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Whither Alleycats

One thing I miss about cycling in New York are the informal messenger races called alleycats.   Basically, alleycats used to be – before the messenger scene was polluted by the hipsters – anywhere from 10 to 30 messengers meeting somewhere in the city for a race.

Someone would have mapped out the checkpoints  - there would be no course, only checkpoints – that the racers would have to pass in order to finish the race.  Usually, the alleycat would have a theme like Halloween or Thanksgiving or movies or anything and at the checkpoints, the racer would have to perform some act related to the theme.

The New York Thanksgiving race is called Cranksgiving and the racers would have to buy canned goods at certain grocery stores and based on the amount of goods collected, the distance travelled and the speed at which these tasks were accomplished determined the winner.  The collected food would then be donated to charity.

The alleycats were more fun when the number of participants was lower.  Seeing as how these races were not exactly on the up-and-up, it wasn’t so safe to have so many racers careening around Manhattan.  And as the popularity of the races increased, riders who weren’t messengers or who didn’t know how to ride at high speeds through city streets were more likely to cause injury to themselves – or more importantly, innocent bystanders.

One Halloween race, some guy with a helmet cam decided to tag along (they were making a documentary or some such nonsense about alleycats) and wanted to record live footage of the race.   At the intersection of 42nd and Broadway, he ran a light and was greeted with the front end of a sedan.  The footage was amusing – he was unhurt – but it underlines the greater dangers of casual bikers – or in this case, documentarians – competing in alleycats.

As the messenger fad became that much more popular and nauseating, the number of riders at each race ballooned exponentially.   For one race, modeled after the movie The Warriors, racers were in teams of five and had to ride from the Bronx to Coney Island and compete at various points along the way that were based on scenes in the movie.  The expected turnout was about 100; over 600 people showed up.

The race began at dusk in the Bronx and almost immediately, thunder crackle, lightning seethed and torrents of rain pounded the racers.  It was fantastic.  I believe I had six or seven punctures during the race; I had to run to my apartment to get a spare wheel to finish the race.  It was an incredible night and was the apex of the alleycat scene.  Of the 600 or so racers involved, only about 150 finished the race.

The winners were determined by the collective number of points the team members scored at each of the checkpoints.  The checkpoint challenges varied from playing handball in the Bronx to wrestling some giant in Central Park to getting a tattoo in the West Village.  The race ended at dawn on the boardwalk in Coney Island.  It was a truly incredible race made that much more memorable by the inclement weather, the hazy and insane recollections about some bar on Fulton St and the exhaustion that was melted away by the black coffee served on the boardwalk.

Shortly thereafter – six months or a year or maybe before – the alleycat scene became just another hip thing to do.  It wasn’t based on skill and finesse any longer; the new racers and hangers-on sought to instill terror and sped wrecklessly through the city.  For me, the alleycat was primarily about skill and finesse; each racer had to use his cunning and skills garnered from months and years of messengering to win the race.  While the races were underground and anarchic, the race itself was the antithesis of anarchy – skill and presence of mind dominated.