The Outspokin’ Cyclist: Bike couriers spur alleycats
Phillip Barron
The Herald Sun
April 27th, 2006
Remember the childhood fun of a scavenger hunt? You and your friends run around the backyard or school yard, gathering clues in corners or under rocks. Sometimes the clues stared you in the face, but the excitement of the game obscured them from view. And for some of them, there was a goal and even a winner. But that wasn’t really the point. The point was to have fun, right?
Take a scavenger hunt, mix in a little punk culture, anti-authoritarian politics, and a taste of danger, spread the course out over town, and make it a bike race. Now, you’ve got what’s called an alleycat.
Although only a handful of people showed up to Durham’s St. Patrick’s Day alleycat, they came from as far away as Hillsborough, Raleigh, and New Haven, Connecticut. OK, Mark didn’t come to Durham just for the race; Yale Divinity School was on spring break and he was in town visiting old friends. But Eric Owens, organizer of the event, isn’t surprised that folks came up from Raleigh for the ride.
“It’s really growing at an exponential rate right now. Many small towns the size of Durham are now hosting alleycats, whereas a few years ago no one had heard of them,” says Owens. So, where did they come from?
Alleycat races are an outgrowth of the bike courier scenes of major metropolitan areas. In cities like Chicago, New York, or San Francisco, the downtown centers are so densely packed that frequently the fastest way to get a letter, memo, filing, or other parcel from one side of town to another is by bicycle. Courier companies employ bikers to navigate through car, bus, and truck-filled streets, and because the courier is paid by delivery, efficiency is key to being a successful messenger.
Efficiency on a bike in a dense urban area, however, often translates into speed, disregard for traffic laws (it might be more convenient to ride the wrong way on a one-way street, for example), and a significant element of risk-taking.
The risks of the job, thinks Owens who spent a year as a bike messenger in Manhattan before coming to Duke for graduate school, bond the couriers together. Bragging about delivering this many packages over that big an area is something he heard regularly after work.
And an alleycat race is the place to settle the bragging rights, to see once and for all who is the fastest or who knows the city the best. “They grow out of a culture of work,” says Owens.
An alleycat is a unique sort of race. It’s designed to recreate the day-to-day challenges of messengers. At the Durham alleycat, each rider received a manifest made up of checkpoints throughout town. To complete the manifest, each rider had to visit each checkpoint and document somehow that he or she had been there.
For instance, to prove that they’d been to Cookout on Hillsborough Rd, riders had to write down the number of milkshake flavors the restaurant offers. Hand-written signs hung near the top of several parking garages downtown, and racers had to scribble down the signs’ messages. And one checkpoint was simply to write down what’s at 1825 Chapel Hill Rd. Riders had to go there to find out.
Unlike other cycling races, alleycats are not held on closed courses. They’re held in the streets, where riders mix with other traffic. Nor is there a prescribed route; riders complete the manifest in whatever order they want. So in addition to being a test of speed, an alleycat tests how well riders know local landmarks and streets.
But, without a bike messenger scene in the Triangle, why are there alleycats?
“Now that skateboarding culture has been completely co-opted, is mainstream, and you can find everything you need at the mall, I think people are looking for the next underground thing,” says Owens. Since alleycats are not sanctioned bike races, they have a certain chic factor to them.
So, did the St. Pat Alleycat bring together an emerging Triangle urban-bike scene? I’m really not sure. But it was fun, a little absurd, and no one got hurt.
For more urban-bike scene absurdity, check out bike polo. Meet at The Bicycle Chain, Durham on Thursdays at 8:30pm
A little post-alleycat video… complete with crooked-crank racing, bike tossing, and a brief night ride.
critical mass — in raleigh
Raleigh’s got an established Critical Mass. Chapel Hill had something like CM while I was in graduate school. So why can’t Durham? I’ve never lived in a city so afraid to hold a Critical Mass. Every time CM comes up for discussion on local listservs, the killjoys chime in and convince everyone that riding down the road in a group is going to invite the crazies to run over us.
A few years ago, a friend and I tried to get it going in Durham, but we couldn’t keep a regular crowd. On the day of the last one we held, only the two of us showed up (it was raining) along with an Indy Weekly photographer. The picture actually ran in the paper, so I’m pretty sure that’s got to be the best rider-turnout-to-press-coverage ratio out there.
solar rechargeable bike light
Back in November, Treehugger posted some advance notice that Cat Eye would have this photovoltaic and vibration powered rechargeable bike light available in early 2006 for mounting on handlebars everywhere.
From the Treehugger write-up: It’s powered by vibration, with the help of a photovoltaic solar panel. The light itself, about 3 cm x 6 cm, apparently fires up when vibrations (ostensibly from riding) are felt, and the little PV panel (under the transparent case on top) supplies power to the light as well. According to the information available at the show, the light has a potential life span of around 10 years if well taken care of. No word on what sort of light would be used, but CatEye looks to be big fans of LEDs (and who could blame them?) so we’ll keep our fingers crossed.
But, it looks like Cat Eye hasn’t updated their product news section since August.
Anyone seen one yet? I’d love to pick one up.
Tarheel Tavern #61
The 61st Tarheel Tavern is all about the bicycle: that simple, elegant, two-wheeled machine that spreads joy, gets you to work, carries you down (and up) mountain trails, carts your groceries, lets you feel like you’re flying on back roads, or reminds you of childhood.
Science and Politics invites us for a ride along the first LSD trip and wished everyone a Happy Bicycle Day on Wednesday.
Black Sheep Cycles, a new bike shop in Charlotte with a blogger at the helm, invites us to test ride a Niner, since Black Sheep will soon be the only Niner dealer in the Queen’s city.
Jamester, a new cyclist in Durham, is chronicling his rides with images and words.
The Bobke Strut summarizes the happenings of the Amstel Gold Race in haiku form.
And finally, Jack Edinger and I hosted another weekend espresso ride on Saturday.
espresso ride
Start your Earth Day off right with some caffeine and two wheels.
Tomorrow, Jack Edinger and I are meeting at Broad St. Café at 9AM for some espresso. Come join us. The plan is to then ride to a few other cafés in Durham, enjoying a shot of espresso at each. For comparison purposes. It’s, um, research. Yeah, that’s it, research.
It all ends by noon or so at the Central Park Earth Day festivities downtown.
This is a fixie-friendly, cruiser-friendly, child-or-dog-in-trailer-friendly social ride. The only thing fast about this ride will be the firing of neurons.
Non caffeine fiends permitted (most places serve teas), though anyone who says eXpresso in earnest will be mocked.
Ride is rain or shine (though it’d be better in the shine).
–photo credit — Jack did the awesome image design above.
morning humidity or pollen?
The roads are dusted yellow every morning, it hasn’t rained in more than a week (and only briefly then), and the sun streams through the shadows. What’s catching the light? Evaporating morning dew or pine pollen?
chasing shadows
the bulls are back in town
The Durham Bulls 2006 season has begun. I saw the lights as I was riding home from the April Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee meeting and, like a moth, I was drawn to them. I hope to catch my first game of the season this week.
summer days on two wheels
Last week, a co-worker brought in some old pictures to scan. Among them was this photo of her cousins who “used to come down every summer from New York.”
The photo was taken in the Caldwell township, outside Hillsborough, NC (ca. 1970)
crossing
a bus stop that was once a train stop. a road. a crosswalk. a bike path.
crossing.
About
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