"Toronto mechanic Greg McRoberts in goatee, Oakley shades, jersey and gloves by Specialized, tattoos drawn and executed by himself"
This article, written by David Livingstone, appeared in the Globe and Mail's "Fashion & Design" section, August 17th. It's a little dated, sure, but I thought you all might get a kick out of it anyhow.
Livingstone writes,"They may joke about themselves being the lowest of the low, but the bicycle couriers of the world this past weekend reached heights of spirit, style and sophistication.
Five hundred participants from 13 countries were in Toronto for the third annual Cycle Messenger World Championships, a two-day event that featured trials, races and an atmosphere that publicist Sarah Hood, quite surprisingly but quite accurately, characterized as 'sweet'.
That the crowd, riders and spectators alike, which lent such a cordial air to the warehouse neighbourhood south of Lamport Stadium where the happening went down, should have been so friendly, so well-mannered and free of tension or aggression came as a revelation. But the look of this crowd was only further confirmation of what many have known for a long time: the courier has been a brace and influential messenger of style, having taught the world lessons is stretch, creative layering and high-performance fashion.
Before grunge, before the neo-hippy and the neo-punk, before the whole peaking panoply of styles linked to boarding, skate and snow, there were young men and women weaving their bikes through urban traffic and sewing up a deserved reputation for cool.
Checking out the championships, one of the best times this town has seen in a long time, more than one observer noted that cool broke down into a couple of strains. Europeans were dressed functionally for speed. This was the opinion of hairstylist John Steinberg, who was one of a panel of judges surveying the scene with an eye to handing out prizes for visual achievement. Steinberg, colleague Russ McKay, Viki Larouche (the Toronto designer behind the street-smart collection called Balzac), and Lisa Byrne, owner of a London company named Creative Couriers, chose a team from Denmark as winners of the Sprocket Award, recognizing the almost sci-fi functionalism of stretch shorts and stretch zippered jerseys (already pegged a comer for spring '96 by Women's Wear Daily) in acid green.
Similarily attired was a team of riders from Hamburg. Pesen Gauer was a serious vision in black-and-white fabric technology as he prepared for his winning performance in the sprint finals, dismissing fashion as "bull---," but otherwise too concentrated on the task at hand to want to talk.
Achim Beier, owner of a Berlin messenger service and responsible for the first Cycle Messenger World Championships, held in that city in 1993, contrasted European style with North American, on which he used the word "freaky" to encompass the tattoos, piercings and matted dreadlocks favoured by the courier tribes of the United States and Canada.
Honoured by the style jury as "Most Dangerous" was the appearance of Spider, from Chicago, whose skull was patterned with a thickly braided Mohawk and a spiderweb tattoo. Gored Hillier, from Toronto, in explaining his dreads, outlined hair ornaments and products that included bike parts, ear rings and hash oil.
While the history of 20th-century costume is informed by all kinds of practical styles borrowed from athletic pursuits, among the major accomplishments of the bicycle courier has been to strip physical culture of its prissiness, replacing it with fresh, raw attitudes. Professionally, the courier has celebrated human power over the machine and, fashion-wise, has favoured strong personal expression.
At the Cycle Messenger World Championships there was some indication of conformity - it seemed that everybody was wearing either Arnet or Oakley sunglasses - but such was the play of personality that the conformity did not register as oppressive.
Among a row of merchants selling wares in the parking lot was Mike Echlin, a former courier, who has founded a store and wholesale operation called Spazz. While Echlin is working the latest trends in street gear, he packs a business card that reads "Sno and Sk8 Crap".
A similar lightness of being was expressed by Donnan Hegler, a courier from Boston, who declared that "The best fashion is naked", and took credit, on Sunday afternoon, for the nude escapade of the night before, when some 150 couriers took off their clothes, got on their bikes and went hopping from clubs to speakeasies to an early-morning splash in a public swimming pool.
That could never have happened in Philadelphia, said a courier from Philadelphia. Nor in London, said someone from London, adding to the unanimously held view that Toronto has to be one of the coolest places on earth.
Special souvenirs being taken back to Germany by Stefan Boost and Micheal Aures, two members of the Citybiker team from Nuremberg, were the police shirts they got from a couple of Metro cops who had swapped them for team T-shirts.
Too bad there aren't any pictures of some of the many funky women who showed up to race. Maybe next year. Maybe then the media will even think of covering the CMWC's as a "sports" event. D'ya think?
