What kind of bikes do couriers ride

In its previous life the building had been a bank, and the vault was later used to stage exhibitions. Layers of graffiti covered every inch of the toilets. By night, avant-garde jazz bands twanged their makeshift instruments in the gloom. Couriers tested the tolerance of the landlords by smuggling in their own cans of beer, but they were never barred.

It was designed as an urban steeplechase with a fox-hunt theme. He strapped a huge bottle to his back containing a few gallons of paint, with a pipe running down the frame of his bicycle, terminating in a small tap. At the start of the race he opened the tap and the paint started to flow as he pedalled off into the traffic, a line of white glistening on the tarmac in his wake.

After a few minutes I released the racers — a pack of bicycling hounds — with a blast of horns. The race was on. It recorded the positions of cars and buses as they had been a few minutes earlier, swerving erratically around now non-existent obstructions.

It registered the ghostly outlines of the lines of traffic idling at the lights; elongated, swooping curves as my brother had cut between moving cars. It also recorded his speed.

At one junction the line of paint led on to the pavement, across some blue duckboards and dropped back on to the road. Some racers followed the route blindly. Other, cannier riders spotted the line continuing further up the road and carried straight on, avoiding the now pointless detour. The hounds whooped and cheered. One fell off his bike and was left behind.

After a while the splashes became irregular. The paint was running out, or the pipe was blocking up. As the pack crossed Bethnal Green Road for the second time we spotted a big splatter of paint in the gutter. My brother had slipped on a drain cover and buckled both his wheels. The race was over, and the riders skulked back to the pub. The white line can still be made out here and there on the roads around Brick Lane, a faint memorial to the route.

A lmost 50 years ago, while he was still a student at Central St Martins School of Art, the artist Richard Long embarked on a different kind of mapping: a bicycle ride from WC1 to Cambridgeshire.

A photo of him about to set off shows a young, steely-eyed man carrying a rucksack and standing beside his road bike, a simple six-speed machine with mudguards and dropped handlebars. To the top tube of his bike were tied a bundle of sticks he would use to mark out his way and record his journey.

He pedalled out of London, through Tring, Ely and Cambridge. He cycled along A-roads and canal towpaths, along country tracks and across muddy fields. At 16 locations along his route he drove one of his stakes into the ground. At random places and times along the way I left one part of the work at each place. Each consisted of a yellow-painted vertical piece of wood stuck into the ground, with a blue horizontal crosspiece at the top.

They were left in gardens, on verges or village greens, in fields etc. There are 15 other similar parts, placed irregularly. With this simple yet radical act Long broke free from the confines of the gallery, and from the constraints of traditional sculpture.

S ince their first invention, bicycles have been used to carry messages. In Paris in the late 19th century, men and boys on penny farthings and velocipedes delivered cheques from bank to bank, or covered the final miles of a fledgling telegraph network, carrying messages from telegraph office to recipient. As the car came to dominate in cities, the use of bicycle messengers waned slightly. But then traffic built up, and congestion slowed the car again.

Nowadays, the average speed of traffic in London is the same as it was years ago — about 8mph, the speed of the horse. In the s people began using bicycles to deliver packages in the city once again, and by the s New York and London saw an explosion in bicycle couriers working the congested streets, competing with the other communication networks that were emerging. Now the old hands say the heyday of the cycle courier is over.

Shuttling tapes and ad copy around London, keeping the whole monumental edifice running. The tradition continued into the s. At the time, the messenger bicycles were quite simple. They had only one gear and no way of breaking other than back-pedaling.

Even though the modern fixed-gear bicycles are more sophisticated and lighter than the machines used at the time, their simplicity is still reminiscent of the early era of bicycle couriers. You can think of the current fixies as modern cars preserving the symbolic characteristics of previous models.

No rule states that a bike messenger should ride a fixie. However, as it often happens, the environment creates unwritten, silent regulations that people follow to be accepted by the group. Fixies without brakes require very little maintenance. Outside of annual servicing or an emergency, the riders only have to lube the chain and pump the tires. There are no derailleurs that can get bent nor brake pads to replace.

This quality makes them attractive to messengers who accumulate many hours of riding every day and throw their bicycles around all the time. Below is a list with all the parts of a fixie and the maintenance that they require:. The cleaning part is more needed during the winter months when the roads are treated with various substances preventing the formation of ice. Stem, handlebars — occasional cleaning, inspection for cracks, and tightening of the bolts;. Brakes — If the rider uses brakes, the pads, the brake cable, and the housing will have to be replaced periodically.

Wheels — The wheels will need cleaning and eventual truing due to the frequent riding. Chainring and rear cog — cleaning and replacement upon reaching noticeable wear and tear;. Most of the tasks above aside from the chain and tire maintenance are not done frequently. This increases the attractiveness of the fixie in the eyes of couriers who just want to focus on riding. The fixie is a simplified bicycle. This increases its reliability because there are fewer parts that can break.

If you want it to take a beating on the kerbs and on the road, get yourself a heavy set of rims. Avoid System-Ex hubs. Personal preference is Goldtec. Loads of money but they roll, and roll, and roll. Couriers who have them make sure they are caked in shit so they are unrecognisable.

They ride slow and are heavy but you never get a puncture. Good for comfort and punctures, but bad for speed. Those things could survive an apocalypse. I like Specialized seats but I break them all the time and have to change them constantly.

I used to secure my Brooks down by tying it to the frame of the bike using a chain and inner tube. Clearly, I need to start doing it again. By using the inner tube around the chain it protects it from the elements and stops it from scratching the paint on the frame.

This stops it from getting scratches and hides desirable brand names. Wrap black tape over the branding too. Personally, my bike is geared near velodrome style really, so set up for a high top speed.

Definitely use it on the top tube. The Hiplock Mini is also proving popular. So, a lot of people end up frustrated and free lock them locking the wheel to the inside of the frame. What am I going to do? Phones are key though. The modern messenger carries a spare battery around with him. But the ideal would be a waterproof external battery case for your phone for long days. We depend so much on our phones, compared to what we used to do.

Clothing Merino wool is obviously a go-to. One of the hardest things though, is dealing with wet, freezing rain. We get that a lot in New York: 33 degrees and pouring rain.

For your upper body, there are a bunch of great options out there, just getting a waterproof shell with something warm under it. I have a Patagonia that I love.