Rules versus problems

Building from Lefebvre, Borden (2001), an architectural theorist, claims that skateboarders appropriate the space of the city. Specifically, for Lefebvre, planners have (attempted) to structure subjective meaning out of the city. For example, urban roadways (designed for automobiles) reduce experience to the reading of basic signs. In this sense, drivers do not interact with the environment; they merely follow the rules of the road (as dictated by painted lines, warning signs, and traffic signals). Borrowing from Barthes (1953), Lefebvre (1968) calls such purely utilitarian designs the zero point of architecture. They are abstract spaces conceived solely for the advancement of capital at the expense of aesthetic and humanistic concerns (also see Lefebvre 1976). However, skaters take the urban planner’s abstract spaces and infuse them with meaning. That is, skaters move past ordinary perceptions and official conceptions of the urban landscape to creatively experience space in unintended ways. By using handrails, curbs, and steps as objects of play, the bland functionality of they city becomes a site of lived dramatization. As Borden writes, “In the case of the handrail, the skateboarder’s reuse of the handrail—ollieing [a skateboarding move where the skater jumps into the air with the board stuck to their feet] onto the rail and, balanced perilously on the skateboard deck, sliding down the fulcrum line of the metal bar—targets something to do with safety and turn it into an object of risk“ (192).

Like skateboarders, bike messengers play in (and with) urban space. Streets and sidewalk, cars and pedestrians are all conceptualized as part of a complex, shifting puzzle (as a point of fact, the New York messengers’ entitled their magazine Urban Death Maze). The messenger’s goal is to uncover the fastest possible route between two points. This is not primarily about pedal power and aerobic capacity. Instead, it is about “skills with spatial capacity” as the messenger, Andy, was quick to point out. Elaborating, Andy stated, “Well, it’s not just spatial. It’s also timing. When you’ve been on the road a long time with cars [...] when you see that opening [...] you know if you can make it or not. And, anybody else who looked at it would be like, ‘You’re … insane,’ but you’re not. You just know exactly how fast you’re going and how fast they’re going and you can do the math.” An excerpt from my field notes (11/14/02) is indicative of this skill. “I saw [Vinny] in traffic today. I was stopped on 23rd Street at Broadway. The traffic coming down Broadway looked impenetrable, but then [Vinny] just appears between two moving buses, weaving out of pedestrian traffic. He wasn’t going fast or anything. He just slipped through it.” Andreas, explaining how messengers use space, asked me, “Have you ever seen [Vinny] ride? It is not that he rides that fast, but he can get through traffic [...]. He can use every little space between cars.”

Whereas skaters creatively use the functionally bland objects of the city (e.g., handrails and parking curbs), messengers play with the functional rules of city traffic. For bike couriers, traffic laws are used only as predictors (in a heuristic of risk) of what other users of the city should be doing. Culley (2002), writes of this perspective, “Red means red and green means green: I keep moving regardless” (189). Recounting a recent traffic citation, Jessica informed her friends, “I didn’t know I’d even run [a red light]. I look at traffic. I don’t pay attention to lights.”

What Culley, Jessica, and Andy demonstrate is that, messengers do not conceptualize traffic as a set of rules. Instead, traffic is a set of problems (i.e., dangers) that must be continually resolved. For example, a red light at an intersection signifies that one is likely to encounter more problems than if the light was green. The messenger may or may not be able to resolve this problem (i.e., fit between the cross-flow of traffic). If she can solve it, laws are ignored. If the rider cannot find a line through, she must stop, but stopping is always a source of frustration. In describing the riding knowledge he had obtained since working as a messenger, Bill explained, that now he can “flow through traffic. [...] Whereas before I probably would have either given the pedestrian the right of way or let the car go the right of way. But, finding those ways to absolutely get myself out of anybody’s way and still keep moving, it’s something I never really did before.” To this point, when I ask Annabel, a rookie, if she liked her job she replied, “Overall, it’s fun, but some days it’s frustrating.” When I ask why, she answered, “Pedestrians and cars get in my way and I can’t flow.” Months later, Annabel proudly (and somewhat sarcastically) referred to herself as an “artist” after a veteran messenger complimented her increasing skills at urban cycling (i.e., in keeping her flow).

As they move through the city, other objects and users of the city become obstacles and implements for the messenger as they attempt to keep their flow. Pedestrians provide a good example. Colliding with a pedestrian is dangerous for both rider and walker. Of the numerous stories of such accidents, Chuck’s weeklong coma stands as a stark reminder of the danger pedestrians pose to cyclists (and vice versa). A basic courier mantra, therefore, is, “Avoid collisions, they slow you down” (Ray, quoted in Geist 1983:B1). Alternatively, pedestrians are also implements of the messengers because jaywalkers can slow down cars, and alter the flow of traffic to the messenger’s advantage. Jack refers to this as “the human shield.” Nathan, whom I was interviewing at the same time, explained, “Since they are jaywalking, you can be sure that no cars are coming.” Jack quick chimed in, “Or, if a car is coming, they’ll hit them instead of you.” Hence, the human shield. Buses can provide the same effect (“bus shielding”). Both are examples if how messengers creatively (and in some ways, counter-intuitively) use the rules and resources of the city (in Giddens’s sense of the terms) to ride against the rules (in the legal sense of the term) of the city.

It must be remembered that, this sort of knowledge is often tacit, and even when used consciously, it is decided upon in fractions of a second. In the case of pedestrian shielding, as a messenger speeds towards an intersection, he looks for indications about what may or may not occur as he crosses the plane of the opposing street. The presence of pedestrians helps the rider determine what other vehicles can or cannot do in the following few instances of time. As Bill stated, “It’s not necessarily a logical thing. You’re not sitting there analyzing. You don’t know why you’re doing these things, but your mind is occupied and kind of taking in the fact that there is a car with its left turn signal on over here, there is a pedestrian right there [...].” Or as Howie indicated, “I don’t know how the mind works. I’m not consciously saying should I go or should I stop. I’m making decisions really fast.”

The difference between the orientation to “rules” and “problems” is demonstrated by the worried and (often times) angry motorist who frets over a cyclist refusing to obey traffic laws (even when there is no danger present). On night in Seattle, as I rode with Jack, he blew through a stop sign. He slipped seamlessly between cars; none of the drivers needed (or had quick enough reflexes) to hit their brakes. Regardless, an extremely irate man yelled from his car, “You’re going to get killed riding your bike like that.” Jack simply ignored the warning (and threat) and continued riding. A moment later he looked at me calmly and remarked, “No, actually, I’m not going to get killed riding like that. That’s how you ride not to get hit.” Sarah explains this perspective by stating, “[M]essengers know how to ride in urban traffic, and flow with traffic. [...] I think that idea of ‘we are traffic too’ can hurt you more than help you. [...] I try to stay out of the way. [...] I think if I rode and obeyed all the laws and treated myself as traffic, I’d actually be stopping the flow as opposed to going with it.”

In this regard, the relationship between the messenger and her bicycle and between herself and traffic is completely divergent from that of the bicycle commuter and the competitive cyclist. For example, all three types of rider are concerned with safety. Non-messengers tend to follow the principles of vehicular cycling (Hurst 2004); bikes should behave like others vehicles on the road and, in turn, be given the same rights as other vehicles. This is Sarah’s derision of the “we are traffic too” argument. Alternatively, messengers conceive of bicycles as a sort of supra-traffic. In this conception, cars and pedestrians are required to follow the rules of the road, and cyclists are given clemency to fit between the cracks of the system. The messengers’ view of themselves, thus, perfectly reflects a traditional view of agency and structure; that they are free to operate between the girders of the structure (see Giddens 1984). As a Chicago messenger explained, “A nice metaphor for it is, if you imagine like water falling over rocks in a stream. There is a natural way to go, and you know, the path of least resistance, etcetera. So, if there is a line of cars in traffic in a street that you’re going down, there is just kind of a natural way that you fall through” (Josh, quoted in Mucha and Scheffler 2007).

Time constraints and edgework

When messengers discursively rationalize their riding (or in Josh’s case, romantically philosophize it), they often emphasize safety. Corporeal security, however, is only part (and in many ways only a small part) of the equation. There are distinct dangers in the principles of vehicular cycling (see Hurst 2004), but the problem-oriented method of messenger riding has its own very obvious hazards (and the frequency of messenger injuries underlines this fact). Clearly, the messengers’ style of riding is primarily concerned with speed and efficiency (in the short run). After all, messengers are paid for making fast deliveries, and regardless of whether they are paid on commission or by the hour, messengers feel compelled to live up to their image.

Speed and efficiency is the essence of bike messenger labor (Stewart 2004). Concurrent with this is the courier’s disregard for traffic laws. As Reilly (2000) writes of double rush jobs: “By merely dispatching jobs of that nature, there is the implied order to the courier to break the law” (29). Many couriers cherish the outlaw aspect of the job, and many smaller companies embrace the image as well. Larger companies, like Sprint and CLS, however, maintain strict Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policies between their riders and their supervisors. They, thus, put a barrier between what everyone at the company knows has to be done and what management is legally willing to be held accountable for. Likewise, one Seattle messenger, nervous about having his picture taken during the course of my research, sarcastically expressed his reservation by stating, “I don’t know, something about having to break laws every minute of the day.”

Working as a messenger, I was routinely given jobs that could not possibly be completed within the confines of the law (or even common sense). Take, for example, an excerpt from my field notes (06/05/03), “[My dispatcher] radioed me and said he had a ‘super rush.’ He told me I had less than 15 minutes to go to Broadway Video [at 53 Street and Broadway], and make it down to Deutsche [at 15 Street and Eighth Avenue]. I did it in 12. I did the actual distance in seven (the other five minutes was lost inside Broadway Video).” I could only do this by running red lights and traveling the wrong way down one-way streets. Other, more cavalier messengers could have done this even quicker.

Not surprisingly, when explaining their behavior on the road, messengers cite time constraints as their motivating force. Johnny explained it simply, “You’ve got to get your job done.” To this, Robin added, “How you do your job is how you do it.” But, just as a concern for safety is only a partial justification for how a messenger moves through traffic, time constraints alone are not a satisfactory explanation for why messengers ride the way they do. As nearly every messenger is quick to point out, riding bikes in the city can be fun—fun precisely because of the dangers generated by the messenger’s continual search for speed and efficiency. As Scott explained, “There are actually real times when there are [extremely hard to meet deadlines]. Where, if you wait at red lights, you are not going to make the job. But, almost 90 percent of the time it’s not like that. I want to get it done as fast as possible. Even if I have like an hour or something to get eight blocks, it is like I want to be there in one second. So, I’ll just run every red light. It’s funner to go way faster.” Or, as Robin stated (openly admitting the contradiction to his previous justifications for why he rides the way he does), “I am terrible. When I am in no hurry, I am more impatient because I feel that I can get away with it.”

In this sense, messenger work is part of the death-defying excitement of edgework (Lyng 1990; also see Kidder 2006a). It is what Marco calls “the thrill of being able to jet through cars.” As he explained, “You get that kind of adrenaline rush, and you kind of look back and say, ‘Whoa, man, I could have been killed by this car and this and that.’ It’s shit you don’t realize when you’re riding because you kind of zone everything out except for the cars within a couple of inches from you.” Or as Howie stated, “[T]he urban equivalent of mountain biking is bike messengering.” That is, at its peak moments—when trying to make seemingly impossible deadlines (whether they are imposed by the client or merely the rider herself)—messengering is about, as Rhonda said, “pushing every single one of your limits.” As Lyng (1990) makes clear, pushing the edge of your limits can be extremely enjoyable. To this end, Johnny, now “retired” from messengering and working for a successful independent record label, stated, “It is the most fun job I will ever have in my life, without a doubt.”