21 July 2003

Bike courier culture, alley cat racing This weekend we met a bunch of bike couriers at a barbecue. Interesting people, with a strong sub-culture - sub in the sense that non-couriers know very little about what they are like, how couriering works etc. Unsurprisingly, most of them are mad about bikes, and it's a way to earn a crust. So there was much talk of the Tour de France. They knew only one person who'd gone on from couriering to 'proper' road racing. There are 600-1000 couriers working London at any one time, and they do about 70-80 miles a day in town, mostly within the Circle line area, though they may travel further west to Notting Hill, and further east to the Docklands. This bunch had a strong sense of identity and shared culture/community. Some have expensively tricked-out rides, some something seemingly more standard (the playoffs between lightness/efficiency, reliability and cost being the key equations couriers run in choosing the tools of their trade), with single/no brakes and single gears common. About 50+ of the London couriers are into "alley cat racing": illegal checkpoint-to-checkpoint race where the racers only know the next checkpoint. Ie: orienteering on a bike, in (and often against) the traffic. AC Racing was imported from US couriers in the mid-90s. Last night they showed a video made by film students by mounting a camera on one of the alley cat racers. 8 minutes of crazy, often-dangerous riding through traffic and people; ends with the cyclist getting hit by a truck when he attempted to zoom across a red-light and straight across the traffic going both ways (he'd successfully done this a few times already in the film). He wasn't hurt too badly, but the bike probably was. "Oh well, that's racing", he concludes. Even though you don't quite get a sense of the true speed on film, it was fantastic, and reminiscent of several other illegal car or motorbike films (Claude Lelouch's infamous C'etait un Rendezvous, the Getaway in Stockholm films, Black Prince Peripherique). Couriers, alley cat racing, etc: some somewhat dark alley cat video at DC Courier Google for 'alley cat race' Travis Culley's The Immortal Class: Bike Messengers and the Cult of Human Power London Bicycle Messenger Association (who also have a print(?) newsletter called Moving Target) bikereader.com: a rider's digest of essays, humour etc various bike movies (list), BicycleCam (races filmed from the bike) Other films: Claude Lelouch's infamous C'etait un Rendezvous, a 9-minute 1973 short film in which he races his Ferrari through an empty night-time Paris. Buy Rendezvous here. (Lelouch also did a Tour de France film, Pour Un Maillot Jaune) Black Prince Peripherique, in which a Kawasaki is raced round the 35km Paris peripherique in morning traffic. You can also buy Periperique here. the Getaway in Stockholm films (Update: Struan correctly reminds us that alley cat racing perpetuates the image of 'cyclists as arrogant, self-righteous grumps with only limited respect for the law'. Which, together with the rest of us non-courier cyclists going through red lights, really doesn't help. Perhaps the racing is symptomatic of a bike culture that sees itself as *against* motor traffic. Alley cat racing isn't safe or particularly clever, but we have to admit it was quite exciting to watch.) 8:35:01 PM     comments