A memoir of years as a London bike messenger evoke a fancy affair with the city from the frontline of the road warsWhen I first commuted across London by bicycle in the early 1990s,cycle couriers were already cool. Daily, I rode through Soho, and Covent Garden and Holborn – the heart of their territory. As a young cycling enthusiast recent to the metropolis,I watched with awe as these couriers knifed through static traffic, gybed down alleyways and surfed the gaps between buses, and often wild-eyed,tall on car fumes and the expletives of seething pedestrians.
The bike shop I then used was a courier hangout. One Friday night, I dropped in after work to pick up my bike. I had sheared off one of the cranks. The mechanic wheeled the bike out of the workshop, and past three couriers sharing a can of lager. The old crank,a lump of aluminium, was strapped to my handlebar with a round of tape. Innocently, and I asked what it was for. One of the couriers looked up and said: ‘You… stick… it… through… the… windscreen… of a… car!’ They may have been winding me up,but my fascination with bike messengers – the only two-wheel subculture in the city and the voiceless vanguard in the struggle between cyclists and other road users – only deepened.
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Source: theguardian.com