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.”

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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:

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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.

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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.

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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

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.

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By Joseph Rose, The Oregonian

Career Courier

Urban bike messengers tend to weave in and out of traffic like two-wheeled worker bees, anonymously focusing on delivering documents and packages around the city as quickly as possible.

For most motorists, they’re a blur of spokes and chain-stained leg muscles. Filmmaker Kenton Hoppas wants to change that.

Hoppas, a formerSan Diegobike courier, has wrapped up production of  “Career Courier,” an 86-minute documentary on the careers — careers? — of bicycle couriers.

“We filmed from March to March, 2010 to 2011, in five cities,” Hoppas said in a phone interview with Hard Drive. “One of the stars of the film isPortlandcourier James Adamson.”

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