Messenger bikes have issues.
If they don’t now they will soon. Being dialed-in, clean, pristine, well adjusted only lasts a little while. All that evaporates even faster in the winter time. No bicycle can survive 50 hours a week of abuse in the city without showing signs of wear. Some of these issues would surprise a well-to-do commuter or a fully supported bike racer if they hopped on a messenger’s bike. Many of these issues would surprise messengers in fact if they were forced to switch bikes and work with someone else’s issues.
I believe that over time a messenger gets a very good feel for their work bike or bikes and has a sense for what’s annoying but safe and what truly needs to be fixed right away. But many times they know it’s not quite safe and it’s really annoying and it needs to be replaced but they can push it, tolerate it, ignore it. The last thing I want to do after a long day of work is go home and work on my bike. Pushing brake pads to the last possible moment of use. Riding tires until they fall apart. Taping up a fender and stacking zip ties to keep it rolling. Art’s bar tape is a mish mash of six different kinds of wrap, none of them actual handlebar tape. Justin rode a tire on his cross bike until it appeared to be nothing but threads. Rachel repaired her toe clips with paper clips.
Not all of these issues however can be seen or felt and some of them sneak up. Last week for example Leland’s handlebars snapped in the midst of a high speed turn and bunny hop. Not just one side but both sides of his drop bars broke clean off at the stem simultaneously. He went down hard but wasn’t seriously injured and was very lucky. Last year I got a pair of cranks for free at the messenger bike swap. They were tweaked when I got them but I rode the shit out of them for a year until last Saturday when I looked down at my chainring while pedaling and it looked like it was rotating on a warped turntable. I could almost pull the drive side crank off with my bare hand. The splined interface with the bottom bracket was scrambled egg. I threw those cranks in the trash and probably should’ve about 8 months earlier. Willie’s Bianchi had a couple cogs missing on the cassette, a broken shifter cable wrapped around a bottle cage bolt, offering a unique shifting style. The side walls on the rims were beyond worn, they were ready to cave in or blow out any second. He rode that thing to work in that state for months until finally he pulled it off the road. I have three bikes with issues. My other two are weekend warriors and don’t go to work with me. Dan has three bikes with issues and if one acts up he’ll leave it at home and ride one of his other bikes for a while. Then when he comes back around to the troublesome bike, the trouble doesn’t seem so bad. This rotating strategy works well, for a while.
Sit around with a few messengers and you’ll hear stories of broken cranks, broken stems, broken forks, broken seat posts, broken pedal spindles, broken chains, blown out rims, rolling on four broken spokes all day long and broken frames, frames broken in spots where frames don’t break, frames broken in ways you don’t see every day. Track bikes and single speeds are popular, not just because they look cool but because they’re simple. There are fewer parts to wear out. Fewer parts to replace.
Messengers have issues too, but I’ll get into that later.
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