shadowpuppetmaster | Shared With: Everyone - Mar 22 2008 | the, chicago, books
anyone read this, or know anything about it?
Quoted: Amazon.com: The Immortal Class: Bike Messengers and the Cult of Human Power: Travis Culley
"From Publishers Weekly
Puck, the scabby roommate from MTV's The Real World, remains the archetypal bike messenger: hyperkinetic, crass, hygienically challenged. But as Culley demonstrates in this exciting memoir of his years spent on two wheels, there's much more to the world of bike messengers than the stereotype. Many are artists, writers or revolutionariesACulley himself is all three. He got his start as a messenger in Chicago in the late 1990s by answering an ad in the newspaper after his small theater company went belly up. "The below-freezing winds burned my wrists and forearms," Culley says. "Thick bloodless cuts would open up along the lines of my fingerprints." He persevered and soon became (by his own description, at least) the fastest, best bike messenger in the city. Culley evokes the dangers of his profession, from careening taxis to yuppie road rage and broken bones. But there were also rewards, principally freedom from the cubicles of the corporate "wage slave." Culley's book is not just a memoir; it's also a political tract about the evils of the consumer economy and car-based capitalism. "The bicycle is a revolution," Culley says, "and I am using it like a hammer to change the world." Such statements may seem to many to veer toward the lunatic fringe, but to the bike messengers living on the edge of the system and constantly in danger from four-wheeled competitors, they'll make considerable sense. Offering a rare inside view of a maligned but ubiquitous urban subculture, this kinetic memoirAwhich is supported by a four-city author tour and ads in alternative weeklies"
Related Content from Around Faves
books
-
Working on an article about the book that came out of this story... So sad.
1 FaverViewed: 5 TimesQuoted: For six years, Fekkak Mamdouh, whom everyone knew by his surname, had been a waiter at Windows on the World, the luxury restaurant on the 107th floor of the North Tower. He had started working there in 1996 when Windows reopened after the 1993 terrorist bombing in the World Trade Center basement.
- sushi - May 09 20081 FaverViewed: 52 Times
- den2fly - Jul 30 20071 FaverViewed: 33 Times
chicago
-
"Bruce Elliott, whose wife owns the Old Town Ale House, painted this nude portrait of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. He said his daughter, who does a good impression of the Alaska governor, served as model."
1 FaverViewed: 16 TimesQuoted: Read about the Sarah Palin nude portrait in Chicago.
- Roldy - 18 days ago1 FaverViewed: 6 Times
- Roldy - 19 days ago1 FaverViewed: 6 Times
