copyright research, hard drives of information.  Boxes of all shapes, sizes, and weights.  For Tommy Hilfiger, Yoko Ono, Artforum, HBO, or maybe your apartment building.

In this fast-paced metropolis, these transactions are expected to be done as quickly as possible.  Often a messenger is waiting by the door for a package to be completed before whisking it to its destination.  Sometimes its destination may be from Water Street to 104th. Sometimes it may be across town.  Most of the time, there are other pickups and deliveries that must happen in that span. The best messengers are ones that are not only quick and agile, but consistently so, and have the most comprehensive knowledge of the city, its streets, and its traffic in order to create the most efficient route.  Many have such grasp of the traffic patterns and flow that they can “see the future” of the traffic up to 15 seconds in advance.

Most messengers ride 40-50 miles a day, every day, in every kind of weather.  Some are paid on commission, based on package size and weight, distance, rush time, and wait time.  They get the most money carrying as much as possible, to go as fast as possible. Some tote over 80 pounds on their back; if they have racks on their bikes, they can fit more. Others receive an hourly salary.   Most do not receive benefits or injury leave, and quite a few skate on thin ice above the poverty line.  Tips are rare, and unfortunately so, considering the importance of their cargo.   

Bike messengers have been stigmatized by terrible press; many accuse them of being dangerous, disorderly, rude, and unsafe.  In most  instances it is a case of either a few bad apples ruining the bunch, or unexperienced commuters inadvertently giving them a bad name.  Messengers are trying to do their job to the best of their ability.  To the average eye, they may appear to be riding recklessly, but in reality when they make a move, they know exactly what they are doing.  They are professionals, and have umpteen times more the street riding experience than most other cyclists.  They, in turn, have to deal with every traffic risk imaginable, residual injury, jaywalking (and often rude) pedestrians, tightly-packed gridlock, exhaust inhalation, hunger, and fatigue.  Many times they are ushered into side doors or freight entrances instead of being allowed to take the oftentimes more convenient front entrance.  All for the sake of the document that your boss needs NOW.

They do it for the paycheck and for the love of the ride.  The shelf life for a messenger may be only 3-4 years, but most are die-hard bike geeks.  The slushy January days are mitigated by the 86-degree June ones, where office-dwellers may envy their courier.  In the spring and summer, they may be found by the bridge, brown-bagging and watching the sun set.  They won't hesitate to help out a fellow rider on the road, and when leaving the bridge or the bar, they never go without a handshake...or, in some cases, a pound.

Please thank your messengers for Fashion Week.  As well for as your envelopes, your garment bags, your paychecks, and the Blackberry you left at home this morning.  Thank them, and better yet, leave them a tip.