Shoot The Messenger
By John Greenfield
Chicago Reader, March 30, 2001

Travis Culley was getting strangled by a trucker last
month in the middle of Halsted, on a warm and clear
Friday afternoon. The driver, a young man with short
blond hair, was an inch or two shorter than Culley but
much more muscular. As they struggled on the asphalt,
Culley's bicycle helmet was pulled behind his head,
and the nylon strap tightened around his neck, pinning
him to the pavement. His assailant climbed on top of
him and began to throttle him with both hands. "I
could not breathe," Culley recalls. "I'm looking up at
his face turning red. All of his weight is on my neck.
There's a blue sky behind him. I'm wondering if this
guy's gonna kill me."

It would have been an untimely end for someone who's
about to become the best-selling bike-messenger-author
of all time.

Last week Villard Books, a division of Random House,
put 30,000 copies of Culley's new book, The Immortal
Class: Bike Messengers and the Cult of Human Power, in
stores across the country. A memoir, it focuses on the
nine months Culley spent as a courier in 1998, before
he began writing. The story combines personal
narrative with a wide-ranging discussion of the
messenger industry, Chicago history, urban planning,
and the anticar movement. For his efforts, Culley
collected a $30,000 advance.

That a messenger could make that kind of money for a
book about bike activism would be unthinkable to most
downtown businesspeople, who rely on couriers to
transport their important legal documents, boxes, and
blueprints.

I first met Culley on a Critical Mass ride in the fall
of 1997. Hundreds of bikers were meeting under the
Picasso in Daley Plaza during the evening rush hour on
the last Friday of every month.

Riding in procession, the bikers take over the
streets, shouting probicycle slogans and passing out
literature, encouraging bystanders to consider
alternatives to driving. The loose affiliation of
riders puts together other happenings to promote the
cause, from a winter cycling fashion show to the
annual "Say No to the Auto Show" protest at McCormick
Place.

On this ride, Culley was typically boisterous. The
long hair he had back then rippled in the wind as he
cruised gracefully around the swarm of bicycles and
idling cars. He repeatedly bellowed: "Do you see us?
We are on bicycles! So watch your mirrors and watch
your doors!" I later learned he'd been injured in an
accident-getting "doored" by a woman leaving a cab.

One of Critical Mass's most controversial tactics is
the "holdup," when riders intentionally stop in the
center of a busy intersection to disrupt traffic. I've
never liked the practice-it only seems to anger
drivers, alienating them from the message of the
demonstration. That's never bothered Culley. During
these blockades, he took delight in holding his bike
triumphantly over his head or skillfully balancing it
on his chin as he hung out in the middle of the
street.

I don't remember this incident, but in The Immortal
Class Culley describes standing in the middle of an
intersection as a truck driver yelled and blared his
horn.

"I thought, What if I don't respond?" Culley writes.
"What would that make me? Some kind of engineering
obstruction? A malfunction? Would the driver get out
and hunt me down or seek to punish me for assaulting
his schedule? For tying up the tracks? Would he take
or destroy my property? Would he kill me?
"I am a human being. I am not some machinist's error.
Let him do what he's got to do."

Chicago has one of North America's largest courier
populations, with more than 70 companies and hundreds
of bike messengers. Receiving orders by two-way radio,
cell phone, or pager, the cyclists crisscross the
Loop, picking up and dropping off packages at
high-rise office towers and loading docks. Most get
paid 50 percent of the delivery charge, which
increases with the weight, distance, and urgency of
the order. As with cabdrivers, the commission system
creates an incentive to move quickly and efficiently.
The need for speed in city traffic creates a risky
situation-most veteran couriers have stories of bad
accidents, totaled bicycles, and broken bones. Other
drawbacks include fatigue, exposure to the elements,
and a lack of sick pay and health insurance, since
many couriers are independent contractors.

But the work does offer exercise, fresh air, and
flexible hours. And due in part to its hazards, most
Chicago couriers make a decent wage for their
"unskilled" labor, between $10 and $15 an hour.

That's why messengering has always been a tolerable
day job for creative types: writer Henry Miller,
singer Sade, comedian Janeane Garofalo, and songwriter
Ron Sexsmith, for example, all worked in bicycle
delivery. In cities across the country, couriers
express themselves through messenger-themed magazines,
art exhibits, and rock concerts.

Naturally couriers have become central players in the
burgeoning bike activism movement. Around the world,
cyclists are calling for a greater awareness of their
right to the road and the bicycle's potential to
reduce pollution and gridlock. Messengers fight the
battle on a daily basis, because riding is also their
livelihood. Many local couriers have become involved
in groups like Critical Mass, the Chicagoland Bicycle
Federation, and the Windy City Bike Messenger
Association, which organizes rallies and concerts and
publishes the local courier zine Dead Air.
But of all the artistic and politically active
messengers in Chicago, Culley's the one making
thousands of dollars from a book about courier life.
At 27, he radiates confidence. A wiry five-foot-ten
with chiseled features and a shock of sandy hair, he
has the cocky charisma of a DC comic book hero. His
everyday speech is lofty and his body language
flamboyant. It's no wonder, since his background is in
theater.

In the introduction to The Immortal Class, Culley
delivers a messenger-activist manifesto with his
characteristic flair for drama:
"The bicycle is a revolution, an assault on civilian
territory, intent upon taking, from the ground,
responsibility for the shape of our cities. It is a
mutiny, challenging the ever-one-way street. The
bicycle is a philosophy, a way of life, and I am using
it like a hammer to change the world and to redeem our
war-torn cities."

Culley's exuberance gives his agent, John Ware, high
hopes for the book. Ware also represents Jon Krakauer,
author of the 1997 best-seller Into Thin Air. "I've
been an agent for 24 years," he says. "I think there
are a couple things working for Travis's book. It's
unique in terms of its content. Then there's the
substantive message of the book. And the very role of
bike messenger is resonating nowadays. In a modern era
where there are not many urban heroes there is
something heroic about the bike messenger that is
old-fashioned, with shades of the Pony Express. You
throw Travis and his enthusiasm into the mix, and I
think people are going to be fascinated. I think we're
going to get good reviews and a lot of reviews."
The Immortal Class promises to be the most widely read
nonfiction account of messenger life to date. But
there have been many fanciful portrayals of courier
culture. The 1986 action film Quicksilver starred
Kevin Bacon as a New York stock trader who falls from
grace to become a lowly bike jockey. A short-lived
1994 TV sitcom called Double Rush tried to re-create
the success of Taxi in a bike-messenger setting.

William Gibson's best-selling novel of that same year,
Virtual Light, features a thieving female biker, while
the hero of Joe Quirk's 1998 thriller, The Ultimate
Rush, is a gonzo courier. But the most enduring
pop-culture image of the messenger has to be Puck, the
misanthropic San Francisco biker from MTV's The Real
World.

In recent years there's been a spate of more realistic
depictions of bike messenger culture. National
Geographic filmed a documentary called Wheels of Fire
about the 1998 Cycle Messenger World Championships,
where courier teams from around the globe converged on
Washington, D.C. Last year Kyle Shepard published
Bicycle Messenger, a coffee-table book of
black-and-white photos. Messenger, Messenger by Robert
Burleigh is aimed at children ages four to eight.
Nerves of Steel, self-published last year by D.C.
courier Rebecca "Lambchop" Reilly,
is probably the closest to Culley's book. Using as a
framework the story of Reilly's eight years of
messenger work in nine cities-she spent three months
in Chicago during the dead of winter-Nerves of Steel
includes a series of interviews with the couriers she
met along the way as well as a history of messengers,
from the ancient Greeks to the Pony Express to the
present. Only 1,000 copies were printed and many of
these have gone to other messengers.

In contrast, The Immortal Class will get the full
benefit of Villard's publicity machine. Ads will run
in alternative papers, and brief write-ups have
appeared in magazines ranging from Chicago to Outside
to Spin. Both the Italian- and German-language rights
have already been sold.

The book has been named as one of Barnes & Noble's
Discover New Writers
selections. Every season a panel of Barnes & Noble
staff and other writers picks 15 to 25 "outstanding"
works by new authors, usually fiction, according to
Nicholas Bettress, manager of the chain's Lincoln Park
store. "His book will be featured prominently in a
special showcase at the front of the store with other
first-time authors," says Bettress. "They will be in
every Barnes & Noble in the U.S., about 600 stores,
and on the Internet."
Villard's mailed 2,500 advance copies to reviewers,
chains, and independent bookstores. The Immortal Class
received starred reviews in Library Journal and
Booklist, praising it for strong writing and unusual
subject matter. A book tour, originally planned for
Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, and San Francisco,
has been expanded to include Seattle, Portland,
Eugene, and Washington, D.C., because of the positive
response, says Villard's publicity manager, Brian
McLendon.

If it's successful, The Immortal Class could redefine
the public image of couriers and draw national
attention to Chicago's community of messengers and
bike advocates, many of whom appear by name in its
pages. But not everybody in that community is happy
about the book.

o
Culley says cycling is in his blood: His grandfather
founded the Fox Firestone Bike Shop in New Smyrna
Beach, Florida, in 1956. Culley grew up about 250
miles south, in the Miami area. His father, a banker
and broker by trade, had his own marketing company,
while his mother was a social worker at a health
clinic.

"We flirted with being middle-class," Culley says. "We
had a big house and boat that we got cheaply. It was a
scraped-together middle-class background."
Culley writes that his father was ashamed of their
modest means and avoided interacting with his two
sons: "He hid away like a piece of furniture, watching
the ball game on TV and eating Cheeze-Its from the
box. His problems seemed heavy and hard to bear."
Culley's parents separated when he was 14.

Two years later, Culley says, he ran away from home,
initially living out of a gold Chevy Caprice Classic,
a gift from his grandmother. He writes that he
survived this period by working as a busboy and eating
leftovers off the dirty plates.

"It wasn't until 16 that I succeeded," he says. Youth
theater spotlighted his acting talent, which, despite
his poor academic skills, won him a scholarship to
Miami's New World School of the Arts, a combination
high school and college modeled after the New York
High School of Performing Arts. "That's where I
started to get behind books and really read them."
Culley earned a BFA in theater and moved to Chicago
with his girlfriend at the time, a painter. He found
work as a freelance art installer for various
galleries in River North, but his subsequent bike
accident left him badly injured and unable to work. He
formed a small theater company called the Finite Space
and directed its production of Goethe's Iphigenia in
Tauris at Chicago Dramatists Workshop (he also played
the role of Orestes). The play was financed with
Culley's credit card, and when the show failed he took
on a series of odd jobs, from bookseller to mover to
carpenter's assistant. By September 1997 he was
working as a leasing agent at a storage warehouse near
the Merchandise Mart.

In The Immortal Class, Culley traces his bicycle
activism back to his initial ride with Critical Mass.
That December he curated the first Critical Mass art
show, titled "Autogeddon: A Critical Response to Car
Culture," at Lineage Gallery in River North. Deciding
once again to focus on theater, Culley quit his
warehouse job. His main source of income during this
time was a one-day-a-week job as an art installer at
the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum. He writes that he
quickly found himself insolvent, hungry, and faced
with eviction.

In desperation, he answered an ad to bike for Joey's,
a mom-and-pop messenger service. Disgusted at risking
his life for low pay, he decided to move up to Service
First, a busier company where he could make good
money.

Learning the ropes quickly, Culley soon became
"indispensable." Fighting exhaustion and intermittent
knee pain, he persevered through a harrowing summer at
the understaffed company, doing more than his share of
work and collecting large commission checks. Near the
end of his short tour of duty, he won his first
"alleycat," or illegal on-street messenger race.
Trilled by the experience, he began to think about
putting together a book on courier culture.
In early 1999 Culley started recruiting contributors
for the book, which he conceived as an anthology. He
would edit the various submissions and write the
remainder himself.

I was one of five contributors he enlisted. I'd been a
bike messenger on and off for a total of four years.
My section would describe my experiences as an editor
of Dead Air, organizing messenger races, and booking
concerts with courier bands. I also wrote about my
arrest for impersonating a police officer because I
rode in Critical Mass with a Chicago police patch sewn
on my bag.

Donny "Quixote" Perry, a former leader of the Windy
City Bike Messenger Association, would write about his
childhood fixation with the movie Quicksilver. Jeff
Benjamin from Velocity Courier would write about the
difficulties of working during the winter, and Jim
Redd, an elder statesman of Critical Mass, would
contribute a chapter about the movement.

Interested in including a female perspective, Culley
sent an E-mail to Rebecca Reilly, who had been working
for many years on her own book. Reilly says she was
put off by Culley's forwardness in proposing a
collaboration with someone he had not met in person.
"The way he treated me was very disrespectful," she
says. "He wanted me to share my work and he didn't
even know me yet."
"I didn't want to consume her book," counters Culley.
"I wanted to open up a discussion and see if she was
interested in contributing a chapter. But she didn't
seem interested. She gave me the cold shoulder." He
eventually recruited Kim Morris from Service First to
contribute the female voice.

That spring Culley sent proposals to several agents,
and John Ware took on the project. "John had been a
strong advocate of the book," Culley says. "It's not
about the book being a big moneymaker, but he stands
behind the ideas of the book. He cares about the
cause: the future of cities and the ecology."
Soon after Culley signed with Ware, the road-rage
murder of Tom McBride on April 26, 1999, rocked the
cycling community. McBride had worked for eight years
as a courier and was well-known among veteran
messengers. According to witnesses, he had an
altercation with the driver of a Chevy Tahoe on the
west side while cycling in to work. He was struck
several times, run over, and killed. Austin resident
Carnell Fitzpatrick turned himself in to the police
after his license plate was found under McBride's
body. Jodee Sargeant, spokesperson for the Cook County
state's attorney's office, says Fitzpatrick has been
charged with first-degree murder and has a court date
on April 10.

Culley didn't know McBride well, but he says he was
deeply affected by the story of his death. He attended
the wake. As recounted in The Immortal Class,
McBride's parents were "surprised by how many
messengers were there. It seemed clear to them now
that Tommy was not just a rebellious kid. He was part
of something. He'd shown that he could work hard and
that he could make that experience work for him. He'd
developed strong bonds with many different kinds of
people here. In the industry and in this room,
regardless of color or background, we were truly a
family."
Culley decided to reconstruct the events leading up to
McBride's death and end the book with a description of
a memorial ride, organized by riders from Critical
Mass, in which scores of cyclists returned to the
scene to hold a vigil while sitting down in the middle
of the street.

He contacted the McBride family several times for
background information. "I gave Travis honest and
straightforward answers," says Tom's father, Robert
McBride Sr. "Most of it was about who my son was."
"Tom's folks have been grateful and supportive,"
Culley says. "They gave me the freedom to write as I
wish and gave me photos of him." He said the family
has been impressed by the response from the messenger
community, which included dedicating last year's
messenger championships in Philadelphia to McBride's
memory.

Though he hasn't seen Culley's book yet, Robert
McBride Sr. hopes it will have a positive impact. "If
it brings attention to road rage and bike messengers,
that will be a good thing."

According to Culley, better public-transportation
policy might have prevented the killing. McBride lived
in Oak Park and drove into the city to messenger. When
his car battery died, he would have taken the CTA
Green Line to work if he had the choice, but he wasn't
allowed to bring his bicycle on the train (bikes are
allowed on the el-two in each train car-on weekends
only). "So he was forced to ride his bike into town
through neighborhoods that don't see many cyclists,"
Culley explains. "That says a lot about car culture."
By June of 1999, Culley was rushing to complete his
anthology proposal, so he could send it to Ware before
following a physician girlfriend to Philadelphia.
Donny "Quixote" Perry's chapter about Kevin Bacon was
the only piece that Culley felt would be ready in
time. During the month before he mailed the proposal,
he called Perry several times a week to check on his
progress. At this point, Benjamin, Morris, Redd, and I
were still to be included in the final product, though
our chapters would not be part of the initial
submission.

Culley mailed the proposal to John Ware before leaving
on vacation to Europe for a few weeks in mid-June. In
Amsterdam he received word from Ware that not one of
the 25 publishers contacted was interested in the
anthology idea. Some, however, were asking for a
memoir. Simon and Schuster eventually offered a
$20,000 advance, but Culley felt that wouldn't be
enough to live on while writing the book.
Abandoning the anthology project, he started working
on another proposal for a memoir. He briefly returned
to Chicago before moving on to Philadelphia, but most
of his former collaborators would not get word that
the anthology was off until he came back to town more
than a year later, in the fall of 2000.

"When I found out it had to be a memoir, it was one of
the biggest problems of my life," Culley says. "I did
not know I had a book at that point-there was no
certainty anywhere. If it was going to be a memoir, I
was committing to the hardest work I ever imagined, so
I shut down everything to focus on that."
Soon after Culley moved to Philadelphia on June 30,
1999, Villard offered him $30,000, "the minimum of
what I would need to write the book," Culley says. He
accepted.

Not long afterward, he contacted Jim Redd to tell him
the anthology project was off. "There was a phone
conversation and he mentioned the advance and that it
was going to be a one-person thing," recalls Redd, who
says he wasn't too disappointed. "It didn't seem like
an anthology would be marketed-it's easier to sell a
book by a single author. And I was never in it for the
money anyway." Redd then passed on the information to
me at a Critical Mass ride.

Culley and I never really saw eye to eye on the
project. I disagreed with his notion that all
messengers enter the business because they have
absolutely no other options, and he wanted me to make
my story more heroic and dramatic. Slow to revise my
piece to fit his vision, I doubted I would be in the
final book. When I got the news that he'd landed the
deal for a memoir, not an anthology, it was a relief
to learn I had not missed out on an opportunity. I was
impressed by-if a little envious of-his achievement.
A few months later Culley sent me an E-mail about his
memoir project, and I congratulated him.

But Morris, Benjamin, and Perry had no communication
with Culley until he returned to Chicago. Morris
declined to comment, but Benjamin and Perry said they
were angered that Culley left town with their chapters
and never notified them of his memoir deal. They
eventually got word of his contract from other people.
Benjamin says that last fall he asked Culley not to
use anything from his chapter: "It seemed like he was
going to milk other people's work for his own
memoirs."
Benjamin has reviewed The Immortal Class for
"XXXposure," the newsletter of a local racing team. He
points out that a story from his winter biking
manuscript shows up in Culley's book. Here's the
version in Benjamin's original chapter:
"I was weaving my way through the stopped traffic when
a white SUV swerved into me, pinning my handlebars
between its left front bumper and the door of another
car. My hands were trapped in there. The driver opened
his door and leaned his head out; he looked like the
son of a politician, from his bomber jacket to his
perfect teeth to his Barbie-doll girlfriend in the
passenger seat. 'Yeah?' he said. "Whaddya gonna do
now, tough guy?' I knew the proper response. I would
kick the door shut on his head, maybe bloody it up a
little. Then I would smash his front windshield with
my U-lock. A very simple plan. But when I tried to
pull my bike free, I noticed that my arms were limp.
I'd forgotten to eat lunch; suddenly I barely had
enough strength to stand. When I finally got the bike
free, I wheeled it to the sidewalk, completely spent."
The Immortal Class does not reveal that the story came
from Benjamin's manuscript. Instead the book describes
a half-frozen Benjamin telling the tale to Culley just
hours after the incident, as they straddle their bikes
outside the Velocity office:
"Jeff, Number Forty-six, told me that a guy in a white
SUV hit him intentionally. The driver got out of the
car and started talking shit and getting in his face:
'Whatcha gonna do about it, tough guy?' In an average
situation, Jeff would have been smashing windows in
with his U-lock and dragging the guy down the street
by the collar, but it was about 10 degrees and it was
a Friday. Half the staff at Velocity had disappeared,
ducked out, or had been seriously injured in the last
week. Jeff, usually in a team of twenty, was doing a
quarter of the work on the board. 'Whatcha gonna do,
messenger man?' The guy advanced. Jeff realized that
if he spared this guy a moment of his energy, he would
not be able to complete the day's work. He dropped his
head, pulled his bike from between the truck and a
parked car, and walked away to a good section of road,
where he could mount up again. He said nothing. He
just continued his work."

Perry notes that a similar vignette from his
chapter-about being struck by an SUV, then doused with
coffee-also shows up in The Immortal Class. "He got my
story and inserted himself as the narrator," Perry
says.

"Donny thought I had taken his work and was going to
plagiarize it," says Culley. "Sorry to disappoint
him-I didn't."
"It's not plagiarism, but it is very shady," Perry
responds. "Travis did not let me and a few other
contributors know the progress of the book, and what
direction it was heading, and what format, and that's
what drove my speculation.

"It was very upsetting for me to have someone drive me
to do a piece, more or less promise the results that
the piece would get, receive a book deal, and then
never speak to me again."
John Ware was surprised to hear that most of the
contributors got no word from Culley for more than a
year. He stresses it wasn't Culley's fault that
publishers weren't interested in the anthology. "I
think of Travis as such a stand-up guy. I cannot
imagine why he waited so long to break the news
because it was so uncontroversial. To impart this
information would not have been fun, but he had done
nothing to injure the people who were involved."
"Perhaps I should've contacted them," Culley says. "It
was inconsiderate of me not to let people know exactly
what was going on at the time, but I was under more
pressure than I'd ever experienced in my life. I was
just petrified at the idea of writing a memoir. If my
head were on straight, I would have let them know what
was going on, but I was really confounded at the
problem of having to write this book.

"I just dropped it because no one seemed that
interested in the first place," he adds. "I thought it
was good for them that I got out of their hair. It
seemed that everybody would be delighted to hear it
didn't work out-I really thought they wanted the thing
to crumble. I don't think that's reason to take aim at
my success."
He admits that he didn't bother to contact his former
partners because he never planned to return to
Chicago. He intended to move with his girlfriend from
Philadelphia to Cambridge, Massachusetts, but his
plans changed when the relationship ended in the
summer of 2000. "I'm glad I returned to Chicago, but I
wasn't planning on it," he says. "Life is like that-it
just changes its course."
Culley says he would like to mend fences-he thanks
Benjamin and Perry in the acknowledgments. "I would
appreciate their forgiveness and understanding for my
absence," he says. "That would mean a lot to me."
Critical Mass rider Eric Anderson helped edit Culley's
writing in the early stages of the anthology project.
He says he hopes the biking community will not be
divided by the book. "I was there from the beginning
and I know that Travis wanted to write a book that
would draw a lot of attention to bicycle issues,"
Anderson says. "If he wanted to get his message out he
had to get it out as a memoir. Despite the fact that I
did a huge amount of work that I won't get paid for, I
don't feel ripped off. I appreciate what he tried to
do in the book. I think it has the potential to show
points of commonality instead of divisiveness."

After delivering the final draft of his book to
Villard's New York office in August 2000, Culley
returned to Philadelphia in time for the Cycle
Messenger World Championships on Labor Day weekend.
There he met Rebecca Reilly in person. By then she had
copies of Nerves of Steel for sale.

"He proceeded to tell me how to market my book," she
says. "I thought that was pretty condescending. I
wasn't looking for advice, and he's full of advice. He
has a style and I have a style and they kind of don't
go together."
Culley says he was only trying to support her effort.
"By that time I knew something about publishing and
said I'd be happy to help. She said, 'I don't have
time for this discussion.' So she was closed to me
from the start. I don't see any antagonism between us,
and I still think she could do a tremendous job in
marketing her book. I'd love to see it succeed on the
highest level. I think there's a need for a book on
the female messenger experience. But I don't think her
book was quite ready."
Reilly encountered the same obstacles as Culley when
she tried to get publishers interested in an anthology
about messengers. "The publishing houses wanted it to
be one person writing," she says. "They told me a
memoir would be easier to sell, and a publisher's main
concern is selling books-it's not a charity.

"But from the beginning my intent was to capture the
stories and the culture and kind of take a snapshot of
messenger life. I felt it was important that many
voices were in the book, not just mine. It was truly a
labor of love. It's all about an industry I love andP>
people I love."
"I'm sorry if she feels that there's some great
victory in self-publishing," says Culley.

"When I heard he got the advance, I knew it would be a
bigger book," Reilly says. "It might get more
publicity and sales, but that's immaterial. This is an
archive, so that in different cities people can say,
'I know that guy-I worked with him.' Sometimes being
successful doesn't mean being big. Whatever he's got
coming his way, good on him, and whatever I've got
coming my way, good on me."
After the Philadelphia championships, Culley moved
back to Chicago, just in time for "Break the
Gridlock," an alternative transportation conference
2>organized by riders from Critical Mass. "I could have
gone anywhere," Culley says, "but I decided to stand
behind the book and the city.

"I was dead broke," he says, noting that the
advance-paid in installments, with taxes and his
agent's fee taken out-barely covered his living
expenses while he wrote. Unable to afford an
apartment, he resumed messengering at Service First
and couch surfed for several weeks, until he had saved
up a few paychecks. During this time he supplemented
his income with donations he received while dispensing
advice, Lucy Van Pelt-style, on busy street corners.
Neil Steinberg wrote an amused column in the Sun-Times
about Culley's cottage industry. But with the onset of
winter, Culley closed down the advice stand and he's
been a bike messenger at Service First ever since.
Last fall Culley received advance copies of The
Immortal Class and passed them along to a few bikers.
The books then made the rounds among other messengers.
At 324 pages, The Immortal Class tells Culley's story
in a roundabout manner, weaving together various
anecdotes and philosophical musings.
In the introduction, Culley states his objective.
Standing next to a newspaper box across the street
from Daley Plaza after a busy day's work, he asserts
his right to give his own perspective on the state of
the "USA Today":
"I don't have the degrees from the old universities to
call me an authority on urban development, but I do
have this: I have the question and I have the city to
relate it to....For the spectacle and the injustice
that gives this place its edge, I've got one of the
best seats in the house."
Meanwhile, Critical Mass is assembling under the
Picasso. Culley refers to the bike activists as part
of "the cult of human power that is reclaiming public
space and giving it back to average people."
Next he depicts the ups and downs of a messenger's
typical day. He sees a coworker frantically return to
base after smashing a cab window and notes the
importance of attitude in making it through the
challenges of the job. He claims that to survive as a
courier one must imagine oneself immune to the
conventional rules:

"You become part of a class who, in order to continue,
must believe itself unstoppable. This heightened
feeling gives the messenger a confidence, a speed and
agility of almost metaphysical proportions. We cling
to the dream of being untouchable, part of an immortal
class of winged angels, hailed for speed and
strength."

The chapter "Freedom in the American City" alternates
scenes of Culley getting trapped in the basement of
the American Dental Association with flashbacks to his
childhood in Florida. He tells of his youthful
friendship with a heroin-addict neighbor who taught
him that he should follow his bliss as long as he
didn't hurt anyone. Culley writes that this
live-and-let-live philosophy shaped his worldview:
"There are many ugly things about our world today and
there are many ugly things about the city that I live
in. The one defense that allows me to move easily
through a society this diverse, that forcefield, is
respect. To move forward, to act upon my freedom, and
to make a living, I must respect the things I don't
understand."
Reporting to work for his first biking job, Culley
feels like an animal being led into a coliseum:
"Mentally, I was preparing myself for the worst as,
perhaps, even the bull does. Knowing that he is
powerless in the arena, he wastes no energy trying to
prove it. He doesn't feign weakness. He doesn't give
in or beg for mercy. The bull has no escape and,
appropriately, no escape reflex. He charges. He uses
his horns. They are his one defense."
Descriptions of daily hazards and confrontations with
drivers are framed by the image of messengers
gracefully balancing on their bikes in a moonlit
competition. He compares his surreal struggles with
psychotic drivers to the couriers' attempts to stay on
a bike with no hands and only one foot:
"Like them, I was attempting the impossible, and the
full effect of this was only starting to become
clear."
He goes on to justify fast, daring, and illegal riding
by messengers:
"What the driving public needs to understand is that
speed is what we are paid for and floating is the
skill that makes our work competitive. We can twist
Madison Avenue into a runway and penetrate a crowd
like it was a puff of smoke. There is no fear. These
kinds of stunts come directly from our experience, and
that experience should be trusted. An intersection
burnt by a courier should herald cheers from cops,
motorists and pedestrians alike. It is the clearest
expression of a messenger's technique."
A delivery to the modern-day offices of Burnham
Architects leads Culley into a meditation on Daniel
Burnham's City Beautiful vision for Chicago-with
generous parks and boulevards, wide sidewalks for
pedestrians, paved roads for bicycles-and its
subsequent betrayal by the car culture. He ponders the
constant movement of people and vehicles and contrasts
the hush of his cousin's home in rural Dixon with the
deafening roar of the el. He stands on the roof of his
apartment building late one night and looks out on the
dehumanizing effects of the automobile and capitalism
on the urban landscape. "This is why the city is
violent....The city itself has been taken from us."
He personifies this evil as "The Spirit of the Place"
and then he addresses the "ghost":
"I saw his face glowing through the skyscrapers and
lying out upon the flatlands of sprawling suburbs.
Staring deep into his empty sockets, I told him the
simple words: I hope we can reach an understanding. I
am from this place. I belong here. I will not serve in
your war."
He describes his harrowing month on the job with a
knee injury in "Between the Cliff and the Bank." At
the end of the chapter, Culley's knee freezes and he's
rescued by a car messenger. Back at the office, he's
summoned by the boss, who announces that he's become
the highest-earning biker in the history of the
company.

Culley's knee apparently got better soon afterward,
because he goes on to describe winning his first
messenger race. His high-speed account of triumphing
over more seasoned competitors finishes on a
contemplative note-he feels a new camaraderie with
this motley crew of messengers but realizes that their
subculture is largely invisible to the rest of
society:
"As we sat in a circle and enjoyed the sunrise, we
were of a single spirit, not for the pains that we had
all endured but for the love we shared, the strength
we felt, and the spirit we celebrated in the
underground domain of urban cycling. Riding away that
morning, the sun now high overhead, I felt a little
sadness knowing that this victory would fall quietly
on the world."
The last quarter of the book focuses mostly on biker
rights and urban planning issues. He describes Jon
Boub's bicycle crash on a faulty Du Page County bridge
and the ensuing verdict in Boub v. Wayne Township,
which cleared the local government of responsibility,
reasoning that cars are "intended" users of roads
while bicycles are merely "permitted." Culley is
outraged: "The Boub case shows us the state of our
current road system, which exercises only the rights
of motorists." He goes on to describe police ambushes
of Critical Mass rides in the aftermath of the trial
and the bikers' growing sense of disenfranchisement.
"Requiem for the Working Man" covers the author's exit
from messenger life and the winter of 1998-'99,
described as a period of estrangement between couriers
and bike commuters that ended with Tom McBride's
death. Culley writes that he and the messengers at the
wake sensed their own mortality and vowed to make a
positive difference in the world, realizing "we are
not immortal, but...we are of a class that will never
die. We live on together, Tommy and all who have
fought for the protection of our common spaces, the
safety of our streets, and the well-being of the very
world that discounts us."

In the closing chapter, "The Remains of Public Space,"
the desolation and poverty of the city depresses
Culley as he participates in the memorial ride through
the west side to the site of McBride's death. He
argues that the automobile has isolated us from each
other, leading to segregation by race and class and
making our society less democratic:
"The private car, being ideologically antiurban, has
reinforced the poverty of the past hundred years by
separating our communities and steamrolling our
commons. The car protects the public from public
space-the last frontier where our ideas can be openly
challenged and improved upon, where-forget
happiness-democracy can be actively pursued."
On the way back from the vigil, Culley notices new
construction that suggests suburbanites are moving
back to the city. He interprets this as cause for
optimism. Back once again at Daley Plaza, he gazes at
the city's majestic skyline and vows to make Chicago a
better place through bike advocacy:
"I, and many of these other riders-messengers and
commuters alike-have inherited her conviction to
survive, to stand out, and to succeed. For the bicycle
and for the culture that supports it, we are helping
to give the city a resurrection, a second coming of
the city beautiful, a second chance at really
working."
i
Cyclists who've read The Immortal Class-and messengers
who appear as characters in the book-hold differing
opinions about its value, both as a history of events
and as a work of literature.

One point of contention is Culley's fitness to write
the first big bike-messenger memoir after spending
only nine months on the job.

"People say I haven't paid my dues as a messenger, but
I don't pretend to be an authority on the subject,"
Culley says. "Some of them want to believe it's noble
to remain a messenger. They can criticize me, but to
me messengering is a transient job for transient
minds."

But "Captain" Jack Blackfelt, a former Dead Air editor
who now messengers in New York, believes Culley's
inexperience was a liability. "Much to his chagrin,
I'm of the opinion that Travis wasn't in the industry
long enough to write a book about it. I like his
philosophy, but he sounds a little naive."

Marcus Moore, the messenger-mechanic who organized the
book's "alleycat" race, didn't have the same problem.
"He's a writer-I don't think his lack of experience
should negate his book." And another Dead Air editor,
James "Jimbo" Daniels, praises Culley's messenger
ability. "He's a good athlete and he's fast. I
remember he could pull off some serious work in a day
and he pulled down some major cash."

Yet Donny "Quixote" Perry argues that Culley is a poor
spokesman for bike messengers. "If there was a person
who worked as a social worker for less than a year, or
a doctor or a lawyer, would you expect them to be one
of the best representatives for their profession in
the country?" he asks. "The story may read well for
some people as a realistic picture of the messenger
community. But I know Travis as a person and I have
complete faith that he used the community as a
stepping-stone to further his career rather than to
tell the story of an amazing culture. I think Travis,
and this comes through in his writing, is one of the
most egotistical and bombastic people that I have ever
met. I'm disappointed with myself for not seeing that
sooner and I think the messenger community and the
literary community would be better off without him."

The book's accuracy is also a matter of dispute.
"He took some artistic license with some things,"
observes Jim Redd, citing a passage that has Redd
U-locking his neck to his bike as a civil-disobedience
strategy. "That's not factually correct, but it
captures the spirit of what we were doing back in
those days."

David Knol, a dispatcher at Service First, praised the
book's true-to-life style. "It's not glossy-it's a
real look at bike messengers." He verifies the scene
where Culley is rescued after his knee gives out.
"That's just the way it was. It was so cool the way he
told the story."

Likewise, Service First messenger Patrick Ingram was
impressed by the fidelity of the anecdote in which he
returns to base after smashing a cab window. "I
remember the incident. He had the dialogue word for
word. The scene is a little embarrassing, but, hey,
that's the way it was. It was true of my personality.
It didn't make me look too bad. It didn't make me look
like a god-just a normal human being with a short
fuse."

Another coworker, Rod Richardson, chuckled over the
following:
"I had been booking for the company more than three
hundred dollars a day for the past six weeks. That's
not called doing a job. That's called being a rock
star. While Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire were
out-slugging each other over Roger Maris' home-run
record, the Punk, Number Thirty-three, and I were
leap-frogging each other for the company record. I had
taken down sixty-eight packages on a Wednesday only to
see Sam hit seventy-one that Friday."
"Every time he tells that story the numbers get
bigger," scoffs Richardson, who has a reputation for
speed and wage-earning ability. "But he was one of the
hardest-working messengers out there. There's a
special group of people in the zone. Once you're doing
50 or 60 runs, or 70 miles during the day, you know
you're out there."

Culley writes of meeting a female Velocity courier on
Lower Wacker Drive as they cycle past half-naked
homeless men. That courier says the encounter never
happened.

The quality of the writing has also garnered mixed
reviews.

"I'm writer enough for the story and I'm passionate
enough for the purpose," asserts Culley.

Marcus Moore agrees. "It flowed well, it was easy to
read, and it kept a good pace. I took it as one
person's interpretation of society, not a factual
account."

"The Jon Boub sequence is really good," Jim Redd says.
"It really helped me to visualize what happened."
But Jeff Benjamin gives the book poor marks. "Most of
the writing is just bad quality," he says. "There's no
real linear progression, and the action is spaced out
with long periods of commentary. Overstatement is
rampant. Everything is to the highest degree. It makes
you wonder whether the author can distinguish degrees
of subtlety.

"It has a couple good sections," he concedes. "The
firsthand accounts of messengering are the strength of
the book. But the book is out of control in terms of
scope. He's trying to tie together way too many
elements. It treats its subjects superficially because
it has to. No book can cover so much in 300 pages with
any depth."
"I'm proud of what I've written, because I think it
speaks to the hearty, hardworking American reader,"
says Culley. "The book articulates my political view
of cycling and my views of the sustainable city. It's
a proposal written by a layman for architects,
engineers, and developers to consider. I want to get
people talking about transportation and how it affects
a city."

There's also a range of opinions about whether the
book will have a positive effect for urban cyclists.
Knol hopes it will improve the public's perception of
bike messengers. "Anything to get their message out
would be good. Bike messengers are special people. I
only wish more people would consider them as humans.
Secretaries hate 'em, people in elevators look through
them, yet they carry million-dollar checks to and from
banks. They're out there in blinding snowstorms and on
icy streets to make sure businesses prosper."
"I think it's awesome that the book is coming out,"
says 20-year veteran Scott "Super Dave" Shanahan.
"We've had two documentaries about messengers in
Chicago, but this will be the first book." He adds
that it may help improve the image of Chicago
messengers, which was tarnished recently when a
courier pushed a man down the stairs at Union Station.
"The crap hit the fan when that messenger killed a
commuter-that just put the messengers in a bad slump.
So some positive publicity will be a good thing."
Jack Blackfelt agrees. "Rebecca trashes Chicago in her
book. It's good that a more positive book is being
written about the city." He's also glad that Culley is
publicizing the McBride case. "If he tells the story
accurately, the facts of the case will shock any
nonmessenger reader."

"I absolutely think it's a good thing he's publicizing
the McBride case in his book," says T.C. O'Rourke, a
bike activist who's been closely following the case.
"Although it may make cycling seem dangerous, it's
getting out the truth."

But Michael Burton, a former messenger who helped
organize the early Critical Mass rides here, feels
Culley misrepresented the nature of the movement. He
cited one line in particular: "The Chicago Critical
Mass was furious with the outcome of Boub v. Wayne
Township."
"It leads you to believe Critical Mass is an organized
entity, and it's not," says Burton. "All it is is a
monthly ride. I bet more than half the people on a
ride wouldn't have any idea who Boub is.

"I think that riders in Critical Mass have been very
good about not falling into the trap of being
spokespersons for the ride. That has helped hold the
ride's integrity as a leaderless, anarchistic
gathering. While I'm excited about the book, I hope
that it doesn't lead to the establishment of
spokespersons, people claiming to be leaders for the
Mass and an implied hierarchy within the ride."
Randy Neufeld, executive director of the Chicagoland
Bicycle Federation, hopes the book will raise the
public's awareness of bike issues. "It's another thing
that puts biking on people's radar screen," he says.
"A lot of us in bike advocacy don't realize how
invisible these issues are to the majority of people."
"Unless it causes divisiveness, I think it's going to
be good for the scene," says Gareth Newfield, a
computer programmer who rides in Critical Mass. "The
more people think about biking the better."

Culley received his first copy of the finished book by
overnight delivery a few Saturdays ago. "Isn't it
beautiful?" he asked, pulling it out of a plastic bag
after riding in the rain. The compact hardback is
indeed a handsome volume. The jacket is a striking
combination of duct-tape silver, black, and yellow,
with the text edgily arranged at odd angles. Arms
crossed, clutching his two-way radio and messenger
bag, framed by the image of a bicycle wheel, Culley
smiles proudly in the cover photo. There are plenty of
black-and-white pictures inside, from blurry action
shots of messengering and Critical Mass rides to
introspective studio portraits of bikers like James
Daniels, Marcus Moore, and Kim Morris. Culley thinks
it's a steal at $19.95.

Other members of the local cycling community will have
a chance to experience The Immortal Class firsthand
when Culley holds his first reading at 7 PM this
Friday, March 30, at Barbara's Bookstore in Old Town.
There's a Critical Mass ride that night at 5:30, and,
though the route is never completely predetermined,
Culley plans to pass out a map that will lead riders
to his reading.

He's cut down to biking three days a week for Service
First. "Right now I'm hibernating," he says,
conserving his energy for his eight-city book tour. He
may bicycle between some of his appearances on the
west coast. In the meantime he's in regular
communication with Villard's publicity department.
"There's more good news coming in every day," he says.
"Things are moving quickly now."
But then Culley's bright future was almost cut short
by his run-in with that trucker.

A little after 4 PM on a Friday, he was cruising north
on Halsted for a pickup, pumping the pedals on his
work bike, a skinny-tired hybrid with upright
handlebars. As he came to a red light at Randolph, he
couldn't clear the intersection because two vehicles
were approaching in the left lane of westbound
traffic. The first was a small car. "I stopped and
gave it room to make a left turn," says Culley.
"However, it was making an illegal U-turn. When I saw
it was trying to make the U-turn, I took a few steps
with my bike to the left and gave it room."
Behind the first car was a National Waste Management
truck, the kind of rig that carries Dumpsters to
construction sites. This one was empty. "The truck
driver was clearly being very aggressive," says
Culley. "He was trying to push the car in front
forward and trying to make his left turn. He blared
his horn and shouted something as I made room for the
car making its U-turn. I communicated with both hands
to say, 'Dude's making an illegal turn.'"
The truck driver responded by making his left faster
than normal. The truck would have swiped Culley if he
hadn't dismounted. It did hit his front wheel, yet the
driver was still yelling. "I dropped my bicycle and I
yelled back, 'Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you,'" says
Culley. The truck continued south on Halsted toward
Greek Town.

"Then I had this moment of standing in an intersection
on a gorgeous day," says Culley. "I pick up my bike
and get on it again. I wonder if I should continue
north and make my delivery. I see that the truck is
unable to get through Halsted quickly, so the thought
lingers, should I tell him something?" Unsure of what
to do, he began to ride slowly southbound. "I was
asking myself the question, 'What's the right thing to
do here?'"
The truck stopped at a red light at Madison. "I was
still rolling in his direction," Culley says, "so I
said, may as well tell him what I think. I was not
angry. I had only one package on; I was not in a
hurry. I came up on his passenger side, knowing that
he was watching me approach, feeling that if I came up
on his driver's side I would have been too
antagonistic."

With the light red, Culley pulled in front of the
truck, got off his bike, and confronted the driver. "I
don't take getting hit lightly," he said. "You did the
wrong thing."

The driver yelled back, "Fuck you. Get out of my
fucking way."

"He lets his foot off the break and starts to push me
with the front of the vehicle," says Culley. "And I
don't move. I just make it real clear, 'I just want
you to know you did the wrong thing there.'"
The driver stepped out of his cab, walked up to
Culley, and gave him a shove on the shoulder.

"With my hand between us in a gesture of peace I say,
'All I want from you right now is an apology,'" says
Culley.

The driver stepped closer, holding his clenched fists
at his sides. Yelling, he came so close that their
noses touched. Culley gave him a head butt. "This guy
was fucking attacking me. I gave him the option to
apologize," he exclaims.

Thrown, the trucker took a step back, then lunged
forward swinging. The messenger dropped his bike, and
a fistfight began in the middle of the street. The
driver grabbed Culley's jacket and bike bag and pulled
them over his head. Freeing himself from his jacket
and bag, Culley blocked the trucker with his left hand
while punching him with his right. Drivers at the
intersection and people at a bus stand stopped and
gaped but did not try to break up the fight.

The trucker seized Culley's left arm and pulled him
into a headlock. "He's pulling my head backward," he
says, reenacting the scene. "It was very forceful and
I was worried he could break my neck. My only escape,
it seems, is to trip him by putting my right foot
underneath his left knee and leaning back. We both go
down."

That's when the strangling started. "A long time
passes and I feel I have no defense. I wondered if
some of the witnesses will come to my aid. They don't.

I'm not panicked, but I realize I've only got one
chance to get out. I bring my hands underneath his
arms and look directly at his nose. And while I'm
starting to see spots, I'm starting to go blurry, I
pull off one last punch."

The trucker didn't let go, but Culley could tell he
was weakened. With his extended right hand Culley
began to push the trucker's head to the right while
prying his hands off his neck with his left.

"He suddenly gets up and lets me go," says Culley. "I
roll to my left side and crawl up to my knees. I think
I see him hunched over with a ball of mucus falling
from his face. It was just a flash-my head was not
real clear."

The light turned yellow as the driver ran back to the
cab of his truck and closed the door. Culley got up
and pulled his bike out of the way. The truck drove
off.

Despite the close call, Culley says he doesn't regret
confronting the trucker. "I'm glad I stood up for my
right to the road, for what I believed in. I think
it's wrong that I should be so threatened and
intimidated on a regular basis by aggressive drivers.
Just because I don't back down doesn't mean I was
looking for trouble. I do have a right to my space and
I'll keep it. Sharing the road is a very serious
thing."

A week after the strangling incident, I run into
Culley on a rainy afternoon in the lobby of the AT&T
Building on Monroe. We're both making deliveries. With
my navy blue helmet, raincoat, and Cannonball Courier
bag, I feel rather drab beside him. He's wearing a
blue helmet, black cycling skullcap, and bulbous eye
shields. A beat-up red Service First T-shirt covers a
flashy racing jacket from the Washington, D.C.,
messenger association. He wears tan cargo shorts over
black winter tights and racing shoes shielded by
neoprene spats. He carries a huge messenger bag
custom-made to resemble the Chicago flag. His belt
buckle looks like a coin slot and reads "5 cents.
Insert coin. Unzip. Shake well. Guaranteed action.
Internal use only."

Riding the elevator to the transfer floor, Culley is
literally bouncing off the walls with excitement as we
discuss his book. We disembark, and I walk toward a
bank of elevators for the upper floors. He jogs in
place beside me. We take the elevator up. He gets off
on the 33rd floor while I continue on to the 38th. On
the way down, I assume he's already on his way out of
the building, but the car stops on 33. Just as the
elevator doors are about to close, Culley runs up and
jams his foot inside with a grin.

Back on the transfer floor, we walk to the first bank
of lifts. Just as we get there, the elevator doors
close in the face of a black man in a topcoat. The guy
is carrying a briefcase with a fraternity-letter
luggage tag.

Culley chides the young professional: "Man, you gotta
have initiative to make it in this world."