ABSTRACT
Since their invention, bicycles have been used for delivery. At the turn of the 20th century, American cities were filled with cyclists delivering everything from groceries to telegraph messages (Perry 1995). New technologies like the automobile and telephone, combined with urban sprawl, however, drastically reduced the utility of bicycles in the courier business. In the 1980s, though, a curious thing happened: bike messengers, once again, buzzed through the city delivering a vast assortment of items. Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, this second wave of bike couriers became a prominent part of major American cities (and cities in other Western nations as well). In 1986, for example, Columbia Pictures released Quicksilver—a movie starting Kevin Bacon playing an options trader turned free-spirited messenger. Nine years later, CBS briefly aired Double Rush—a sitcom based on bike couriers. Recently, the bike courier industry has begun to contract (once more), but many urban businesses still rely on its services.
