I Hate Fakenger
The word, not people that look like messengers but aren’t. I have tried to high-light what I think is wrong with the word, and the sentiment behind it, in a humourous way but people still aren’t getting the point. Knarf’s post on it is a good example of someone who has missengered my intentions. So I am going to spell it out, so no-one can have any doubt about what I think.
It’s a mean-spirited jibe that demeans its originators, not its intended targets. I get especially cross when I think about all the messenger events that I have organised, participated in or spectated at.
Why? Because as I said in my previous post, those events relied heavily on volunteer labour. In fact, most of those events would not have happened at all without volunteer labour. And a lot of those volunteers were not messengers. They were people who either used to be messengers, were friends of messengers or were inspired by messenger culture and, despite not knowing any messengers, pitched in and helped because they were into it. Often these people rode fixies, wore cycling caps, used messenger bags and had spoke cards in their wheels. But were not messengers.
So how cool is it to make jibes at people that support your scene, you dummies? Does labelling people that you might be friends with, seeing as they share your interests, as ‘fake’ contribute to global peace and understanding? A phoney is a phoney, whether they are a working cyclist or not. There are more than two people in the international messenger community who are posers and talk a lot of rubbish about things they have done, or are going to do. Are they more or less fake than the non-messengers who contribute to messenger events in a far more meaningful but less vocal way?
I am reminded of nothing so much as the ‘real’ messenger debate that surfaces from time to time in the messenger community. The most absurd example of this was the controversy over Lars Urban and Andy Schneider, who between them won 4 of the first 5 CMWCS.
The rumour, repeated almost before Andy was presented with the trophy in 93, and again in 94, 95 and 97, was that they weren’t ‘real’ messengers. That they were really semi-pro roadies who had been paid by unscrupulous company managers to ride and win so that the resulting publicity could be exploited for commercial gain. Even the basic premise of the accusation is open to doubt.
One of the manager/owners of Sprint, Lars’ company, became a very close friend of mine (and incidentally contributed a huge effort to making CMWC 95 a success). Olli told me that despite the publicity that surrounded Lars’ wins, he estimated that Sprint had not made a single extra pfennig as a result. Ok, it’s kind of a hard thing to quantify, but that’s what he said.
Why was the accusation made? Because Andy and Lars didn’t fit the image of a ‘real’ messenger, according to whatever prejudiced stereo-type was possessed by the messenger making the accusation. Andy and Lars wore lycra, not ‘street garms’, on the bike. They shaved their legs. They rode top dollar road bikes, not botched-up ghetto-jalopies. And they were strong, fast and smart. They were better messenger racers than the ‘real’ messengers.
So what was the truth? Were Andy and Lars ‘real’ messengers or fakes?
The truth was that Andy and Lars had been elite amateur racers. But never quite good enough (or committed enough) to make it as pros, although elite amateurs in Germany can scrape a living. And reaching the end of their sporting careers, saw in messengering a way of continuing to ride their bikes and get paid, and the opportunity to have a job that would allow them enough time off to continue to train and race.
Lars was a good messenger, according to his boss, although he could be pretty impossible to despatch sometimes. Andy held the docket record for a 6 hour shift (what, I hear the ‘real’ messengers shout, he only worked 6 hours!), 54, at Per Velo, I was told by a colleague of his. That’s more dockets than I ever did in a 10 hour shift, and I was reckoned by some to be a pretty good messenger.
That makes them messengers in my view, whatever I might think about the colour or construction of their cycling clothes. And Lars whipped all-comers on the legendary Human Powered Rollercoaster. The HPR was a sketchy, skiddy, wooden 125 metre figure of eight track that broke more than a few riders’ bones. Ok, he was an arrogant bastard: I remember him once saying to Joey Dias, the TO top-dog, ‘we race; I win’. But he did win.
Anyway, enough of this reminiscing. I’ll leave you with this thought: Reidar ‘Danny’ Farr had been working for a few short weeks when he was run over and killed by a lorry that failed to signal a left turn. Was he a ‘real’ messenger or a fake?

I tried to look like a poseur. But I still end up looking like a middle aged man wearing a messenger bag riding a one-speed, spray painted bike. I'm afraid some people think I'm homeless.