The first trailer for the feature bike messenger action movie is here. Many New York City messenger were involved in the making of this movie.
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NIU assistant professor delivers insight on bike messengers
Northern Star, September 13, 2011
By Chelsey Boutan
When assistant professor of sociology Jeff Kidder first rode his bike downNew York City’s streets, he was afraid.
Angry commuters, red lights, traffic, one-way streets – Kidder struggled to weave through the urban maze so he could pick up an application at a bike messenger company.
“It’s sort of like being in the middle of an aluminumGrand Canyon,” Kidder said. “It feels very frightening.”
Kidder’s interest in this subculture grew as he worked as a bike messenger for his doctoral research, which became the foundation for his recently published book, “Urban Flow: Bike Messengers and the City.”
“A bike messenger’s self identity is really wrapped up in their work, and I find that very interesting,” Kidder said. “My book tries to unpack what about this job allows that to happen.”
For more than three years, Kidder worked as a bike messenger inNew York City,SeattleandSan Diego. Kidder said having direct experience with the group’s activities is the best way to study a subculture.
2011 Markus Cook Award – Call for nominations
It’s time to call for nominations for this year’s Markus Cook Award for services to the international messenger community.
This will be the 14th year that the award is presented. It was started by Buffalo Bill in 1998, to remember Markus and to draw attention to messengers whose work benefits all of us.
From the IFBMA’s Markus Cook Award page:
“The MCA for services to the International Messenger Community is not a prize for winning a race. At the time the Award was conceived, CMWC was beginning to be more about the racing than the happening. I [ Buffalo Bill] wanted to re-establish the spirit of the championships, to restate the reason that we all come to this event every year.
The MCA is a reflection of the axiom that everyone who comes to a CMWC is a winner, whether they race or not.
Markus himself was very much in love with the CMWC, and in many ways he was the unlikeliest bike racer imaginable. He was several other things, of course. Editor of Mercury Rising messenger zine, unofficial spokesperson of the SFBMA, leader of L Sid, and a friend to all. The enthusiasm of Markus brought CMWC and the international messenger community toSan Francisco, and it saddens many people to this day that he did not live to see it.
This award is for people that inspire and empower the wider messenger community, that put all of us before themselves.”
Darcy Allan Sheppard – A life’s last moments
On August 31, 2009, former attorney general for Ontario, Michael Bryant, killed cyclist Darcy Allan Sheppard in one of the most violent and horrific cases of road rage in Toronto’s history.
Neither Michael Bryant nor his wife, entertainment lawyer Susan Abramovitch, gave statements to police regarding the circumstances that led to Darcy Allan Sheppard’s death. They will have many months to tailor their testimonies to fit the known evidence and weave it seamlessly into a vigorous defense mounted by one of the most elite criminal lawyers in the country.
Bryant’s victim, Darcy Allan Sheppard, who was known as Al to his friends, will not have a voice at the trial. He will not have an opportunity to challenge Michael Bryant’s carefully scripted and rehearsed testimony. He will not have a chance to correct Bryant’s devoted wife and an experienced lawyer when she unconditionally supports her husband of twelve years on the witness stand.
Al’s voice needs to be heard. It’s important that people have an opportunity to understand his life’s last moments. Al could have been any one of us. He just happened to be the cyclist who crossed paths with a driver on the verge of a road rage meltdown.
I have attempted to rebuild those last moments of Al’s life from his point of view. All of the events are based on the factual evidence contained in security camera video, witness statements and news reports. Al’s point of view is also primarily based on the factual evidence as well as my own experiences as a bike messenger and cyclist.
On the evening of Monday August 31, 2009, Al Sheppard was heading home to his apartment at Dupont and Dufferin Streets. His route took him along Bloor Street in front of the trendy blocks of retail stores and boutiques near Bay Street.
At about 9:45 pm, a security camera captured images of a black Saab convertible stopped at a red light on Bloor Street near Bay Street. The car was driven by Michael Bryant. His wife, Susan Abramovitch, sat next to him in the passenger’s seat. The Bryants were on their way home after a night out celebrating their twelfth wedding anniversary.
New distracted driving law applies to cyclists
By Stephane Massinon,
Calgary Herald, August 29, 2011
It’s not just drivers who will be forced to hang up their cellphones under the new distracted driving legislation, but cyclists, too.
Bill 16, Alberta’s new distracted driving legislation, which takes effect Thursday, will apply to all vehicles in the Traffic Safety Act and that includes bicycles and is enforceable on roadways.
Carl Hollick, president of West Direct bike couriers, says his employees have all been warned not to talk on their cellphones while riding and said most usually know their destinations before leaving.
“We are telling them there is a change, there is a law – and it is a law – and we intend for our people to obey it,” said Hollick.
“We’re doing everything we can to make sure that we stay as a handsfree environment.”
(Darcy) Allan Sheppard Memorial Ride & Ghost Bike Ceremony
Sunday, August 28 · 1:00pm - 4:00pm, Bloor & Avenue
Apparently (Al Sheppard) by Uncle Dropsi and Sunny
From the Toronto Bike Messenger Association’s (TOBMA) event description:
Commerce in High Gear: The Geography of Bike Couriers inNorth America
Martin Prosperity Institute, August 24, 2011
They are some of the city’s most visible workers, a familiar blur in the downtowns ofNew York,ChicagoandToronto. With the advent of e-mail there has been less work for them, yet they do their work as they have always done it: with urgency. They are bike messengers (also known as bike couriers). Their job is to move contracts, monetary instruments, and other small packages around dense areas of the city – and to do it fast.
There is already a fair amount written about the decline of messengers or about messenger subculture. In this work, bike messengers are profiled either as dodos of the digital economy or urban cowboys; anachronisms or anarchists. New research on Bike Messengers from the MPI suggests that they might also be symbols of regional economic advantage.
A recently completed study by Research Associate Patrick Adler has mapped and attempted to explain the geography of bike couriers inNorth America. It finds that bike couriers cluster in a small number of North American cities and that the places with bike couriers are more prosperous economies than the places without them.
Thirty metropolitan areas in Canada were studied along with the ten largest American metros, and a stratified sample of 32 others. Part of this study involved establishing the number of bike courier companies in each metro. The map below shows survey results.
Cycle couriers arrested for ‘threatening behaviour’
Cycling Weekly, August 23, 2011
By Will Irwin
Two courier cyclists might have expected the law to be on their side when they were perilously cut-up by a London taxi driver. But instead they found themselves under arrest and appeared in court charged with ‘threatening behaviour’.
Andrew Brown and Mark Durrand appeared atThamesmagistrates court and were cleared of the charges, but only after they’d been violently arrested and spent a night in Police cells.
Brenda Puesch, a witness in the case, described what occurred to Cycling Weekly: “I saw a taxi deliberately swerve into two cyclists immediately in front of me before accelerating off, missing them by inches.”
The cyclists pursued the taxi driver and, upon catching him, remonstrated with him over his driving.
CMWC 2011 Warsaw – Results!
The 2011 Cycle Messenger World Champion are Michael Brinkman of Bremen, Germany and Jenna Makgill of Aukland, New Zealand
Full results are available at Bega’s site here
When Reality TV Is Real… No One Is Watching
By Emerald Pellot
Pop Matters, August 3, 2011
Looking into the real world of failed reality show Triple Rush
“I thought they’d come out with the show and it would be totally fake,” says 23-year-old Dillon Roberts with a laugh, “but it turns out this is the one new reality show that is actually more reality than fake.” Roberts is sitting on the edge of a mattress in his studio apartment in Greenpoint,Brooklynholding a Pabst Blue Ribbon as his chuckle tapers off. It would have been great if Triple Rush, the failed reality show he starred in aboutNew York Citybicycle messengers, had been a sham – but it wasn’t. The show, which premiered April 14th on the Travel Channel, was yanked off the air after only three episodes highlighting the fact that audiences may not want as much reality as they think in their reality television.
Triple Rush featured the “chaotic” experience of being a bicycle messenger in the Big Apple by following the daily activities of three courier companies, Quik Trak, Mess Kollective and Breakaway. What’s interesting about Triple Rush, however, is not the show itself, but why the show foundered and what this reveals about audience’s expectations from reality TV shows today.
It means a lot when your reality TV show is, in essence, a sham. For Snooki, the breakout star of MTV’s Jersey Shore, it meant a leap from $3,000 an episode to $30,000, the publication of her first novel A Shore Thing and appearances on shows like The View and Letterman. If you’re Kim Kardashian of Keeping Up With The Kardashians it means newfound fame and notoriety, your own fragrance and oh yeah, that whole sex-tape thing with rap star Ray J. is water under the bridge. It means a whole lot to be a part of this great reality TV thing— if your show is a bamboozle. That is, if it’s not contrived, sensationalized, edited, dramatized, provoked, orchestrated and manipulated enough to be “good,” then you’re just Dillon Roberts, a bicycle messenger with a few extra bucks and a girlfriend who thinks your job is kind of stupid.
