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Back in, I believe, the winter of 1996/1997 I worked as a bicycle messenger. I was in no way a hardened veteran of the streets. If anything, I was more like this:

Don’t worry, I couldn’t finish it either.

Anyway, today the streets are of course teeming with people delivering food on e-bikes. However, the old-timey messenger–by which I mean someone on a race bike wearing a satchel–has become yet another casualty of the digital age, and it’s been at least a decade if not two since they’ve plied the streets in any meaningful number. And yet, their memory lives on, and I was surprised to see that Monster Track is still a thing:

While I understand there is (or was) such a thing as “messenger culture,” I never became a part of it, and if anything I found that in working as a messenger you could easily go weeks at a time without talking to anybody. (This was perhaps one of the best things about being a bike messenger.) As I also understand it, the so-called “alleycat”–in which I never participated, having failed to gain entrée into the fabled “messenger culture”–is meant to replicate the working experience of the bike messenger, making this one of the very few professions whose practitioners enjoy pretending to do their own jobs during their downtime. (Even people who love their jobs generally want to take a break from doing them when they’re not getting paid for it, the exceptions being medical and legal professionals who feel compelled to lecture people on social media.)

Given this, watching people participate in alleycats today is doubly strange in that the job upon which they’re modeled no longer exists. This gives them the appearance of ritual, and the participants seem like cloaked figures in some sort of religious procession, the primary difference being they’re in a great big fucking hurry. Stranger still to someone who once did the job with a pager and a pocketful of quarters for the payphone is the presence of smartphones, and indeed the person making this video stops almost immediately to figure out where he’s going:

From there it’s doing your best to ignore all that lavish bike infrastructure the city has coddled us with:

And riding right into oncoming traffic:

And riding right into crowded crosswalks against red lights:

And of course the great Running of the Salmon:

So basically, alleycats are bike races that are modeled after a job that no longer exists and that are deliberately ridden outside of the venue for which the bicycles are designed, making them quite unique in the sporting world. In particular, with regard to that last attribute, it’s really no different than playing golf outside of a golf course, though as far as I know that’s only something that happens in music videos:

Still, it’s remarkable that urban cycling is still riding a wave of outlaw appeal that has its origins way back in the previous century:

Whereas it’s doubtful that the food delivery industry that has replaced it will ever attain the same level of cultural cachet:

Though maybe I’m wrong and these things will become the new messenger bag:

You never know.

Moving on, yesterday I spent some time on the Faggin:

To see how it compares to the Tete de Course:

Crucially, both bikes have handlebars:

This is a good thing, because while you may be tempted to leave the handlebars off your bike for weight savings, they are generally worth the penalty for the increased comfort and control:

Both bikes also have handlebar-mounted levers in order to effectuate slowing and stopping:

Though the levers on the Tete de Course also allow you to shift:

As a result, the Faggin’s cockpit has sort of a lean appearance:

Whereas the Tete de Course looks like it’s rolled up its sleeves in order to flex its oiled biceps:

Other differences include the color:

As well as the materials utilized in the construction of each frame:

There may be other differences too, but I won’t know for sure until I get the results back from the lab.

One thing I do know for sure is that neither bike will accept a set of Growwtac Equal mechanical disc brakes:

For all my whining about disc brakes, I do appreciate them, and while I don’t want or need them on my road bikes myself, I think they’re fantastic on a bike like my Jones:

Of course, as a lover of simplicity, I happen to be partial to mechanical disc brakes, since they offer most of the advantages of their hydraulic counterparts while simultaneously not requiring me to retrain my rim brake-oriented brain in order to service and adjust them. I also like the way they feel, and consider the fact that you can move the pads in and out the same way you can with rim brakes depending on how much lever travel you want to be an attribute. Generally speaking, they’re also far more tolerant of abuse, or neglect, or both. This isn’t to say they’re better than hydraulic disc brakes; it’s simply to note that they’ve got a lot going for them.

Despite all this, the humble mechanical disc brake is perhaps the most maligned brake in cycling. This is because, while the so-called “roadie” has long been the byword for elitism in cycling, in practice nobody is more snobby, fickle, judgmental, and equipment-obsessed than the mountain biker. And early on, these snobby, fickle, judgmental, and equipment-obsessed mountain bikers decided that mechanical brakes suck, and that anyone who uses them is a “woosie” who doesn’t ride hard enough–just like they decided anyone who doesn’t use suspension is a woosie who doesn’t ride hard enough, or anyone who doesn’t ride a bike with a 45-degree head tube angle and a 1mm stem doesn’t ride hard enough and is a woosie, and so forth.

Nevertheless, for the reasons I’ve previously established, plenty of people do want mechanical disc brakes anyway, though because mountain bikers think any brake that doesn’t allow you to stop using only your pinkie is no good they’re under the impression if they don’t get some fancy boutique version it will work horribly and they will die–hence the $365 Growtac, which sounds like it sucks, possibly because it’s overpowered so you can stop with your pinkie, but who knows:

The popular notion in cycling seems to be that if a mechanical disc brake caliper doesn’t come in a bunch of fancy colors and cost a lot of money it’s a piece of crap, but in my experience, mechanical disc brakes are one of those things in cycling where you get a lot for a little, and a set of budget Tektros will generally work great at a tiny fraction of the price.

But maybe I’m doing something wrong.