Cupid Courier is a San Francisco messenger service that can serve all same day delivery needs for the Bay Area.

[NEWS]

January 1st, 2012

Like Bryan noted two newsletters ago, we have cycled through authors to retain the lineup of last year. That means I once again have the difficult position of both eulogizing the past year and getting us rocking into the new one.
For its part, Cupid had a solid eleventh year. We have maintained a remarkable consistency for the last half-decade or so. The crew, the volume, you: all things that kept on keeping on in 2011. We started delivering lots and lots of flowers in earnest this year with Farmgirl Flowers. That has been brought up a lot on this page, so I won’t plug it again. It has been a challenge, moving top-heavy water-filled glass with biomaterial in it via bicycle. But Christina at Farmgirl is awesome, and the response from both recipients and folks on the street has been great. We literally transport smiles for hours a day sometimes. One thing we never counted on was the obvious amount of time we would end up spending in hospitals. It is rarely more than once or twice per week, but we bring arrangements to people who are not very well at all. Or obviously grieving a great loss. This made me uneasy at first because of poor emotional preparation. Now it feels pretty cool, being the avatar of some else’s love, care, and/or admiration. We get to bring lovely things to loved ones. Pretty cool for a company named Cupid, after all, huh?
On a personal level, the ol’ homestead made leaps and bounds in 2011. Our third year of home ownership really saw massive progress. A lot of electrical work made us feel a bit safer, and we nearly have a 100% working kitchen! This latter is all I really want, so 2012 will hopefully have a lot more family and friends in for visits. Food being my main reason for going anywhere, you see. Our chickens are just now starting to lay eggs again. They went through a ‘hard’ molt this winter. They stopped laying and lost a massive amount of feathers. Not sure why evolution programmed this in the coldest part of the year. But they have muddled on, and now seem a good bit happier. With most of their feathers back, they don’t look so funny, and we hope we don’t have to buy eggs again. It felt weird buying a dozen last week.
Hopefully you all had a productive 2011 as well. We at Cupid look forward to serving you well in 2012. Thanks for everything!
P.S. We’ll close again to celebrate the Birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., Monday, January 16th

December 16th, 2011

We all like to find hidden treasure right? In the sagebrush dessert hills around where I grew up I loved to go on rambling walks, usually with the family dog Zuzu. While he was off doing dog miles (3 or more to my one) I would imagine coming across some long forgotten treasures left out and now half buried. More often than not I would find them in the form of some bleached coyote bones or a really nice chunk of obsidian, maybe even an arrowhead if I was really lucky. I never did stumble across an x that marked the spot of some old timers hidden gold. Maybe that’s why I came up with the idea to make that happen for my nephews and niece. For Christmas I plan on burying some treasure for them in hills near grandma's house and my brothers and I will take them out to find it. Of course we’ll need a treasure map.
The Bay Area is full of hidden gems; it’s one of the things I love about living here. It’s also one of the fringe benefits of our job. Being out, moving around the city and the greater Bay Area especially on a bicycle I constantly come across nice little surprises.
Most treasure hunts involve a quest right? This past weekend for my birthday some friends (including the Cupoids!) joined me on a quest to find a polar bear. We had to catch BART to the East Bay, but then we hopped on our bikes. Our ride took us past John Muir’s home where we climbed to the top of the rather large house to take in the view from the cupola and ring the bell. From there we dropped into downtown Martinez, rode past the famous beaver dam then onto the Carquinez Scenic Drive. This road is definitely a gem of Bay Area cycling because a large portion has been closed to cars after a landslide almost 30 years ago. Bikes have no problem getting through and it’s a cozy ride with Carquinez Straight on one side and rolling, open, oak-lined hills on the other. It also takes you right into Port Costa, the goal of our quest. Where else can you have a beer (or a few) with a 10 foot tall polar bear then stumble across the street and stay the night in a former bordello now serving as a “rustic” hotel? If you’re looking for a car free weekend getaway I couldn't recommend it more highly. I’ll even draw you a treasure map if you’d like.
-tim
P.S. Don’t forget we’ll be CLOSED Mondays Dec 26th and Jan 2nd and that HOLIDAY RATES apply during the week in-between. Happy Holidays!

December 1st, 2011

Not sure how it worked out, but one year later and I'm up for the post-Thanksgiving, pre-December holiday newsletter. After rereading last year’s I was almost tempted to simply copy it (who would notice?). Some things haven't changed...Thanksgiving leftovers took a while to finish with leftover gravy lasting the longest (yup, I make lots for just that reason!). I hope everyone had as great a Thanksgiving as I did, and also enjoyed the long weekend. Last year's newsletter also had me suggesting some gift ideas for those of you searching around. Because I think it's such a great idea, I'm going to throw out another plug for local worker-owned businesses. Check out NOBAWC.org and you'll find all sorts of local worker-owned businesses (bookstores, baked goods, groceries, bike shops, and more).
Looking for something really cool and different to give for the holidays? How about flowers! As many of you know, Cupid has been partnering with the new local company: Farmgirl Flowers. Offering locally grown flowers in new arrangements daily, Farmgirl is a great local, and conscious business. Even better than receiving flowers once? How about receiving flowers all the time! Farmgirl offers the ability to set up scheduled flower deliveries on a regular basis (weekly, biweekly, monthly, etc.). Many people receive magazine subscriptions for the holidays, but how great would it be to receive a flower 'subscription'? Not only would that lucky recipient get to enjoy local, seasonal flowers, but they'd be delivered by your friends at Cupid. Curious? Check out Farmgirl's website at farmgirlflowers.com.
Scheduling Note: Cupid will be closed Monday 12/26 and Monday 1/2 for the Christmas and New Year's Holidays. We will be open the week between (12/27 - 12/30) under a skeleton crew and holiday rates. If you have a question about our availability over the holidays please give us a call. Thanks.-bryan

November 16th, 2011

My parents are in town for their decennial visit to the West Coast this week. They do have 19 grandkids on the Right Side, so their general absence can be excused. I was nervous, before they came, that I might not be able to find enough to do with them. They have done some of the classic touristy things before, and even lived South Bay (where I was born) many many years ago. It felt like it would really be a dig to find new interesting things to do. Where was the list of Secondary Things for Tourists To Do In SF?
And then yesterday with a map, the wife and I tried to point them to places that are not touristy, where the sightseeing buses do not take you. There is so much! We weren’t able to hang with them today, so they took the tall bus anyway. Knowing they’d be going, we tried to point to places along the bus routes. Guess what - there is still so much!
If you like people, its good to remember that you can do nothing in places, just walk around and gab and gawk and just take things in. You do not have to send anyone to the best thing, or go with them to the tastiest restaurant, or make sure that they see the Greatest Art Exhibition EVERRRRRR! Outatowners can be shown just about anything around here if you are familiar with it, can explain it or share little tidbits about its history or raison d’etre. It is really easy to be an accomplished ambassador for the whole Bay Area. You know a lot more than you think you do, in all likelihood, and every neighborhood and institution is probably worth a gander.
So that is my lesson this week: don’t get nervous when you have to play the host. Relax and remember that you can go anywhere and do anything. Even if you set aside only some time for these auslanders, it will probably end up not being enough. You will wish that you had more time during their stay, as more and more things will come to you as you shuffle around the streets and parks of our cities and towns, the hills and waters around them, and mingle among the cohabiting humans of the parts thereon. This place rules.
Thanks again as always for calling Cupid!-Rev

November 1st, 2011

There is probably nothing I like better than the taste of a few perfectly ripened blackberries eaten straight from the bush still warm from the sunshine. All these years of riding to every corner of town I’ve casually noted a few choice berry patches and beginning midsummer I like to check in on them if I happen to be going by while working. They are usually good for a least a few berries from about June through October. This year I was trying to keep note of when there was a lot of ripe ones so I could go out and pick some. I was also planning on making time to scout for some more obscure spots. As usual though, I got somewhat preoccupied over summer and didn’t get out berry picking until a couple weekends ago. By then the fruit was already past the peak and the nearby patches on Bernal HIll had been clearly picked over by other urban foragers. My girlfriend and I did have the company of hundreds of orb weaver spiders though. These arachnids apparently flourish right at the same time as the blackberries are winding down. The thickets with all their nooks and crannies are perfect for the spiders to weave their classic nets, usually right in front of a cluster of fat purple berries. Our method involved me wading into bushes while she spotted some choice berries and whacked at any unseen webs with a stick found nearby. I had to dodge the hard to see spiders (serious case of the heebie-jeebies), try not to scratch the heck out of my arms (I wish I were wearing long sleeves), all while keeping a close eye for poison oak (cycling knickers were another bad choice). It took a couple hours but we managed to gather enough berries to make a nice fat tart to share. Nice and simple; plain dough, not too much sugar, 45 minutes in the oven and it was freakin' delicious if I do say so myself. By the time you read this there will be a photo of it on the Cupid Courier Collective facebook wall. Check it out.

-tim

October 15th, 2011

Well it's been quite a start to the month of October here in SF. We did see a bunch of fantastically warm and sunny days out there, but we also got quite an unusual amount of rain this early. If you were of the superstitious school of thought, you could blame Jim for the recent rain, as he had the audacity to preview October's weather in our last newsletter. Seeing as how it's his birthday month, I think we should let him off the hook. This is a good time, however, to remind everyone that we are entering the season of rain, and extra caution should be applied to any packages. We all have great waterproof messenger bags, but on an extremely wet day everything is at a slight risk. This is true especially if you're sending out anything that might be larger than our bags, and might stick out the tops. We always try to carry plenty of plastic bags, and other waterproof barriers, but help from the sender is always appreciated.
As messengers we get to see the city in flux and action everyday at work. Usually this action causes extra traffic, whether it's construction, festivals, or protests. A couple construction projects will be causing minor headaches in downtown for a while: the new transbay terminal and the new central subway. Of the less planned variety are protests. The OccupySF protests have been on our radars for weeks now. While I support them completely, I'm still a little glad they haven't interfered too much on our work day. That said, even if Occupy marches or protests did interfere, I would still be in support. I think political protest is an integral part of what makes San Francisco great. Props go out to SF politicians who have been willing to show support and willingness to work with the protesters (and those that do are surely getting my vote in a couple weeks). It's great seeing the Occupy protests from the view of a work day at Cupid, as I believe our business model (worker-owned co-op) is one way to address many of the 'Occupy' issues.
As for great businesses, our partnership with Farmgirl Flowers is going great. The founder Christina has just redesigned her website and added a few more options for flower arrangements. Even better, you can now add some chocolates to your flower delivery for that special someone (or yourself!). While our basic messenger service is rewarding, I do enjoy seeing the look on recipients’ faces when I show up with flowers. If you are thinking about sending someone flowers, or are looking for flowers for the office, and want them delivered by your favorite messenger service, go check out her recently redesigned website: farmgirlflowers.com.-bryan

October 1st, 2011

Whassup, y’all?! Welcome to October. As we all know, this is one of the best weather months of the year in the Bay Area. It is also my birthmonth! My wife and I firmly believe in celebrating the other’s birth for our entire respective months. This makes for some great fun for me. My Cali license says I have 44 years under my belt, so maybe I should be getting a tricycle or a Segway to do your deliveries.
We are in the midst of getting ready for a new roof put on our home here in North Oakland. This has involved a lot of hard work scrabbling around in a very hot and dirty place, dark and dangerous to the old noggin with low crossbracing and protruding nails. It’s pretty exciting, as it’ll lead to a lot of other projects being made possible to complete. We’ll have a new venting (openable) skylight and soon after that a nice new hood over the range. Pretty sweet, but the operation has been all we’ve thought about about a month now. Leading to a boring newsletter.
One thing that constantly amazes me is the weight inside of words. Within a couple of days this past week, really short conversation with different parties revealed a whole world of thinking. It is hard to describe, but in a couple of sentences, these folks revealed an entire history of thinking that they had never communicated before. And last week I learned that my family, mostly on the East Coast, got pounded by the remnants of Hurricane Irene much harder than I thought. The night it hit up there, we had a little flurry of emails going around, where everyone basically said the were doing pretty good. After hearing little more, I assumed that meant things only got better. Turns out that my upstate New Yorkers got hammered. Personally untouched, fortunately, they were surrounded ny neighbors whose lives were altered forever. Small towns were submerged under headhigh waters. The NY State Thruway about 100 yards from one of my sisters was completely closed for days. The dam above her house burst, causing that flood. Had its reservoir been an acre or two bigger, her house would be gone. Scary.
What am I getting at? Not sure. Something like how I am constantly reminded too late that talking is so incredible. Sharing thoughts and ideas, well, there is no substitute. Never think that you know enough. When you don’t hear or ask anything, you can’t assume things to be how you expect them to be. Check in with your friends and family often. They are awesome!
Thanks as always for being Cupid Courier’s client!-Rev

September 16th, 2011

Wrapping up the end of my workday this afternoon involved handing over to Bryan the bandolier’s worth of electronic devices that we use to communicate with ourselves, you all and the universe at large. I can imagine an PigPen like cloud of invisible radio, cell and WIFI signals emanating from me, to accompany the more obvious messenger aroma. I often wonder if all the extra electromagnetic signals our hyper-connected world creates is unhealthy for all of us.
I’m not ready to pack it in and move to Green Bank West Virginia though. I caught an article this week about how people who feel they suffer from electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS) are moving there because it is a large area that is free from cell phone towers and most other forms of radio signals. The World Health Organization currently does not recognize EHS though it agrees that many of the sufferers symptoms are genuine.
Why is the area of Green Bank kept free of radio transmission? It is home to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. We are actually constantly being bombarded by electromagnetic radiation generated by the diversity of objects in the universe. One way to study the distant stars is by “listening” to these galactic frequencies so the area is kept clear of the Earthbound radio clutter we create.
There is actually a brand new object up there for us to observe, if 21 million years ago can be considered new. That’s how long it took the light of an enormous exploding star to reach us last week. This supernova has the elegant moniker of PTF 11kly and with a good telescope it should be visible for weeks as a bright spot in a galaxy just off the handle of the Big Dipper. It’s probably too far away to affect Cupid’s communication devices but I might still use it as an excuse when I have trouble understanding Jim over the radio.
-tim

September 1st, 2011

Who has the most tedious and boring occupation? A rhetorical question for sure, but one that I've been thinking about lately due to a great book, The Pale King by David Foster Wallace, that I've been reading. Published posthumously, the book tackles many concepts including the idea of boredom. In order to tackle the idea of boredom (or possibly tediousness), Wallace places his fictional tale in the depths of the IRS. His main characters are midlevel accountants who work at an IRS office in a suburban office park. As you can imagine, this setting is perfect for what most of us might imagine as the epitome of a boring occupation. But is that fair? As Wallace's tale continues, even as he highlights his own ideas about boredom, he describes just how this tedious job has its own interesting and challenging bits. Using humor, and examining the minutiae of tax codes, Wallace surprises me by pointing out how even what I might assume to be boring might not be (and especially might not be to his characters).

This is probably a given, but we all have vastly different ideas of what would make for a boring, or interesting, occupation. Ask any of us at Cupid and we'll usually tell you that we have a pretty exciting and dynamic job. I would bet that many non-messengers would agree. That said, to many people the idea of riding around delivering packages would seem pretty tedious or boring. As a messenger, of course, I get to see all sorts of workplaces: accountants, artists, construction, etc. On any given day, any of these occupations seem to me either really interesting, or really tedious. To me this is pretty cool! Not to be too cliché about it, but it's pretty great that we have opportunities to do all sorts of things. Want to ride your bike around town for a living? Want to work in a co-operative workplace? Or, find video editing exciting, or accounting challenging, or social services rewarding, or bread-baking fulfilling? It's pretty great riding around the city all day and seeing people doing all of these things and, hopefully, not finding them boring. And, as a part-time student myself, we should make sure that the freedom to explore occupations is always around, through support in education or small business opportunities, etc.

What's even better than an exciting job? How 'bout a Labor Day Holiday! Please enjoy the vacation if you got it. -bryan

August 16th, 2011

Summer shenanigans going on for me lately. I have been to a wedding each of the last two weekends. One was up in the Oakland hills, and most recently a few of us Cupoids were in Pescadero for our friend Kevin’s betrothal. The last few years have really killed my getoutandaboutedness, so it was pretty crazy going to Pescadero twice within a few days (one of you sent me there last week). It is so hard to believe just how beautiful it is down there. The coast highway feels like another world, even though it is just an hour or so south of SF.
This is analogous to where my parents live in upstate New York. Some upstaters wouldn’t even call it upstate, as its only about an hour north of Manhattan. The west side of the Hudson River is actually mighty rural, and my parents will tell you that the property taxes there are going to keep it like that for quite some time. In fact, they pay waaayy more than I do in Oakland for a house and lot each just a bit bigger than mine. This is kind of crazy, as there isn’t much to do around there except sleep and drive somewhere to go shopping. That may be an exaggeration, but I definitely prefer living in the Bay Area.
There is probably some element of inflation due to a workforce that still lives close enough to commute and earn NYC dollars. Still, it’d mean at least 2 hours on a train every day, with cars taking, mmmm, its New York, so forget cars.
I got to thinking about where they live in the first place because that is my other ‘shenanigan.’ A big bad bug bite after returning from a reunion there over the 4th of July weekend came with a mighty bad rash. It showed up over a week later and seemed like a really bad reaction to a spider bite, of which I get many in the opened up old fixer-upper of a house. Nope - Lyme disease! Its pretty rare on the West Coast, but my brother-in-law has had it four times. It was a little bit scary as it affects a lot of things, and my initial clinician got me really worried about neurological damage. Some things that were really hard to find out: it is by no means always a target-shaped rash, although that is a good indicator. Look for a growing red circle too. I got a bunch of them after a little while. And the ticks bite in the nymph stage - the size of a poppy seed! Still on my antibiotics course, which should wipe out the evil bacteria. Take care if in the woods of the Northeast, them critters are nasty!-Rev

August 1st, 2011

My handlebars broke the other day as I was bunny-hopping a speed bump. Though I was moving a bit quickly, I wasn’t going full speed; the resulting crash gave me a few scrapes, but it could have been much worse. There are any number of situations (most of which I’d rather not contemplate) where a catastrophic failure of an aluminum part could have been quite dangerous. Things wear out and most messengers go through bicycle parts the way a busy office goes through copier supplies. At this point I’ve broken just about everything you can attach to a bike as well as several of the bike frames those parts were attached to.
I’ve never kept any real records, but by a very conservative estimate I have ridden well over 100,000 miles as a messenger (this does not include a substantial number of non-work miles). This translates into a lot of tires, tubes, brake pads and other expendables. I was locking up my bike this past week and I thought of all the times I’ve done that at work over the years (well over 50,000 times on a half dozen mini U-locks). The metal cleats that attach my beat-up shoes to my fancy pedals has worn down to a tiny nub. I’ve gone through at least a half-dozen of these cleats over the past several years. This one is still just hanging on but I’ll have to replace it and the shoes soon. Messengers are also known to squeeze a few extra miles out of their gear. If your tire has a hole in it a folded dollar bill wedged inside might get you through the week until payday.
The summer doldrums are officially here. This means business at Cupid can be a bit slow so not much work-related news. As I write this, though, I’m about to crawl out from under the Bay Area fog and head for the hills on a five day hiking trip in the Trinity Alps up north. I’ll see y’all next week.-tim

July 16th, 2011

As you might be able to figure out from previous newsletters, everyone here at Cupid has been able to get out of town over the last month or two. Seems weird that so many of us are taking off for weekends, or weeks, until I remember that...oh, yeah, it's summer! Living in San Francisco and working outside in July sure can make it hard to remember that we are in fact in the middle of the summer. Luckily, all it takes is a long bike ride, or BART ride, or short car drive out of our fog-covered coastline in order to experience summer-like conditions. Last weekend, my girlfriend and I were able to drive up to Chico in order to see a friend. Summertime indeed! It was up in the 90's, and finally I was able to get some good swimming in. We also got some great blueberry picking in ($3 a gallon!), along with some leisurely bike riding (small, flat town with little traffic makes for some relaxing biking compared to the normal work day in SF). And of course, what better way to end a bike ride and swimming, but to visit the Sierra Nevada brewery.
The best part about our trip, however, was to see our friend Sara. She's currently interning at a cooperative farm up in Chico called GRUB Farm. GRUB Farm is a small-ish operation with a few partners and focuses mainly on their subscription-based CSA service. They also sell produce at farmer's markets throughout the area. It was really cool to see a cooperative enterprise in such a different environment than Cupid's urban existence. I would assume that their experiences as a coop might be quite different from ours, but it was cool to hear how similar our business practices are. It is definitely great to see how cooperative enterprises can work in completely different environments and businesses (urban bike messengers compared to rural farmers). Although you can't find their produce in the Bay Area, if you're interested in looking up a cooperatively run farm, check out GRUB's website at grubchico.org.-bryan

July 1st, 2011

Well, happy July to you all. We didn’t really warn you well, but we, like you, are closed on Monday, July 4th. Have fun! While most of these bills are being distributed Friday, I’ll probably be 35000 feet up in the air on the way to an East Coast family reunion. My parents in their silver years jet around like a couple of business execs, and generously got me a ticket with their frequent flyer miles. Pretty sweet - with all the skimping in that industry, it is surprising that people actually still get perks out of it.
Normally I would be really psyched about heading toward the land of hot days and summer rain, but check it out. This past Tuesday’s storm (which personally made me feel more wet than any thing offered up last winter) brought us to a monthly rain total of 1.67.” By my calculation, using the average from weather.com, this equals 1285% greater than normal. And this weekend’s July 4th temperatures look to spike in the 80’s. Which means I am leaving hot and moist to get to hot and moist. Usually I look forward to the vive le difference aspect of travel, especially where weather is concerned. C’est la vie.
Trying to get over writer’s block for the past two days over this newsletter, but the only significant thing I could think of was sports. Lame, huh? I acquired all of my sports affiliations (well, except for the Giants, as I needed an NL team) while living in Boston. It was no small thing when the Bruins won hockey’s Stanley Cup recently. It was an ill-tempered series with Vancouver that famously climaxed with riots outside the arena’s downtown location. Despite this, it still gives me shivers.
I lived in Boston during my college years, attending BU, a major hockey school. The Bruins always felt a close second to the fabled Red Sox in terms of popularity and cultural gravitas. Always bridesmaids and runners’-up, they would tease, tempt, and predictably trip as seasons and generations rolled on. I watched more hockey than anything else there (mostly because you don’t go out as much during a long Boston winter), probably, so it is still stunning that the B’s overcame their archnemeses Les Habs, the Montreal Canadiens; then their embarrassers of last year, the Flyers of Philadelphia; a really tough Tampa Bay team; and then glory in Vancouver. 25 playoff games! 3 Game 7’s! Miraculous and record-setting goaltending from avuncular Tim Thomas! Hockey is back, at least for me. It sure can be hard seeing my team play during the regular season, but here’s hoping that this victory will help me out a little there. And also be good for the sport in general - hockey is great, especially live if you ever get the chance to see a game.
See you next week, and thanks for calling Cupid!-Rev

June 16th, 2011

     All cities have layers.  Any geologist or archaeologist will tell you that, in general, the deeper down you dig the farther back in time you will see. On some mornings my ride into work takes me through some of the many layers of San Francisco. After I pass the vacant lot that my neighbors have appropriated as a run for their friendly chickens, I’ll cut over to Harrison St.  With it’s bike lanes it’s a popular route for cyclists, though for the past month sewer line work has made the ride a bit frustrating and sketchy (if you get a chance to peer into the road cuts you can literally see some of the layers I’m talking about).
     One hundred years ago Harrison St., through the Mission, was part of a rail line that continued all the way down to San Jose. With a sharp eye you can spot loading docks and roll-up doors, various signs of the industrial past. Take a quick look at an internet satellite view and you’ll see the curving diagonal to the southwest from about 22nd & Harrison toward San Jose Ave. The old railroad right-of-way is marked by angular buildings and a few parks and yards filling the linear space.
     Continuing on to 17th & Harrison I will now be above a former marshy area; a confluence in the Mission Creek drainage. This low area is prone to flooding. Our friends over at Godspeed Courier have a office near here and I once caught co-owner Brandon on the nighty news, the lower part of his office ankle deep in water.
     As I turn right onto Division I have the decked Central Freeway above me, the ghost of the former rail line underfoot and the entombed creek bed below that.  Entering the Design Center district at the foot of Potrero Hill these three features diverge again as we reach what was once the shoreline of the ecologically rich, shallow tide flat of Mission Bay. This bay cut deep into what is now SOMA, the sand hills that hemmed in the early town flattened and dumped into the low areas to create new real estate.
     If it’s a nice quiet workday morning I might take my coffee and stand by at  Mission Creek park. This is the last remnant of Mission Bay and is home to a lingering houseboat community as well as various herons, egrets, pelicans and the frequent sea lion. Though it’s a shadow of it's former ecology, I’m glad for this bit of habitat. It empties into the greater SF Bay at Lefty O’Doul Bridge, what we now call McCovey Cove.
     The layering of our city is wonderfully approached by many contributors in Rebecca Solnit’s recent book “Infinite City”. If you have any interest in a sampling of the historical/physical/metaphorical layering of this crazy town I highly recommend giving it a look.     -tim
P.S. If you have any interest in a short film our friend Tanya Mia made in homage to Cupid Courier, you are cordially invited to a screening at ATA, 992 Valencia, this Saturday June 18th, 8pm.

June 1st, 2011

One of my favorite aspects of working as a bike messenger is the way in which I can really get a sense of what folks throughout the city are thinking about. It may sound cliched, but it's kinda like knowing the current 'pulse' of the city. Overhearing conversations on the street between construction workers or conversations between policemen in a coffee shop, chatting with clients and receptionists, listening within crowded elevators, gabbing with coworkers on our radios, and seeing headlines on every newspaper stand we pass by gives the messenger a good idea of what happens to be on every one's mind. It could be sports, local or national politics, traffic jams, and every one's favorite topic: the weather.
What happens to be on a San Franciscan's mind these days? How about our World Champion Giants. Even those that aren't really baseball fans can be overheard talking about our local heroes, or at lease complaining about game-day traffic. Unfortunately, the last few days have been full of discussions about injuries throughout the Giants ball club, particularly the young rookie Buster Posey. Hopefully the Giants can call up some young talent from their farm system to fill some pretty big shoes.
Here at Cupid we've had our own shortage in our daily line-up of late. All-star Rev Jim has been on our version of the 'disabled list' with an unfortunate rib injury. I myself have injured my ribs a couple times, and boy oh boy do they hurt for quite a while. Hopefully in a short while, Jim won't be wincing in pain every time someone tells a good joke. With Jim out, along with a couple planned vacations (as you're reading this I will probably be somewhere in the desert southwest), we've had some help from some really good friends. Cupid may not have a farm-league team down in Fresno to tap into, but we have been able to get some great production from some really great pros (at last check: Jason, John, and Travis). I think it says a lot about the camaraderie between many of the 'indie' courier companies in SF that we can all help each other out. -bryan

May 16th, 2011

A couple of us here at Cupid have seen Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Shot with that hip, newfangled 3-D technology, it is the latest movie by Werner Herzog. The German director went a-filming to a cave in southeastern France where some incredible Upper Paleolithic paintings were found in 1994. They are in fact the oldest paintings ever found.
I’d give the film a pretty strong recommendation. A 3-D documentary, you ask!? It works, it really does. It is completely humbling to learn that somebody 32000 years ago was a better artist than me. The director also somehow finds some rather odd characters out in the middle of nowheresville France. But most importantly, you get to watch and listen to Werner talk. As always, he has some great, frenetic, visionary, epistemology-bending self-aware observations as he injects his own bad self into the movie. Judging by some snickers in the theater, I am not the only person who finds Mr. Herzog comically charming.
He’s made some 60 movies over the years, according to imdb.com. My favorite movies, though, are usually about him, intentionally or not. Burden of Dreams from 1982 is possibly the best making-of doc ever. His buddy Les Blank, also a great documentarian, co-directed it. It is about his production of a movie called Fitzcarraldo, which involved, among other things, hauling a steamboat over an Amazonian jungle mountain, and then sending it downriver, out of control , with madman Klaus Kinski aboard with cameras rolling. It also has the greatest Herzogian monologue ever.
Another great one, which I haven’t seen but LOVE the idea of, is called Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. Apparently Herzog bet another buddy, Errol Morris, that Morris could not make a movie about a pet cemetery. Gates of Heaven is a GREAT Morris doc, and so Les Blank again directed another movie about Herzog called, you guessed it already, Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. While masticating, he polemicizes about life and everything. Check any of these titles out, and let Cupid know if you like ‘em too.
Don’t forget, Monday May 30th, we are CLOSED for Memorial Day! Thanks for clientifying with Cupid!-Rev

May 1st, 2011

A messenger friend of mine who had moved out here from Chicago once said to me over a beer after a blustery work day,“Man, this is the windiest city I’ve ever worked in.” I replied,“I thought you were from the ‘Windy City’?” He told me that the nickname comes from the wind-bag politicians, not the weather.
I find it hard to believe that it’s windier out here than in the Midwest, but Chi-town probably does have us beat with blowhard public figures. We do get our share of wind, though. Take a trip out to Point Lobos, and you’ll see dramatic evidence in the wind-blown shapes of the Monterey Cyprus; a beautiful evergreen native to the region but apparently not to the originally treeless San Francisco. Springtime seems to be our windy season, and this past week lived up to that.
You’ll find a lot of cyclists who say that they’d take the rain over the wind; though maybe not in March of an El Niño winter. Rain you can dress for, and the grime normally washes off pretty easily. Wind, though, can make the work doubly exhausting, and after a long day in the skyscraper canyons and traversing the hills, it can seem that it was always blowing in your face.
It can go both ways though, so to speak. I once rode over 120 miles in one day when my touring partner and I had a kickin’ tailwind in West Texas. This was followed by a few rough days when we struggled into 30 mph headwinds, lucky to break 40 miles a day.
Rain, wind, weather, experiencing the full gamut is one of the pleasures of working out-of-doors. You won’t catch me complaining when it’s a rare hot San Francisco day, and I’ve got sweat in my eyes. I also have to say that when I found myself this week with two of the infamously large “Color G” boxes strapped to my bag, the crazy push I was given while flying down 10th St. went a long way towards making up for the gusts I’d been fighting for most of the afternoon.-tim
Schedule Note: Memorial Day is coming up and as usual we will be CLOSED Monday, May 30th.

April 16th. 2011

"435 Pacific 15 to 555 Market, 1777 Montgomery oversized 30 to 500 Sansome, 501 Second 2 hour to 2100 Oakdale ten minutes old...." At any given time during the Cupid workday a stream of addresses, times, clients, and other information goes over our two-way radios and we have to be able to hear, process and remember what is going on. Not only are we responsible for new deliveries that get called in, but assimilate them into what deliveries we might have in our bags already.
I found myself thinking about this feat over the last week as I have been working through the book "Moonwalking with Einstein" by Jonathan Foer. Currently a bestseller (maybe you've come across it also) the book is about how human memory works. What I found particularly interesting, with regard to messengering, is how we can 'trick' our minds into remembering more information than technically feasible. According to Foer, we really only have the ability to keep 7 separate bits of info in our short-term memory at any given time. But we are incredibly capable of remembering and processing geographical information: where we are within a three dimensional landscape. Important for early human survival, our minds have evolved for centuries towards becoming excellent machines when it comes to location. In his book, Foer follows 'memory athletes' (eventually training himself) who can remember astounding amounts of random information. One way these 'athletes' are able to do this is by connecting information to what we're naturally good at: geography. For instance, take a random stream of words and attach them to a familiar landscape (maybe your childhood home) and they become much easier to remember.
This seems to me exactly how a messenger can process information on the fly. The list at the start of this newsletter is already over the magic number of 7 (and actually pretty short for a busy day), yet we can remember it no problem. Instead of just numbers we hear clients and locations that we can visualize within our mental landscape of the city and of our workday. Numbers become images of buildings, lobbies, streets, past delivery experiences, and our clients smiling faces. Pretty cool if you ask me. -bryan

April 1st, 2011

Passing out bills on March 32nd doesn’t happen all that often. I wish there was some awesome prank to play on y’all. As super-superstitious as I am, though, all I can think of is some lie actually coming true and getting shafted by fate somehow. For those of you in SF, though, keep an eye out for one of my favorites, the St. Stupid’s Day Parade. It should be downtown, lunchtime, as always; watch as silliness promenades about our fair city.
How ‘bout this weather? Nice Tim went to Chile recently, as you read here. He sent me a postcard from there with a Pablo Neruda poem. I think of him (Neruda, not Tim) as the greatest poet ever, mostly because he isn’t too ‘arty,’ and you can always ALWAYS find something of his that perfectly expresses how you are feeling, or says just what you want to hear, any time, any situation. From a birth to a wedding to a funeral, Pablo’s got you covered. The poem on the card really speaks to how it feels on the streets this week, after such a soggy and bone-chilling winter (thus far, knockknockknock on wood):

Ode to Bicycles
I was walking down a sizzling road: the sun popped like a field of blazing maize, the earth was hot, an infinite circle with an empty blue sky overhead.

A few bicycles passed me by, the only insects in that dry moment of summer, silent, swift, translucent; they barely stirred the air.

Workers and girls were riding to their factories, giving their eyes to summer, their heads to the sky, sitting on the hard beetle backs of the whirling bicycles that whirred as they rode by bridges, rosebushes, brambles and midday.

I thought about evening when the boys wash up, sing, eat, raise a cup of wine in honor of love and life, and waiting at the door, the bicycle, stilled, because only moving does it have a soul, and fallen there it isn’t a translucent insect humming through summer but a cold skeleton that will return to life only when it’s needed, when it’s light, that is, with the resurrection of each day.
- Pablo Neruda, 1956-Rev

March 16th, 2011

It’s interesting the way that geography and culture are interrelated.  I learned somewhere that the average walking speed of a city can be correlated to population size and average income. It’s also safe to say that an isolated desert dweller has a different set of priorities and attitudes than a Manhattanite. 
In the 21st century it’s arguable that the Japanese, with their long history with earthquakes are the best prepared people on the planet both psychologically and practically for natural disasters, their worldview shaped by their geography (and geology). They did create the word tsunami after all.  That they are struggling with such widespread devastation should give us pause, both in our compassion for their situation and as warning for our own vulnerability.
My thoughts about  geography and culture have been inspired though by something more pastoral, after reading “The Ohlone Way” by Malcom Margolin.  The Ohlone were the original inhabitants of much of the Bay Area at the time of European contact and conquest.  They lived in a world so rich in resources and with such a forgiving, mild climate, that it’s thought that for as much as 5000 years they lived in stable societies that knew neither true warfare or famine. That would be almost unprecedented in human history.  They certainly knew the power of earthquakes but if you live in mobile reed dwellings and have a strong cultural memory of tsunamis it unlikely it would have been as devastating as we find it.  The Ohlone weren’t a monolithic tribe with a single set of values.  They were more of a loose association of family based groups speaking at least 12 mutually unintelligible dialects. Their world was not a perfect eden to be sure; different groups tended to be generous but wary of each other.  However a sophisticated set of traditions and taboos made for a strong balance between conflict and cooperation.
I’m compelled to make the comparison to our modern Bay Area culture with it’s variety of socially, economically and environmentally conscious endeavors.  It’s as if the same geography that the Ohlone knew, though not nearly as pristine and rich as in their time, has produced a new flourishing of positive interconnectedness   Our member organization, NoBAWC would fit into this picture. They’ve recently produced a beautiful map of the worker owned businesses of the Bay Area that actually covers roughly the northern half of the the original Ohlone heartland.  If any of y’all would like to have one let us know and we'll get one to you.
-tim

March 1st, 2011

There’s a form of Murphy’s Law (“Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.”) that applies every day at Cupid. If you’ve ever seen one of us come in to your office bouncing off the walls and dancing back and forth like we have to pee, well it’s probably because we just drank a large coffee in 30 seconds in order to get to your office for a rush delivery. It happens every time. As a messenger, you start to think that you’re in a slow period during the day, so you sit down to an enjoyable cup of coffee… just to get a call for maybe the first rush of the day. And to make things more aggravating, you’ve probably been sitting for a while beforehand with nothing to do. If you’re the client in this situation, please don’t feel bad…we love getting rush deliveries! In fact, I like to use this ‘law’ from time to time in order to drum up business. Slow day messengering? Just order some hot soup, and blamo - rush work pops up, guaranteed.
A form of this Law came in to play the other day while I was at work on a cargo bike. First of all, a cargo bike is just what it sounds like… a bike that can hold quite a bit. What’s great is that Cupid just had the opportunity to test out a new cargo bike design from CETMA, an independent builder up in Eugene, Oregon. The bike was really fun to try out, and could hold up to 200 lbs (maybe more)! Unfortunately, the day I rode it around I felt like good ol’ Murphy came around and ensured that clients in whatever part of town I was in called in rushes. First, the bike was surprisingly nimble, and rushes were little problem (just required a few extra calories on my part.) Second, maybe this is a good thing? Instead of buying coffee every time I want more work, I could just ride a larger bike.
If you’re curious just what a cargo bike looks like, please check out the CETMA web site at cetmacargo.com. CETMA also makes some great racks for regular bikes, so check them out as well. And if you want to see Cupid in action on a cargo bike, we’ve got some pictures up on facebook, please look us up.-bryan

February 16th, 2011

Well, Cupid has passed yet another of its milestones: we have celebrated our 12th Saint Valentine’s Day. I have seen pretty much every single marker pass by during Cupid’s life. Every anniversary, every ValDay, every New Year. Come to think of it, what haven’t I seen? Not many billing nights, that’s for sure. Mentioning these milestones is good fodder for these newsletters, much like the weather. As the rain gargles in the downspouts outside, it sure is weird thinking of a 12th year for anything. Cupid is a tweener.
In a perfect messenger world, rain would fall only at night and on weekends. I can’t speak for my entire community, but I get enough sunshine and fresh(-ish) air at work. Cruddy weekends, well, they’re fine by me. Sort of like phone calls: Cupid has ruined my telephone manner. Or more precisely, it has ruined my desire to talk on the phone. Don’t get me wrong - I love talking to you all. But on weekends, the last thing I want to do is put that thing to my ear. If my friends don’t leave a voicemail, they’ll never hear from me.
Remember I have chickens here in Oakland? They are awesomely fun. There are some new things I’ve learned. Three hens can be almost as noisy as roosters. They are quite impatient to get outside, once the sun comes up. I tend to let them out before they can raise a ruckus on work-mornings, but weekends, well, they squawk up a storm until you let ‘em out. They are pretty young still, and are laying 2 or 3 eggs a day. That is hard to eat. We give a good many away. They really are a lot smarter, and more personable, than I had expected. They talk to each other all day long - unless they have snuck into the house, where they creep around silently until you find them.
We are remodeling our house too, mostly ourselves. It is a funny process - I have learned so much in terms of electrical that I would feel pretty confident in rewiring another house. Unfortunately, it has been learned by screwing up a lot in doing a fraction of what needs to get done. And once we finish, I will in all likelihood use all this knowledge, umm, say, never. Not really, but it feels that way, you know? That said, it is mighty satisfying. We are close to halfway done with the kitchen, I’d say (all I want are kitchen counters, really, that’s all). That is pretty far, for us. Seeing a newly-wired run of receptacles, ready for the breaker flip-on, is a thing of beauty. Do you know how hard it is to twist together 5 12-gauge wires? It’s hard. My hands are sore.-Rev

February 1st, 2011

Have you ever traveled 13,000 Km over 36 hours; hopping on 4 different airplanes, then jumping in a truck to drive on rough unpaved roads through mountains, around an enormous lake, past glaciers and down a long desert valley only to get stopped 3 km from the beautiful turquoise lake where you had planned to camp. Yeah me neither, until almost exactly 1 month ago when I found myself in northern Patagonia standing next to a cold and silty glacial river that was too high to cross in our rented truck. I don’t have space to tell the whole story here but if you want to see my photos, you can find them here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicetim/sets/72157625908789308/
There is actually a lot of Cupid stuff to tell y’all about today. First off, VALENTINE’S DAY, always a favorite for us here. If any of you are interested in having flowers delivered in SF by one of us Cupoids, on or around V-Day (or anytime) you should hit up our friend at Farm Girl Flowers. Her arrangements are very cool, made with local flowers and love: http://farmgirlflowers.com/.
We also have another project starting this month. Our friend Lane who hand builds cargo bikes and racks in Oregon has asked to put his latest design through the paces of full time messenger abuse. We’re really excited about getting the chance put his new bike into our stable, but we need your help. We need to have cargo to put onto it. Hopefully everyone out there already knows that we can handle almost any size delivery to the greater Bay Area. We have various vehicles at our disposal by we very much prefer to use bikes, so if you have file boxes, bathtubs or 70 burritos that need delivering we’re dying to put some scuffs into the pretty green paint on Lane’s latest creation. More about him at: http://cetmacargo.com/
I know all this may seem a little commercial coming from your favorite “anti-capitalist” messenger company, but these folks are small scale operations with a desire to do what they love in an ethical way, much like us at Cupid Courier as well as many of y’all. In that spirit of camaraderie, don’t forget that Rainbow Grocery is offering 15% off this month to customers who bring in receipts from other NoBAWC businesses (or Cupid invoices). For more info checkout: http://www.rainbow.coop/.
As a final note today, Cupid Courier will be CLOSED Monday, February 21st, for Presidents Day.
-tim

January 16th, 2011

Cupid Courier is happy to announce that this invoice you are currently holding is good for FREE FOOD! Well, ok, not quite free food, but a wonderful 15% discount at Rainbow Grocery; which, if you think about it, is almost the same as getting that extra pint of ice cream at the end of a shopping list- for free! What's the story? Well, the Network of Bay Area Worker Cooperatives (NoBAWC - aptly pronounced "No Boss"), along with Rainbow, is putting together a promotion for the month of February in order showcase some of the various worker-owned businesses in the Bay Area.
Here's how it works: during February, Rainbow Grocery is offering a 15% discount to customers that present an original receipt, invoice (such as the one you're reading), or ticket voucher from a participating NoBAWC business to a Rainbow cashier at checkout. This offer is good for the entire month of February, but only Monday through Friday. Also, the receipt or invoice must exceed $5. If you have any questions, feel free to ask any of the Cupoids over the phone, or when we stop by to pick up your deliveries.
NoBAWC is a fantastic organization here, and one of which Cupid has proudly been a member for years. I highly recommend checking it out at NoBAWC.org. Also, if you haven't already experienced the greatness of Rainbow Grocery, here's your chance! Rainbow is probably the mother-of-all co-ops in the Bay Area, and is located at Division and Folsom. Check them out at rainbow.coop. Lastly, I think this is a great excuse to check out a few more local cooperatives. A couple of my favorites include Box Dog Bikes (a really friendly, supportive bike shop), and Arizmendi Bakery (with some of the best pizza in town). Box Dog is located on 14th St. at Guerrero (boxdogbikes.com) and Arizmendi has 5 locations all over the Bay (arizmendibakery.org). Happy Shopping!-bryan

January 1st, 2011

Man, do I get all the good newsletters? HAPPY FREAKING NEW YEAR, EVERYONE! How weird it is going to be to type, yes, here it is, for the first time anywhere, 2 - 0 - 1 - 1! Wow. 2010, well, as you read this it is already 2011, so you have already been completely inundated with ‘best of...’ lists, analyses, synopses, epilogues and codicils. I’ll leave it there. It was the better and worse of times, to paraphrase (relative to 2009, to be grammatically correct).
Scheduling: the Feds and Cupid Courier will honor the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and CLOSE JANUARY 17th. You should too!
Hoodies! We got another big batch of hooded sweatshirts aka hoodies printed up. This happens every 5 years or so. We are proud to offer them to clients at cost, $24 cheap! That is a reaally good deal for a four-screen (hearts on sleeve, ‘tattoos’ on other sleeve and left breast, large logo on back) job, and is the same as worn in-game by your favorite Cupoid. You can get them at Sarah’s other gig, her retail boutique Pushbike, located in the Mission, 3049 22nd St. at Shotwell.
My newsletter before last, way back in September, had some things to say about politics. I called chemistry political, and someone, maybe Nice Tim, later said they wanted to hear how I got that one. And I never got around to it. Now that I have no idea what else to write about, and for some reason I have been thinking of it again, I thought I’d try.
Think of an atom as a person. There are many different elements, like people. They can form bonds with each other, or be repelled. The world outside has a huge effect on the chemical bonds. The same two atoms might only bond under certain conditions. They can break apart as things change.
In chemistry and politics, tendency and capacity are quite important. Individuals and groups might tend to do things a certain way, and generally retain the capacity to do what they ‘normally ‘ do, but as the environment changes, so too the bonds that keep things together. Extremes like highs or lows in temperature or pressure really bollix things up.
Y’see, it is all about abstract influence over distance. Attraction and repulsion. Environment. Building. Forming bonds. Atoms that are nothing alike can form some of the strongest bonds. Atoms can go on to form molecules, which can have very different properties from their constituent atoms. If molecules glom together, they can form compounds or gases or mixtures, many different states to choose from. Chemistry to me is the study of how things work together, to make other things, which can make other things, and so on. Ditto politics. Whaddaya think - total b.s.?-Rev

December 16th, 2010

So we’re getting into the thick of the holiday season. I should start with a few reminders. Some of you might have noticed a little typo in the last newsletter. No, we were not closed yesterday. However, we will be closed on Friday Dec 24th and Friday December 31st. Also, for the last week of 2010, from the 27th through the 30th, we will be working at holiday rates as Bryan described in the last newsletter. Give us a shout if you have any questions or special requests. This is always a slow time, as most of us seem to be spending quality time with loved ones or merrymaking or what not, but we do like to be available for the few deliveries that are necessary for you folks.
Speaking of spending quality time with loved ones, have any of you ever seen Cupid’s Book of Good Counsel? They were printed in Oakland and given out free to newlyweds. Ostensibly meant as a guide to marital success, they were mostly filled with ads for local businesses, but they also have lots of recipes and fun stuff about etiquette and housekeeping notes, etc. I bet a few copies are hiding in attics or garages around here. The SF public library has a few editions, look here if you want to learn more: http://sfhcbasc.blogspot.com/2010/02/from-our-test-kitchen-cupids-book-of.html
I borrowed an image from what I believe is an early 1920’s San Francisco edition for the holiday card we are sending out with the paper bills. I have to give Bryan the credit for discovering the image. The card is a small thing, but we like to remind y’all how much we appreciate you. Here’s to a cozy season for everyone and we’ll see you all in the New Year!
-tim

December 1st, 2010

Well, it's officially December, which means Christmas muzak in every lobby and elevator for a month. Hopefully everyone out there had a great Thanksgiving. My better half and I had our second annual tofurkey-day potluck this year. I have to say, potlucks for Thanksgiving might be the way to go. Everyone only has to make a couple dishes and you end up with quite a feast! I believe it was Tim who thinks that it takes 4 hard hours of bike deliveries in order to work off Thanksgiving. Sounds about right to me.
With Christmas and New Years around the corner, it's time for us here at Cupid to pull out the calendar and figure out what days we'll be open, and what days we get to stay home under a blanket drinking hot toddies. It looks as though Christmas and New Years both take place on Saturdays, therefore the important folks in the Federal Government have declared the Fridays preceding as closed holidays. We are thinking that all of you, the clients, will also be closed those days. That said, Cupid is planning on being CLOSED on Friday 12/14 and Friday 12/31.
Also, every year we have to figure out whether or not to stay open during the week in between the holidays. Just about all of our clients seem to be closed those days, and it is tempting every year for us to also close up. What has worked over the last couple years, however, is to stay open, yet treat deliveries that week similar to deliveries performed during off-hours. That is, charge our off-hours rates for the week. So the plan is: we will be OPEN Monday 12/27 - Thursday 12/30 and will charge regular rates (as opposed to rush rates like we do for LateNight work) plus $20 (for SF deliveries) and $40 (for out of town deliveries). As always, we really appreciate feedback, so let us know what you think and when you might be open.
Also, this year Sarah will be participating in the 5th annual 'Supermarket Sweep' this Saturday. This is a bike race around the City with contestants trying to pick up as much canned food as possible for donation. It's a really cool event and you should check it out at supermarketstreetsweep.blogspot.com. If you'd like to donate food, Sarah will happily swing by your office this week with her cargo bike and pick it up. Just give us a call by Friday morning or drop us a line at info@cupidcourier.com.-bryan

November 16th, 2010

Cupid began what feels a new era this past Friday, as we began delivering bouquets for Farm Girl Flowers. Pulling a page from visionary co-founder Meghan Mack’s original mission statement, we now deliver those fragrant symbols of beauty and ardor! We are actually pretty excited about it. Our partner in crime, Christina of FGF, has a wonderful business model. Only locally-grown in-season flowers (something like 90% of cut flowers come from other nations, let alone states) are used, only one arrangement per day cuts down on waste, and the price is great. We might be plugging FGF a lot more in the future, but for now, check out www.farmgirlflowers.com.
Thanksgiving is here already!? As per the last few years, we will once again be closed on “Black” Friday, November 26th.
Mi esposa y yo got back from Oaxaca almost two weeks ago. If you don’t know, it’s the state right next to Chiapas, way down on the Pacific Coast of southern Mexico. Quite an adventure. Some friends who own a little land near the ocean traded my wife’s architectural expertise for 2 round trip tickets. Among my many firsts: eating grasshoppers, wielding a machete with intent, seeing a huge pre-Columbian complex (called Monte Alban), drinking expatriate-mountain-man moonshine mezcal, having chocolate-corn porridge for breakfast, taking part in true Mexican Day of the Dead festivities, living next to feral bog-chickens, and so much more. I might have eaten my not inconsiderable weight in tortillas. Truly an unforgettable trip.
But here at Cupid we always try to be thoughtful with these humble newsletters -hopefully it is not too tiring to read. It struck me upon returning, after 2 weeks of Oaxaqueño plumbing, that Americans are water crazy! Granted, the gray water systems down there can make the towns smell a little, err, raw, but man. The first shower I took upon our return to the States seemed like an entire lake’s worth of H2O. NorCal water always seems to be just above drought levels (if not well below, knock on wood). Why is it so hard for me to remember that this substance is so precious? Just like petrochemicals, we think as a culture that what was once bountiful will always be thus. We should probably be treating water as if we were in a desert, and happened upon an oasis. Probably not too far from the truth.-Re

November 1st, 2010

Researchers studying hyenas in Africa have learned that they have a surprising level of communication and coordination. A pack of hyenas will actually pre plan what type of prey they intend to hunt and choose the size of hunting party appropriate to that animal. They will intentionally bypass other available prey en-route to the desired animals.
A lot of long held prejudices about animal intelligence seem to be dissolving as we take a closer look at the creatures with which we share the planet. At one time tool use and language were thought to be exclusive to us humans. Chimpanzees have been observed not only using sticks to fish for termites but also re-crafting their to tools to make them more effective and passing these techniques on to others. Ravens are known to attract wolves or coyotes to carcasses to do the work tearing the animal apart so that the birds can get at the meat. An observant primate researcher found that the monkeys he was studying have subtle differences in their danger cries that distinguish what kind of threat was around. A very slightly different pitch for an eagle as opposed to a leopard. He also learned that the other animals that shared the forrest with these monkeys could understand the different signals and act accordingly.
It’s a bit funny that we would be so arrogant about our communication skills. If we added up all the hours of campaign advertising on the radio and television with their sinister voiceovers and grainy photography, then mixed that in with gross tonnage on slick mailers that have been clogging our mailboxes I doubt we’d get even a short paragraph’s worth of useful information. It’s also questionable whether the proliferation of communication gadgets is helping us truly understand one another.
We put a lot a emphasis on good communication at Cupid Courier. It’s what keeps us efficient and effective while at the same time working within our seat-of-the-pants methods. This isn’t to say that we don’t have our share of misunderstandings and I’m sure a lot of our jargon would sound pretty silly to an outsider. This tag I’m running is about to get burnt so I better clean up. Copy that?
-tim

October 16th, 2010

After a nice long warm spell, it is starting to feel like Fall. I'll admit, I'm liking the weather change. Of course I can say that now, as I'm curled up on the couch drinking coffee and writing this newsletter, but the change of seasons is really pleasant. And change in itself seems to be in the air. I will be spending this weekend moving, along with a new dog in my little family. Other Cupoids are experiencing their own changes also. October means Jim's getting another year younger (make sure to wish him a happy birthday if you see him). Sean recently moved himself. Sarah's shop Pushbike is in the process of moving to a new and bigger location. The shop should be open sometime around the end of the month and is located at 22nd and Shotwell in the Mission. I can't wait to see what it looks like when it's open.
Change is also good for us here at Cupid. We've been working on a new potential project with a new business where we will be delivering flowers. Hopefully, this will start at the beginning of November and once it gets going we'll make sure to let y'all know the details, so stay tuned. Just figuring out how to deliver flowers by bike along with our regular deliveries has really forced us to think about changes to our daily work routine. It's also a slightly different business model than our regular deliveries, and adjusting has been thought-provoking. Cupid is 11 years old now, and being willing to adjust our system and methods after so long is a great way to reexamine our little collective enterprise. That being said, we are always looking for changes that we could make which would better suit our clients’ needs. If there's an idea or request for how our service could better suit your business' needs, please feel free to let us know.
Lastly, I believe that long time Cupid partner Bruce will be back on the road a few days over the next few, so say hi if you see him or talk to him on the phone. We all look forward to the chance to work alongside Bruce when possible.
-bryan

October 1st, 2010

The topic of emergence and system theory has been popping up repeatedly in my media cloud (podcasts, radio, internet and still my personal favorite, actual books).  My layman's understanding is that emergence relates to the structures and patterns created by the interactions of a complex system. Think of the the beautiful and mesmerizing patterns in a flock of thousands of tiny birds doing loops and turns in unison. You end up with some curious results in this field. For example, when you have a group of people guessing the the number of jellybeans in a large jar the average of all the guesses will most often be more accurate that any individual guess.
Related to this is the fact that systems (natural, social, technical) fail. The more complicated it is the more often is fails. So how does the world function if everything is failing? Well, the best systems have compensations and redundancies that keep any one small failure from becoming a huge one. If one ant falls into a creek and is swept away there are thousands more to fill its spot. If I break my chain at work, we adjust our plans; maybe Sean meets me to take my urgent deliveries while I get my part of our system put back together.  However, as the bumper sticker says, sometimes “#%@* happens”. Thousands of people-hours go into keeping the mind-bogglingly complicated Space Shuttle flying safely, yet it’s had it’s unfortunate failures.
It seems like the last year has produced some monumental failures is some of our industrial systems. Mine disasters, pipeline ruptures, the Gulf oil tragedy. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it follows a decade of willful neglect of the checks and balances on the these systems. There could have been more levels of redundancy and compensation in the systems but they we’re cut to save money. Life has inherent risk, but our balance of who enjoys the gains and who suffers the costs may need serious adjustment.
As I hinted above, Cupid is it’s own system subject to its own particular failures. It can be immensely pleasurable when were humming along, adapting to and compensating for the quick changes or setbacks. This isn’t to say that our system is infallible, but when we’re at our best we hope that we create that illusion for y’all.
Speaking of our system, a couple biz notes:
A reminder that our overweight charge goes up today (Oct 1st) to 30 cents per pound on deliveries over 9 pounds.
Also Cupid will be OPEN on Columbus Day (Oct, 11th).
-tim

September 16th, 2010

Writers’ block has really been hitting me hard for my last couple of newsletter efforts. I can get off on a roll by saying that Cupid is going to increase our weight charge. Starting October 1st, it will cost $0.30 per pound for packages over 9 pounds. This isn’t really a big deal for almost all packages. We have done a couple of huge jobs in the last year, though (including one nearly a ton!), and it really seemed like we were undercharging despite their difficulty. I don’t really feel like doing the homework, but it is something like 5 years since we last raised our rates. Isn’t that crazy? Remember when everyone basically had a raise preprogrammed into their union contract or salary? Owning a business is something else. We don’t have that luxury, and really have to pick our spots when trying to pay ourselves a living wage.
Did anyone ever see the Ben Stiller movie Greenberg earlier this year? Pretty forgettable, really, but for some reason I remember its one funny line. Stiller’s cabinetmaker character Hank, in conversation, sums up his life in one line, something like,”Oh, I share a wood shop back in New York with some people, but...[shrug]...its political.” Knowing a few people in the trades (and having a former woodworking wife), well, we all laughed pretty hard. A place like a shop can be complex. Everyone needs to pool resources for really expensive space and equipment while vying often for similar (or even the same) work.
This situation is similar to one in the SF messenger industry, where many small companies try to work together. Being able to send a little overflow to another company can allow you to give great service while not having to overstaff/overhire. It takes trust by the subcontracting company, and the loyalty and hard work of the subcontractor, to keep a positive flavor on the community tongue. That relationship is political.
Inside a company like Cupid, there is a group of equals. But what is equal exactly? All of us are so different, bringing a variety of assets (and, yes, debits) to the table. We all choose to share expenses (financial, emotional, intellectual, you name it) for a common good, while giving unequal levels of many MANY different characteristics. This relationship to me, too, is political.
And y’know what? Everything is politics. Economics is the politics of money. Chemistry is the politics of atoms. Whatever - politics work. Perhaps inefficiently at times, but I’ll take it any day. There was a long series on NPR Radio about the human brain. The ability of humans to work together was mentioned many times. This ability has changed over time, and is given no small credit in allowing our weak bodies to overcome stronger but less intelligent species. Ok, current state of the world notwithstanding, of course.
It is just that currently, politics to many seems to mean Fox News and MSNBC screeching at each other. No need to say it with a sneer: politics can be a sign of the presence of higher thought, it is how you express what you need (without a big stick or a gun), it can be a sign of trust, loyalty, respect and optimism, and it can very well be the absolute essence of what it is to be human. Really. No need to say it with a sneer.-Rev

September 1st, 2010

Well here it is; Labor Day is just around the corner (Note: Cupid will be CLOSED next Monday), which just about marks the beginning of Fall, or more appropriately around here: Summer. Of all the things that symbolize the changing seasons (leaves changing, shorter days, colder (or warmer) days, rain), what has been on the top of my mind is Back-To-School time. Yup, I've spent the last few weeks trying to figure out what classes to take this Fall and it hasn't been easy. Now I could write an entire newsletter about education and budget cuts in our fine state, but let's just say that life has been a challenge for anyone trying to continue an education at a public institution lately. It's been almost three weeks already and I am just now allowed to enroll in the (overflowing) classes that I wanted after crashing about 15 different lectures. In order to do so, I've been practically living at campus and my head hurts from all of the possible schedule permutations (maybe I can get some sort of logic credit for all this?).
One bright point in all of this school mess has been my partnership in a collective enterprise such as Cupid. Cooperative ownership offers all kinds of benefits, but perhaps the most important one is that, as partners, we all see the enterprise as a larger picture than just the work day. All of us are able to work with each other, not only through the usual workday, but also through all of our outside endeavors. Some of us have other forms of employment, projects, recreational activities (re: some fantastic vacations and travels), or just life desires; and the ability to structure these things along with work is really amazing. The last few weeks have found me frustrated and tired, and having coworkers that were able to be flexible and understanding has meant the world to me. Thanks Cupoids! Now all I have to do is learn how to write an English paper....

Have a great Labor Day everyone! -bryan

August 15th. 2010

When I mention the San Francisco Mime Troupe to people who aren't familiar with it, I can see their eyes glaze over with visions of diminutive frenchmen wearing black turtlenecks and berets trying to escape from imaginary boxes.  However, as those who have been to one of their annual performances can tell you, the troupe is anything but quiet or forlorn.  The Mime Troupe turned 50 a few years back, and they've earned a reputation for their bawdy musical performances with a lefty bent and a bit of camp and sexual innuendo thrown in.  They traditionally open the season on July 4th weekend with free performances in Dolores Park. I caught the first show and was pleasantly surprised to find that the theme was worker-ownership and workplace democracy.  Trust me, they actually make this funny and entertaining.  I'm pretty sure that you can still catch the show in the Bay Area, check out: http://www.sfmt.org/index.php.
     The concept of worker-ownership seems to be growing in the popular consciousness.  As Rev. Jim mentioned in an earlier newsletter, the U.N. has declared 2012 to be the year of the Co-op.  I'm told that in Michael Moore's recent film, Capitalism, A Love Story, he extolls the virtues of cooperatives as an alternative to corporate greed.  Worker ownership was a prominent feature of the SF Community Congress, which recently convened at USF to discuss a positive vision of the city's future.  In these times of economic and environmental uncertainty, with many frustrations with top down decision making, I can see the appeal to having more input on how we make our way in the world.  I know we cherish that over here at Cupid.
   Speaking of the value of us workers, Cupid will be CLOSED Monday September 6th, in recognition of Labor Day.-tim

August 1st, 2010    

Happy August, everyone!  Now where’s my peacoat?  Let’s hope that we some time this summer get a little heat.  Even over here in Oakland (aka The Sunny Side of the Bay), it has been awfully cool for far too long.
     There haven’t been many summery activities for me that require the hot sun.  It feels like I have been stripping paint off of beadboard panels (an all-weather task) for months.  Most of the country would kill for some of the howling wintry blasts of this past July.   I got a taste of the ol’ hot and humid a few weeks back.  My parents decided to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary in the Adirondacks of upstate New York.  They have been renting a big lodge for a week every summer the last few years.  It fits my parents, five siblings and attendant in-laws, and 19 nieces and nephews - 33 humans total.  The celebration was at that lodge, on a big lake one town over from Lake Placid.
     It was quite a party.  We somehow got a caterer to show up with a great meal (not easy out in the sticks), my parents’ siblings made a surprise appearance, and had the obligatory ‘slide’ show (quotes because now things are done on computer, of course).  In fact, the whole week was pretty sweet.  Hot, languid, and fattening.  I was basically the weird uncle, drinking beer and trying to keep the little ones from being jerks to each other.
     Overall, it was overwhelming.  It felt like the last time that the whole family would be together for a while.  You can probably imagine that it is quite difficult getting that many people in one place at one time.  And 50 years!?  What is up with that?  The ‘rental units have made it look almost easy.  They were 23 and 21 years old when they got married.  How you can live so sweetly and modestly for that length of time, well, it is impressive and amazing and inspirational.  Somehow I’ve made it four years with my sweetheart;  maybe someday we’ll have the same party...-Rev

July 15th, 2010

Should bike messengers have to take an exam before hitting the road?  That's the question I was asking myself the other day while helping my girlfriend, Andrea, study for her big professional licensing exam (good luck sweetie!).  Of course it's a little silly for bike messengers to have to pass a test.  Like just about any other job, messengering calls for a larger skill set than most people imagine, but we're not quite responsible for heart surgery, designing earthquake-proof bridges, or representing defendants in court.  What would we be tested on though?  Addresses and local geography come to mind first (especially how to get around the hills!)  But many other skills are just as necessary such as bike maintenance, fixing a flat on the fly, and of course a level of physical fitness.
  Working at Cupid however calls for a whole bunch of other skills.  As a collective enterprise we are all responsible for having customer service skills, as we get to talk to the clients over the phone all day.  In fact, I believe that those phone skills are just as important as being able to deliver packages on time.  We also have to have some accounting skills (as I write this, Tim and I are about to do the books and print the bills in your hand).  Come to think of it, future Cupoids will have to learn a lot and maybe we should test them.  Cupid Courier Collective Partner Licensing Exam?... whew I wouldn't want to write that.  The best way we've gotten so good at our work, though, is good old experience... and we have that in droves.  With some quick math, I think our tiny crew has 70+ messengering years under our belts.  In the end, it's all about creating a great service for you, the client. So what are we good at?  What should we work on?  What would you test us on?      -bryan

July 1st, 2010

Imagine a rolling hillside loosely covered in softballs and overlaid with a deep pile carpet. Now try walking for miles across this unstable terrain. This is what hiking on the arctic tundra is like, and that was the easy stuff. Swap out the softballs with basketballs and pour in a foot of water, and you get the tussocks. Walking here, you either go calf-deep in the murky water or you try to balance on the wobbly clumps of grass as you move along. After miles of this, your feet are craving a solid piece of ground to stand on. You search for a rocky outcropping, or maybe a sandy river bed, so that you can put your feet on something firm for a few minutes.
A couple weeks ago, I got a chance to do some hiking through the tundra about a hundred and fifty miles north of the Arctic Circle, in the Brooks Range of Alaska. The place is stunningly beautiful. At first glance, it has the appearance of the Desert Southwest or the Great Basin; it's too far north for trees to grow and much of the area gets less rainfall than Nevada. However, though it looks like wide open country, a foot or so below ground is solid ice year round and the topsoil can't drain. In the 24 hour days of the arctic summer, this makes for soggy, tiring hiking. Like the desert, it's a place of subtleties. If you stop to examine the ground, you find a Dr. Seuss landscape of tiny plants, lichens & flowers. As you watch an hours-long sunset turn a craggy mountain golden, you’re astonished to find that it’s 3 am.
If you’re wondering what brought me to Alaska, check out my good friend’s website: www.ChrisMcCaw.com. He’s a photographer, and he’s been working on a very well-received project making long exposure, one-of-a kind images of the sun. He wanted to try working in a place where the sun wouldn’t set, and invited me to come along.
I suppose I should get back to work here though, and remind everyone of the upcoming 4th of July weekend, which means two things. One is that Cupid Courier Collective is turning 11 years old! We're going modest after our 10 year mayhem, but we will be BBQ'n on Sunday afternoon at Mckinley Square (20th & Vermont on Potrero Hill), and as always y'all are welcome to join us. The other thing to mention is that we will be CLOSED on Monday July 5th for the federal holiday.-tim

June 16th, 2010

Jeepers. The solstice and the the 4th of July weekend rumble down the pike already, just around the bend. Cupid will indeed be closed on Monday, the 5th of July, just like the feds.
Do you have vuvuzelas buzzing in your head like I do? My co-worker/owners can tell you that I am a bit of a sports fan. Right now I’m trying to juggle baseball, basketball, and the FIFA World Cup. Soon the Tour de France will begin. Holy smokes. The scale of the great soccer spectacle in South Africa is astounding. It makes me sad to read/hear so many negative reviews from American commentators. If you have tried watching some, and were bored, well, wait a sec. Or try again. The first round games tend to be cagy, conservative affairs. As teams that have lost or tied need points to advance, the second- and third-round games really open up. Or you might happen to catch a dandy. Today, No. 1-in-the-world Brazil played No. 106 North Korea (Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea), and it was great! Brazil are so big, fast, and flashy, but could not completely shut down the Hermit Kingdom of Kim Jong-Il. They won, 2-1, but the Koreans held there own. They showed great sportsmanship, skill, and organization, and had real human fans - I guess I was expecting a bunch of automatons cloned from the Dear Leader’s genetic stock.
I think I mentioned chickens in my last newsletter 6 weeks ago. We ended up with a bunch. Tragically, the first shipment got lost/held too long by the USPS, and 20 of the shipment of 25 hatchlings didn’t make it past their first day out of the box. That dismay has been tempered by the remaining five, and the replacements sent by the hatchery two weeks later. We now have 5 teens, about 4 weeks old, and 22 chick-a-dees (cheepcheepcheep) just 2 weeks old. It still has not yet sunk in, as we are not yet sure which ones we will end up with. We ordered for a whole community of people; we will be keeping somewhere from 2 to 5. All are ridiculously cute. The teens are getting a little more peevish and squawky, but they’ll be fun when they are older and aloof, too. For now, we call it Chick TV. You can watch the little ones go crazy in their little box, running around and over each other like popcorn; or take the big ones outside, watch ‘em learn how to eat bugs and try, sometimes successfully, to escape from their enclosure (they are still small enough to wriggle through inaptly-named chicken wire, for now). Urban farming! Please check out our friend Novella’s book, Farm City (her last name is Carpenter); it’s a pretty funny account of her farming in the Oakland ‘hood.
Thanks for using Cupid!-Rev

June 1st, 2010

Whew, after what seemed like an unusually cold and wet week here in San Francisco (especially for late May), we are treated to a beautiful Memorial Day weekend. I feel as though it couldn't have come at a better time. Hopefully all of you were able to get out and enjoy it. As I write this, I am unfortunately getting over quite a cold, but that hasn't stopped me from sitting out in the garden and soaking up some of this sun! As seems painfully obvious, bike messengers here in SF count the days left until we're out of the rainy season, and this year we keep counting and counting (I would like to write that the counting is finally over, but I wouldn't want to jinx things). Aside from just having a few months without working in the rain, it may soon be appropriate to clean and tune-up the ol' bicycle. Our bikes get quite a beating during the winter, and I always try to wait out the rain before putting too much love into tuning things back up. This year I may have stretched things as far as they go, as the bike is making noises I've never heard, and last week's rain might have finished off the brake pads. Messengering always calls for some after-hours work, but in this case tuning up the bicycle while hanging out in the garden and drinking a few beers on a sunny Memorial Day, well, that hardly seems like work at all!
As for not working, Sean and Tim both spent their holiday weekend up in Portland racing the annual West Side Invite messenger race (I'm a bit jealous), and after that, Tim will be going on one of his seemingly annual summer adventures (super jealous). Look for him to return later this month, hopefully with some good stories.
Also, did everyone see Pushbike, Sarah's shop, get Best of SF in the weekly? Pretty cool. If you didn't get a look, it's still online and you can check it out here: sfweekly.com/bestof/2010/award/best-bike-fashion-1985016/-bryan

May 15th, 2010

If you know where Herb Caen Way is, you may be able to find an obelisk dedicated to him that includes this quote: “THE TRUTH IS that like many a country boy before me, I respond to the city. I’m at home where the tall buildings grow, where the hustlers hustle and the buses bustle and the best way to climb a mountain is on a cable car, clinging to the outside step and watching all those natural beauties teeter past on high heels. Give me a place where you can pick up the phone and call room service and have anything in the world delivered on a sliver tray in 15 minutes.”
Although we’re not big on the silver tray thing, Caen may well have been referring to us messengers and our ability to get stuff delivered. He had a well-known affinity for bike messengers. If I’m not mistaken, he originated the now clichéd idea of cycle couriers as the last of the urban cowboys. I wasn’t around, but I understand that when the city dedicated Herb Caen Way, a group of messengers was on hand with a supportive sign saying,“Herb Caen Way Cool.” Willie Brown (mayor at the time) responded,“I think we have the only bicyclists in the world who could be arrested for drunk driving, but today, with me as mayor, you have immunity, guys.”¹
This city has an infinite number of these cool little details worth exploring. It’s one of the fringe benefits of this job to discover them, and, as I explained in my last newsletter, little tidbits of street knowledge are a messenger’s stock and trade. One of the best repositories of arcane information about our fair city is my friend Super Mike, a fellow messenger and co-owner/operator of another small messenger company. Over this past weekend, he reprised an epic 24 hour Scavenger Hunt he created in 2007. Highlights of that one included stalking a raccoon on Telegraph Hill at 2am, and watching Sarah wade hip deep into a fountain to retrieve a special prize. As I write this, my lovely partner and I are down to the last 6 hours of this year’s hunt. I'm sure all this head scratching and blundering around is going to translate into good memories after a couple beers at the finish line at Benders.
Speaking of beer, another reminder: Cupid Courier will be closed on Monday May 31st for Memorial Day!-tim

¹SF Chronicle, June 14th 1996

May 1st, 2010

Springtime! That means it is time for Bike To Work Day! Thursday, May 13th, see sfbike.org. A future with much better bicycle infrastructure is well worth some slightly more crowded bike lanes during commute times, so join the fun (if you don’t normally bike already)!
Speaking of more things vernal, Happy (Belated) May Day! Happily it fell on a Saturday this year, so we did not have to feel torn over whether to close Cupid for business. International Workers’ Day is something very close to our hearts. As members of NoBAWC (pronounced no-boss, the Network of Bay Area Worker Cooperatives), labor and worker empowerment are issues close to our hearts’s.
The last NoBAWC general membership meeting was at a cool place in Berkeley: the BioFuel Oasis. It used to be over by Aquatic Park, but is now at the intersection of Ashby and Sacramento Streets. If you live in or frequent the East Bay, you have maybe seen it. Not only do they sell biodiesel made from recycled vegetable oils, but also carry many things for the urban ‘farmer.’ Or, perhaps more precisely, things to support your dabblings in api- and aviculture (bees and chickens). They also have pretty cheap classes to teach you the basics about these activities, as well as how to manage goats, rainwater, greywater, and more. Maybe this stuff isn’t for everyone, but urban chickens and bees have been getting ‘hip’ lately. The NYTimes and NPR seem to have stories about them all the time. If you have even a mild interest, check out biofueloasis.com.
My ol’ lady (a big gardener) and me have a mediumish-sized yard that is probably just big enough for those wee animals. Chicks will be first, as they’ll arrive in a couple of weeks. We don’t even have a coop yet, so they’ll be fostered out until we get one built. Speaking of Cat (the ol’ lady), she was in an LATimes story last year about this very topic. She and a partner designed the herb garden/chicken coop area for a local restaurant, Pizzaiolo in North Oakland. It is pretty fun - you can find it at http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-citycoop18-2009aug18,0,1964942.story. So get something planted this spring - time for beans and tomatoes to go in, if you need some ideas. My next newsletter will be in June, so hopefully you’ll already have proverbial fruit by then. See you then!-Rev

PS. Don’t forget Mothers’ Day on the 9th; also, Memorial Day is celebrated on the 31st this year - Cupid will be closed!

April 15th, 2010

Hello all! It feels like spring has arrived here at Cupid for a couple reasons: first, the weather is getting to be much more agreeable (let's hear it for daylight savings), and second, we have all made it through another Tax Day. Although, because of taxes, none of us probably want to have anything to do with math, I came across something numbers-related lately that I think is pretty cool. Basically it's something like this: Why do Cupid's delivery times resemble something that a toddler might come up with? So it turns out that there is a theory out there that we have a different natural way of thinking about numbers than our usual linear process (1,2,3,4,5,6...) and that we inherently think of quantities logarithmically. Wha? Well it sort of goes like this: 1 doubled is 2 doubled is 4 doubled is 8, etc. It seems as though toddlers, before being taught 1,2,3,4,5,6..., have a tendency toward 1,2,4,8...
In fact, as part of the story I came across, researchers went to native tribes in the Amazon where the local folk have no words for numbers and no "math", at least as we understand it. These researchers would put together a chart with points from 1 to 9. They then placed items on 1 and 9, and then asked the locals to find the 'middle' point. 5 right? Well they picked 3! And here's why: 3 times 1 is 3, and 3 times 3 is 9, or.. (1,3,9,etc.). So what about Cupid's delivery times? Well they resemble that logarithmic process much more than a linear one: 15min, 30min, 1hr, and 2hr. (Bike delivery times). And this makes sense: a 30min delivery is twice a 15min delivery, and a 1hr delivery is twice a 30min delivery. There would be no sense for us to break it down linearly: what is the point of a 1hr 45min delivery charge? Ok, ok I know, too much math for the day after Tax Day, and I'm not sure I'm the best person to explain this. But I thought it was cool, and if you want to check out the story I found, check out WNYC's 'Radio Lab' online and download the 'Numbers' podcast.

One last note: Sarah pointed out to me that SF Weekly is doing their annual 'best of' voting and one of the choices is 'best bike messenger.' How cool would it be if Cupid won? They might just be looking for an individual, but as a collective entity I think Cupid Courier would count. Anyway, I think it would be great to win, so if you have a second: vote for us! Thanks. -bryan

April 1st, 2010

At the end of a workday a few weeks ago Sean (a.k.a. Pumpkin) and I were having a drink at the “office” (a.k.a. a certain downtown bar). We got to talking about how over the years at Cupid we’ve had certain deliveries that involve some creative routing. Maybe you have to cut across a gravel lot then jump off your bike and carry it across some railroad tracks; or perhaps there's a subtle pathway that cuts out a block or two. These trade secrets have always been part of being a good messenger but it’s probably fair to say that at Cupid we’ve refined the art of routefinding. Messengers can be notoriously stingy about giving away their secrets but working collectively we have an interest in sharing knowledge because it lets the whole team work more effectively. Rev. Jim scouted out a shortcut to one of our destinations that involved following a dirt road for about a mile. I gave it try and refined it when I discovered a faint “bummy path” out of the corner of my eye that went through a little tunnel and cut out even more distance. I have my doubts about whether this way saves any time but it has the satisfaction of being more direct and more creative.
Recently Google has added a bike routing feature to it’s mapping service. I think this is a great idea. The best bike route is rarely the same as the best car route. The promotional video you can find online actually features San Francisco’s famous “wiggle”- the popular bike route that connects the East side of the City to the West through the Lower Haight. However after playing with it I feel that I’m well qualified to say that it often performs poorly in giving you the best ways to get around in these parts. It’s good start though and it does keep you off the truly scary streets.
Software is no match for a resourceful cyclist but it should improve as users give feedback. Being a stingy courier though I don’t intend to give away my hard earned intellectual property that quickly. I’ll give y’all some freebies though. Good routefinding is more about your methods than just rote knowledge. Google got the first part right; don’t think like a car(especially one with a GPS). One Way, Do Not Enter and Dead End are more like suggestions if you’re on a bicycle. Try not to go up a hill just to find out that your destination is down the other side; try skirting around. And don’t be afraid to trust your gut and try a shortcut. You might discover something cool or learn a lesson. We once had a frequent destination in Alameda. I learned I could save over 2 miles by riding to a “Dead End” and hoisting my bike over a 6 ft fence. It took me a few months of this before I learned that it was much easier to go to my right 100 yrds and ride down a sidewalk. -tim

March 16th, 2010

The Ides of March! Beware, especially if this is right around the time that you and your designated tax preparer have set a deadline! What is it, exactly, that makes the tax season so horrible? I’ve been getting returns done by professionals since the dawn of Cupid; ownership sure seems to have a lot more complexity to go with its inherent responsibility. All I need to do is fill out a planner, total up some things I think are deductible and put ‘em in there. How hard is it?
Since getting married, the joint return has been that much more stressful than the old days of the individual return. Cupid has been sort of cursed in the past: we stuck with one guy way too long (every year we moved the deadline earlier and earlier, but still April 15th would see all of Cupid filling out extension applications), and then last year’s nightmare where we finally moved on, found someone after a long search, and then got completely abused as she went AWOL for weeks and weeks at a time. I don’t know about the rest of Cupid, but it sure has made life tough in my house. My joint returnee did not really know about marrying into Cupid corporate culture, with its attendant lame and tardy tax prep. Considering that she makes a good bit more than me (don’t tell her I said so), it makes not knowing how much to pay for our quarterly self-employment estimated payments brutal when they are unexpectedly large. Very stressful - and she is the kind of person who used to do her taxes in January. Help!
We do have a new guy now, though. It has been a huge relief, for he has already finished the Cupid returns. Those are the things that hold everything else up, and we are done-zo! Man, am I psyched. If you need a good CPA, this guy seems pretty sharp. Call us if you are looking for one - we can probably give you a solid recommendation. Although maybe I should call him first to see if he can deal with the extra biz.
Take a deep breath, and dive in. It really won’t be that bad. That’s all I can say. After all the stress, we are almost done with our individual stuff. It was of course nowhere near as bad as all the guilt and dread of not dealing with it made it feel. I just hope that next year I can remember that. Hopefully we are in it for the long haul with the new CPA and he can help wipe away some of the angst associated with this whole period. Good luck to you all!-Rev

March 1st, 2010

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” -Ferris Bueller
This last weekend, I found myself entertaining relatives who had never been out to visit San Francisco, let alone California. What this of course means is a whole lot of cable cars, trolleys, Alcatraz, Lombard St., Alamo Sq., Fisherman's Wharf, and, well, just about everything else SF-touristy one can imagine. First of all, I have to admit that I have been a resident here in San Francisco for a few years, and have participated in very few of the above-mentioned activities. Not only am I not generally inclined to, say, shop at Pier 39, but sometimes it's those really obvious things in life that we can let pass us by. How is it possible to live here for so long, yet never ride a cable car? I know that I see cable car sights every day at work, and that the ride is a bit expensive, but really…no other city in the States has cable cars (with their history and views). It just seems crazy not to ride one at least once, right?
Ok, I don't really mean to say that we should all go out and sign up for every tourist attraction in the city, but maybe it's important not to let something amazing or beautiful pass us by just because it's mundane or we see it everyday. And although I'm risking this being quite a sappy newsletter, we all live in and around an absolutely amazing city; something that can be easy to forget in the middle of winter, working away the days.
As bike messengers, all of us here at Cupid zoom past quite a tremendous amount of postcard-worthy San Francisco every day, see an incredible amount of urban activity and diversity, and encounter all sorts of wild events and characters; yet it can take a day off showing visitors around to really appreciate it.-bryan

February 15th, 2010

In these high rent times can you imagine having difficulty selling beach front property in San Francisco? What if I told you you could have a home and land in the Sunset district for about $600? This was the case in the late 19th Century, however the land was within vast inaccessible sand dunes and the home was an abandoned street car. If you’re like me you’re thinking that still sounds awesome and in reality it probably was a pretty cool time to live out there.

Around this time rail lines covered the Eastern half of the city and horse-drawn street cars had given way to steam and cable cars which in turn were being replaced by the electric street cars. We still have remnants of them on the Market St F line. The surplus cars had been piling up becoming a space consuming headache for the railroad owners so they were offered up cheap to the public. They ended up repurposed as all sorts of things like sheds, offices and lunchstands but many of them became the basis of an eclectic community in the Sunset remembered as Carville. In it’s heyday of the 1890’s into the early 20th Century hundreds of streetcars became beach cottages, cafes and even a clubhouse for a female bicycle club called the Falcons, to the shock of polite Victorian society. I’m told that several cars still exist out there, hidden within the neighborhood if you know where to look. It’s fairly easy to find a bit of info about the story, but there is also a recent book by local writer Woody LaBounty entitled Carville-by-the-Sea which is quite nice and well researched.

On the subject of repurposing, we Cupoids have recently been putting a lot of thought into adapting ourselves and it occurred to me that we should come to y’all for advice. Are there any types of service that Cupid doesn’t currently provide that you might find useful? Are there changes in how any of you work that Cupid could adapt to better? We can cover most any vehicle sized work we get now(mostly by car but sometimes by creative bike work), however doing more cargo work by bike is one area we are trying to expand into. One of the things I love about our little autonomous collective is our ability to modify how we work when necessary. Since you are our current customer base we’d like to think of your needs first whenever we make plans to adjust our methods. As always we would sincerely appreciate any input from you.

tim

February 1st, 2010

It is a chilly Sunday morning over here in the East Bay. The plum tree in our backyard has the tiniest green budlets, though. The rain ain’t over by a long shot, but the days already seem just a shade longer. I leave my house a little earlier than do my partners in crime and Cupid, so I feel a little more affected by daylight. Or the lack thereof. There is already about 45 minutes more light than our low on the solstice. Did you know here in NorCal, that low is about 9 1/2 hours? Man, that sure seems depressing to think about. I guess it could be even less.
Great news! It is great to know that the United Nations is such a forward-looking body. In December, they designated 2012 as the Year of Cooperatives. Let us optimistically assume that John Cusack movies and the Mayan calendar do not predict the future. Cupid will then share with you a lot of the attention that will be garnered by this little ownership system. Meaning, we will keep a lookout for lots of topical op-eds, interesting articles and multimedia presentations to inform you about. We also will share with you the spotlight itself, as it were, since you deserve as much credit as we do. Our system doesn’t go anywhere without the patronage of our clients.
Here is a segment from our friends along the East River:

The General Assembly,

Recognizing that cooperatives, in their various forms, promote the fullest possible participation in the economic and social development of all people... are becoming a major factor of economic and social development and contribute to the eradication of poverty...,

Urges Governments…to give due consideration to the role and contribution of cooperatives…by, inter alia:

(a) Utilizing and developing fully the potential and contribution of cooperatives for the attainment of social development goals, in particular the eradication of poverty, the generation of full and productive employment and the enhancement of social integration;

(b) Encouraging and facilitating the establishment and development of cooperatives, including taking measures aimed at enabling people living in poverty or belonging to vulnerable groups, including women, youth, persons with disabilities, older persons and indigenous peoples, to fully participate, on a voluntary basis, in cooperatives and to address their social service needs;

(c) Taking appropriate measures aimed at creating a supportive and enabling environment for the development of cooperatives by, inter alia, developing an effective partnership between Governments and the cooperative movement through joint consultative councils and/or advisory bodies and by promoting and implementing better legislation, research, sharing of good practices, training, technical assistance and capacity-building of cooperatives, especially in the fields of management, auditing and marketing skills;

Hopefully that wasn’t too boring. I think it is neat. Have a great February!-Rev

January 18th, 2010

Well I hope everyone had a great holiday season. I know, I'm a little behind on the holiday wishes, but it's been a while since I wrote a newsletter. Also, I start back up on night classes this week, so it really is the end of my holiday. One class I'm excited to delve back into is Spanish (please don't quiz me on the phone, 'cause really I'm not that good). Living in the Mission has really prompted me to try and learn Spanish, something I've really always wanted to do.
As for foreign languages, I just recently came across a fantastic article about languages, in particular 'difficult' ones. Language, communication, and preconceptions have always been an important part of Cupid, and seem to be a bit of a theme through the newsletter lately, so I thought it would be relevant. For starters, the article points out that English really isn't that hard compared to many languages out there. An example is !Xoo, a language spoken in parts of southern Africa that requires speakers to develop a particular lump (scar tissue) in their throat in order to form certain sounds (ouch!). A couple of the languages in the article have really cool aspects. One language spoken by some native Australians requires speakers to know their compass bearing at all time. In fact, they don't have words for 'left' or 'right' and would say something like: “you have a spot on you southwest pant leg.” This language actually conjugates verbs based on compass direction such as: “I will deliver-in-a-westward-direction your package”. How cool is that? Apparently if you get a group of school children together that speak this language and ask them which way is northeast, they will all point in the correct direction immediately. I doubt a group of adult English speakers could do that!
My favorite language in the article has got to be Tuyuca, a language spoken in the eastern Amazon. Tuyuca includes endings on its verbs that describe personal knowledge. This might be something like; “yes the package is delivered (and I know this because I delivered it myself)” or “yes the package is delivered (and I know this because someone told me it was or I assume it was).” Boy oh boy that would be helpful in communication. If only English had this trick, especially when it comes to journalists and politicians! Think about how much b.s. we could eliminate from every conversation.-bryan

P.S. It's looking like a wet week, so please package your deliveries accordingly, thanks.

January 1st, 2010     

 Happy New Year everyone. I have the impression that most of us are glad to see the aughts come to a close. I’ll avoid the debate as to whether or not this ends the first decade of the new millennium, but I will say that the last ten years are book ended with some disappointments. As we said repeatedly here in aught-9 it was also the decade that saw Cupid come into being and thrive (mostly) past our ten year birthday.
     Like Jim in the previous newsletter I’ve been inspired here to write about something I’ve recently read and it dovetails nicely with Jim’s topic.
In her book “A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster” Rebecca Solnit also produces evidence that altruism and egalitarianism are perhaps our truer “human nature”; that the myth of survival of the fittest and every man for himself in a time of crisis is just that, a myth.  We find that the media is most often perversely fixated on a perceived breakdown of morality, unnecessarily demonizing the victims. The reality on the ground is much more likely to be people coming together in mutual aid to take care of each other in ways that clumsy bureaucracies cannot.
     Solnit focuses in some detail on the 1906 earthquake here, Manhattan after the Sept. 11th attack and New Orleans in the wake of hurricane Katrina.  She also touches on many other crises, tapping into numerous anecdotes of people self-organizing and improvising, providing for the needs of themselves and those around them often by going around government agencies that seem more concerned with reestablishing their own authority than in caring for the public. In these stories it’s easy to see something to celebrate. In a times of suffering and challenge an innate sense of fraternity arises that we could do well to emulate in our daily lives. These crises can also lead to lasting societal change. In Solint’s words “The recovery of this purpose and closeness without crisis or pressure is the great contemporary task of being human. Or perhaps the dawning era of economic and environmental disasters will solve the conundrum for us more harshly”.
     My hope is that is comes across as inspiring rather that pessimistic. As Bay Area residents most us have a healthy respect of the possibility that our world will literally come falling down around us. There is also a legacy here of civic life and self-organizing that can serve us well when the need arises. Like Jim suggested, it may be a basic aspect of human nature that we tap into at Cupid. That sense of purpose in working toward a shared goal.
-tim

December 15th, 2009

Happy Holidaze! I am honored to bring you the ever-special end-of-year holiday newsletter. Once again, important notes on coming scheduling: Cupid will be closed the biggies, Dec. 25th and Jan. 1st. That intervening week, Dec. 28th-31st, will see a bare-bones staff, and rates changed to something resembling our late-night charges. The ‘lnb’ charge ($20 in-town, $40 outa-town) will still be put on all jobs, but we will not auto-upgrade tags to rush rates. This seemed like a fair system when we tried it out last year. But really you all should be taking that week off anyway, right?

I saved an article from the Nov. 14th NY Times for when it was my turn for the news. It really spoke to me about a lot of issues. If you glance ahead at the footer (they always stand out, those little guys at the bottom, so go ahead and look down there. Uh oh. Evolution? God? Egad!). A teaser:

Religion is often blamed for its spectacular excesses, whether in promoting persecution or warfare, but gets less credit for its staple function of patching up the moral fabric of society. But perhaps it doesn’t deserve either blame or credit. If religion is seen as a means of generating social cohesion, it is a society and its leaders that put that cohesion to good or bad ends.1

The article is really not very long, if you feel like googling it. It isn’t really so much about there being a gene associated with theism. The author describes newish thinking on why group behaviors have evolved into what we do as a species today, in what they are calling ‘group selection.’ Why have cultural groups acquired all the crazy traits, the ethos, the religions, that they have?
Evolution is formulated to say that it favors the sole, well-endowed individual who has a new mutation that will allow for greater rep in the future gene pool. Group behavior, then, is anti-evolutionary. It is a product of a system where altruism and community are venerated, and where people acting in others’ interests, not their own, are the ones who pass down these long-lasting and powerful religions/traits. We can, of course, insert tons of cynical discourse on what really happens with humans here. But really, religion is just one of many ways that humans come together in action and thought, that they might further the cause of all rather than one. Sound sorta familiar? I am synopsising terribly, and can not do in 5 paragraphs what Wade does in 12. His article just got me to thinking about Cupid. Sometimes I feel like we are something new, nearly revolutionary in our free market/capitalistic iconoclasm. And then sometimes we are just plain old, really old, as old as religion itself. We survive by acting collectively towards a shared goal, and I have to wonder why it feels like we are so unique in the American business world? That’s crazy.
Sorry to bore you - we hope you have a great all-inclusive season of fests and joy with your loved ones in these dark cold days!-Rev

1Nicholas Wade,”The Evolution of the God Gene,” New York Times (Nov. 15th, 2009)

December 1st, 2009

Holiday Schedule News (Please Read): Once again we are approaching the holiday season, and we here at Cupid are trying to figure out our schedule for the weeks around Christmas and New Years. We never know exactly what our clients’ needs are for the week, so any feedback would be greatly appreciated. For starters, we will be closed on the 25th and the 1st (both are Fridays, which makes it easy). The big question is whether or not we should be open the week between. Most of you are generally closed that whole week, and we hardly get any calls. In the past we have stayed open with a skeleton crew, but have treated deliveries as after-hours calls and charged the standard rates plus the after-hours $20. Please let us know if you plan to be open, and if this works for your office. If you have any questions/concerns about the holiday schedule, please just give us a call.

Here I thought that I had finally, days later, digested Thanksgiving, but alas I found the leftovers in the fridge (especially the gravy), and now I can't move again. So, I figured I'd take advantage of my comatose state to write this newsletter. Hopefully everyone had a great Thanksgiving, and better yet, a great 4-day weekend.
I know traditionally I was supposed to start on my holiday shopping, but I think I just ate too darn much. Plus, I suppose I'm not much of a 'black Friday' go-to-the-mall kind of guy. If any of you are, thank you for your part in jump-starting our economy. For those of you that haven't started, or are still trying to find gifts, I would love to plug a local group called NOBAWC. For those of you who aren't familiar, NOBAWC is a network of worker-owned business here in the Bay Area (we've been happy members for years). Our website is nobawc.org, and you can find a whole list of shops and services (bookstores, movies, baked goods, groceries, bike shops and more). Might be a great way to support your local economy. As for plugging local businesses, how about Cupid? Yup, we make all sorts of weird deliveries during this season and love doing it. So if you want to send your client a bottle of wine, a basket of cheese, tickets to the opera, or pick up a truckload of cupcakes for your office holiday party, just give us a call. We do just about every type of same-day holiday delivery, although we still don't have a proper 'wrapping' charge.

-bryan

November 15th 2009

On a recent cool morning I was taking a break in the park down on Mission Creek. Directly in front of me standing on the old pier timbers were, from right to left, a brown pelican, a cormorant, several sea gulls and a great blue heron, all seemed to be warming themselves in the early sunlight. Circling above was another pelican that came diving down into the inlet with a splash, coming up with a fish in it’s mouth. Nearby were a pair of cavorting sea lions and a little squad of western grebes. I thought about how fortunate we are in the the Bay Area to have these wild creatures going about their business in the midst of our human commerce.
I’ve written here before about how I appreciate the signs of nature near at hand; that fringe benefit of working outdoors if one is observant. You can see dolphins and whales, coyotes and raccoons all within the City and County of SF. That SOMA raccoon I saw on my street late one night looked pretty scruffy and citified though, not your clean and fluffy National Park variety.
This past Friday while having lunch in Washington Square I observed a hawk having it’s lunch. It had caught a small bird and was tearing into it atop one of the cypress trees while being harassed by a dive bombing crow. You can often spot hawks perched atop the Cathedral here and our famous Telegraph Hill parrots are sometimes their prey.
Speaking of eating birds and being appreciative, Turkey Day is coming up. Once again Cupid will be closed for Thanksgiving Day, and Friday, November 26th & 27th.
-tim

November 2nd 2009

Hm. Daylight savings time, Thanksgiving later this month - Christmas music in elevators and Salvation Army Santas ringing bells on the street corners must only be a few weeks away. If you read last period’s newsletter, you might join some of us in blaming Bryan’s hubris for the impending blizzards of snow. It is time to start thinking about short days and snuggling up with books by the fire. If you have a fireplace. And it isn’t a Spare The Air day.
I have been marveling lately at just how little time there is, daylight being saved notwithstanding. Errands, cooking, dishes and other chores can really suck up the day. It is getting very easy to see why people buy frozen and prepared foods. Not just saving on prep and cooking times, but also cleanup time. How people can get anything done with children too is an impressive mystery. I’m taking some shifts off at Cupid to accelerate the cold-proofing efforts of our pad. There are so many intertwined projects that will make it happen, though. It is hard to even recognize how far we have gotten in the year since we closed on the li’l’ fixer-upper. We know its a lot, but we haven’t even touched the electrical system, which seems to hold everything else up.
Today, the first day of November, is a great example of how time gets spent. We drop off buckets with the baristas at the local Sunday farmers’ market and return later in the day to pick up all of their used grounds. The amazing Cat Chang, my better half and an accomplished gardenfarmer, makes black gold (compost) out of it. She is also volunteering with City Slicker Farms, helping them make a market farm in a super-seedy West Oakland park. Today we helped break ground and build raised beds for urban agriculture. There was coffee of our own to roast. It takes just a few minutes in a West End Poppy II hot-air popcorn popper, actually. Give it a try some time (outdoors, as the chaff goes everywhere) with a $5 thrift store popper. You can get green coffee beans online, or at my local corner store, 48th & Telegraph in Oakland.
All that, and this boring newsletter to write too, wow. This was just some fun stuff we do that might be interesting. I hope you all have something that you can while away the coming fall and winter hours with, that makes you feel accomplished and complete and content. I often have a hard time seeing the big picture for the brushstroke, the forest for the leaf, and it can be frustrating. Don’t be like me. Even when you putter around, doing the fun little things, those matter too!-Rev

October 16th 2009

As I'm sure everyone can remember, last Tuesday was a rough one. That much rain in one day is pretty rare, especially this early in the season. Luckily for me, I had that day off! OK, not to rub it in too bad for my coworkers....I'm sure there will be plenty of wet days left in the season for me. This is probably a good time to remind y'all, our clients, that, well...it rains, and it's a good idea to take this into consideration when sending out packages. We all have some pretty great waterproof messenger bags, but extra care in packaging, especially if you think your package might stick outside our bags, would be helpful.
As I'm writing this newsletter I am listening to a news report about how we're heading for an El Niño winter. Apparently, that doesn't necessarily mean that we'll have an especially wet season, but I'm still cautious. I have to admit, I like the seasonal change. Maybe it's my Northwest upbringing, but these shorter, wetter days have a bit of a romantic feeling...excuses to stay in at night with a hot toddy and a good book. Of course, all of us here at Cupid still have to go outside for work all day. As much as I'd like to say working outside in the rain doesn't bother me, of course it does! Would I rather be doing something else?....probably not, but just don't ask me while I'm wet and can't feel my toes.
There is another way at looking at messengering through the winter, though. At least we see the sun! With days getting shorter, and darker, many people go to work when it's dark and come home when it's dark. Us messengers, however, get to see daylight all winter long, even if it's accompanied by a cold, wet, wind. And it still doesn't snow here in SF, so what are any of us complaining about anyway?-bryan

October 1st 2009

When asked about long bike tours I often explain that while not easy they are generally simple. You get up in the morning. You ride your bike all day. If you see something interesting you stop for a bit then continue on. Eventually you’ll find you’ve ridden a thousand miles. This is decidedly different from a bike messenger’s day where you get up, ride all day and if you’re lucky you find you’re back where you started.
I’ve long wanted to ride my bicycle across Nevada, the state I was raised in, so when my friend Ian suggested we ride out to Durango for a mountain bike event, it seemed like a great chance to do it. Ian, being British(among other things) was a good choice of touring partner because he has a dry sarcastic sense of humor, a stiff-upper-lip type of persistence and little experience in the Great Basin or Southern Utah. Most people wouldn’t knowingly ride across the driest state in late summer and all the cyclists we met on the road had little love for Nevada. The 1000 miles from Carson City to Colorado is arguably one of the toughest bike tours in the U.S. I loved it.
As Mr. Gandolpho, my 8th grade Nevada history teacher, taught me, Nevada has more distinct mountain ranges than any other state. Geologically it’s known as Basin and Range topography; the spreading continent has cracked into tilting blocks. This creates a series of north-south mountain ranges with long broad valleys in between(most have awesome hot springs!). This also means a lot of climbing as you ride across it. In Utah we traded the basin and range for mesas and canyons, so still more climbing. Ian added up over 30,000ft of uphill for the ride.
While I don’t expect others to share my enthusiasm for the desert, I do bristle a bit when I hear people describe Nevada as boring or ugly. They are simply not looking closely enough and through a windshield at 70 miles an hour you’re not going to see much. The smell of wet sage and blooming rabbitbrush as you cruise across a deceptively vast landscape under an afternoon thunderstorm is exquisite. -tim

September 16th 2009

Civility: or Returning Power to the Overdog
Lowbrow South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson’s shout during the President’s speech last week just ticked me off. Seems like I am not alone - Maureen Dowd in the NYTimes got whiffs of racism and condescension in her column last Sunday. To me, having just endured eight years under Wilson’s party, to which truth was not always the most important message, this sure seems ironic. Second, this is healthcare we are talking about, not an overseas land war. How could he dare to break that kind of everlasting protocol, respect, and decorum over this issue? Healthcare is only nominally about life and death. Not to mention that it only adheres to our internal citizenry (oops, that what he was cry-babying about), not international standing or the decimation of a foreign populace.
Then me and my ol’ lady saw Inglourious Basterds this weekend. This and Mr. Wilson and memories of Dick Cheney dropping the f-bomb on the congressional floor all got me to thinking. Liberals and Democratish-types are wusses! Quentin Tarantino’s latest made me think how awesome it would be for Jews to have an ass-kicking band of thugs to hero-worship; plus they can always fall back on The Golem (the Jewish legend, not the Tolkien character). And maybe African-Americans can now think of King Kong as another defender against victimization and enslavement, and, well, you should probably see the movie. It’s got some moments.
But now, the Left needs some ass-kickers, a roving (Rove-ish?) bunch of behemoths, with poor manners, bad grammar, and a just-not-going-to-take-it-anymore attitude. Forget gun control - they need Glocks and Kalashnikovs. They are the ‘party in power,’ but keep using the tone and language of well-educated, even-tempered pragmatists. THAT’S B******T! They’ll never get anything done if they keep letting jerks trample all over them and theirs. I want Joe Wilson’s scalp!
Does the Left really need to ‘man up’ and ‘grow a pair?’ I don’t know, but how about those sexist phrases? Maybe testosterone is the problem in politics, huh? And maybe in the long run, this even keel and this apology acceptance will be constructive. Maybe it will serve the country and the world. Time will tell, but for now I will dream of a good-looking, muscular Will Smith-as-Hancock-type raffish superman who can slap some politeness into some folks.-Rev

P.S. Apologies to all GOPers out here (there must be some, right?); I imagine here in SF it’d be pretty hard to find conservatives who approve of the latest Tourette’s outburst in Washington DC.

September 1st 2009

Who Represents the Messenger?
We’ve heard a whole bunch these days about ‘Town Hall Meetings,’ especially in regards to the ‘hopeful’ healthcare debate. And I think what gets a lot of us really worked up about the whole scenario is how much of us and our ideas are being represented. And to be fair, both sides of this debate should be upset. Of course ‘death panels’ are not even close to an accurate representation of what the reformers are proposing. Also, I bet a lot of folks who would like to see measured or no change in healthcare policy don’t like being represented as a bunch of loud-mouthed folks screaming “communism.” Unfortunately, it’s the loudest voices who end up representing folks way too often.
I just attended a ‘town hall meeting’ myself, although not about health care. This meeting was almost completely about representation. In this case, a good friend of mine belongs to a trade organization which recently released a publication that was disgustingly homophobic. The meeting was set up so that the members could have a conversation with the board that published the material. Of course, not only were they hurt directly by what was published, but also because the trade organization/magazine was their ‘voice’ in the general public. They don’t want to be portrayed as homophobic by the very body that’s supposed to be representing them!
So who represents us, the bike messengers? Well there are organizations such as the IFBMA and the SFBMA (the International Federation of and the San Francisco Bike Messenger Association(s), respectively) who do a lot of great work as representative bodies, but unfortunately most of the general public have never heard from or interacted with either (have you?). So when most of the public looks for the ‘representative’ bike messenger, they are faced with the ‘loudest voices’. What do I mean by that? Well, I think that when most people think of ‘messengers,’ they think of folks doing incredibly reckless things in traffic. Just search ‘messenger’ in youtube and you’ll find all kinds of videos of folks doing all sorts of stupid things in traffic. What really bums me out is that a lot of these folks you see aren’t even actual messengers! So who are we? Well, I can’t really answer that (and I can’t promise that I never ran a red light), but I bet you’d be surprised by how mellow you’d find most of us really are. It’s just the loudest folks who end up representing us.-bryan

August 17th 2009

Several months ago, an Australian messenger friend of mine was in town and he'd been reading this book, Traffic, Why We Drive The Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), which he recommended to me. My first reaction was "I spend the better part of my time dealing with traffic. Why would I want to read a whole book about it?" However, I did finally get around to picking up the book and it turned out to be a pretty engaging read. The author, Tom Vanderbilt, taps into the innumerable studies that have been done on transportation, and driving in particular. The psychological aspects of driving can be quite fascinating. One of my favorite studies had researchers staring at drivers who were waiting at a red light. If the driver noticed they were being stared at, they would almost invariably speed off more aggressively when the light changed.
Much of the information in the book confirms what we may already suspect from experience. Obsessive lane changing on the freeway doesn't get you there more quickly; people on cell phones, hands free or not, are less attentive to their driving. There are also some surprises, though. A Dutch traffic engineer found that if you removed many of the safety features on a thoroughfare (protective barriers, excessive signage, etc.) people will drive more carefully. One of the recurring points of the research is that the more safe we try to make driving, the riskier our behavior becomes. Vanderbilt describes the driving environment as "...a toddlers view of the world. A landscape of outsized highly colored objects and flashing lights with harnesses and safety barriers that protect us as we exceed our own underdeveloped capabilities."
I've long felt that we don't give driving and traffic the respect it deserves. Our brains and bodies aren't designed to travel at such high speeds and with so much mass. Being in traffic is one of the primary modes of social interaction we have, yet each driver is encapsulated in their own "private" sphere and we often act accordingly and with a lessened regard for those around us. Maybe we should all be on bikes or in convertibles. Studies have shown that drivers in convertibles with the tops down are less likely to cut others off or drive aggressively. Studies have also shown that most of us think we are better that average at driving. Because this is a practical impossibility, that means most of us are not as good at driving as we think we are.
-tim
Schedule note: Cupid will be closed on Monday, September 7th for Labour Day.

August 1st 2009

Hate to say it, but boy, am I glad that July is over. It started with the planning and execution of our 10th anniversary party. Even with the division of labor, there was still a lot to do. You know you’re nearly obsessed when you find yourself unable to sleep and go to the grocery store to buy 9 pounds of hot dogs at 4 am two nights before. The 3rd of July was spent making ~6o pounds of vegan yet tasty salads. When we got out there, it was pleasant to learn that Sunday street closure in GG Park extends to Saturdays on holiday weekends. Hurray to an extra 250 yards to haul 2 extremely full truckloads of party supplies and infrastructure! The ensuing fun and exhausting chaos was of course worth the effort.
That was quickly followed by a trip to the East Coast. That included driving from NY to Boston and then on to a week in the Adirondacks with my 19 nieces and nephews (!). More exhausting chaos.
That was quickly followed by a road trip last weekend to the Oregon coast to perform another wedding ceremony (my 7th, wow!). Indeed, even that was more exhausting chaos.
One thing that I didn’t really afford myself over this period was the time to reflect on the past 10 years. There was one odd moment, driving over the Bay Bridge on the morning of the 3rd. It was on the way to Costco, of all things, to shop for the big party. I was flooded with a very powerful emotional surge. Suddenly, 10 years of indefinite feeling seemed to be hitting me all at once - success, failure, happiness, worry, hurt, glee, hope, pain. It has been such a road that there seems very little way to even begin to sum up or encapsulate our history and meaning. Let it be said that I feel immense pride in Cupid and the place it occupies in our community, in all the fellow worker-owners over the last decade, and in our ability to serve you clients extremely well while putting food on our own tables. As the only partner around since day one, I have worked with every single Cupoid, and consider myself lucky to have worked with such an incredible cast of characters.
Here’s to a restful and recovering August, and ten more years.

Peace ‘n’ love, Rev

P.S. A massive special thanks to Ms Meghan Mack, our cofounder, whose idea this whole crazy thing was in the first place. She came down from Portland for the big anniversary, and we never really got to the big speechmaking time. She deserves unbounded thanks and praise from every Cupoid and satisfied customer from over the years.
 

July 15th 2009

We've been talking everyone's ear off about it, and now it's official, Cupid Courier is a decade old!  We all had a great time celebrating out in Golden Gate Park as part of the annual "Independents Day" BBQ (which celebrates the network of small independent messenger companies in San Francisco.)  If you weren't able to make it you missed out on some great food, good beer, and some wild times.  If you were there, thanks for coming!  We had some great help from friends within the community whom I hope all know how appreciative of their efforts we are.  Cupid had a small run of shirts made celebrating our ten year anniversary.  If any of you are interested, we might have a few left over.  I think we're selling them for $10.  Oh yeah, Sean also printed up a slew of Cupid Courier beer coozies, which I think we'd part with for a couple bucks a piece.  Again, just ask any of us.   -bryan

July 1st 2009

According to my records it’s been almost exactly 7 years since we started including these love letters to y’all in the bills. Apparently we celebrated Cupid’s 3rd birthday a little early in 2002; Jim mentions the somewhat infamous pig roast we had that year, as well as a couple clients that have come and gone since then. We’ve been writing these newsletters for so long now that it’s hard not to feel like we’re being repetitive. One common idea that is probably ok to say over and over is just how sincerely appreciative we are of all of you that keep calling us and keep our quirky enterprise going.

Well, if you do the math above or have been listening to us gush about it, you know by now that this week Cupid Courier Collective is turning 10 years old! Our various personal distractions and the sluggishness of the business in general may appear to have dampened our moods just a smidge, but the fact is that we’re excited. I think back on the roster of cupoids past and present and it’s a substantial list of truly unique and memorable people. Cupid really is more than the sum of its particular parts. The idea that in another 10 years Cupid could still be out here pedaling with an entirely new set of faces is both scary and wonderful.

I feel like it’s safe to say that we’re all proud that from our iconoclastic, misfit, bike messenger roots that we’ve found a way to sustain ourselves while also being a positive force in our community. If any of you all are looking for something to do in town on July 4th, consider coming out to our little party as we start our second decade as an entirely worker-owned and democratically-run endeavor. We’ll be at the Horseshoe Pits in the Northeast corner of Golden Gate Park (Fulton & Stanyan), Saturday July 4th from noon 'til dusk.

-tim

Historic San Francisco Courier Company Celebrates Birthday

The Cupid Courier Collective, a wholly worker-owned and -operated messenger company, will reach its milestone tenth birthday on this year’s Fourth of July weekend.

San Francisco, CA, 4 July 2009 - Founded in 1999 amid labor upheaval in San Francisco’s same-day urgent local delivery business, the worker co-op has been forging their own path while fully supporting the workers’ movement established by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) in 1997. The founders began what was one of the first and continues to be the longest-active messenger collective in the United States.

Bike messengers are often considered to be a counter-cultural, ‘outsider’ urban demographic. Surprising creativity, industry, and intelligence lurks therein, however. Such has been the case for the Cupid Courier Collective during its ten year lifespan. As an attractive workplace, it has long attracted the most experienced messengers in The City. The combination of this experience with the responsibility of ownership seen by clients in their own offices and on the road has inspired an incredibly loyal and well-served client base.

The Network of Bay Area Worker Cooperatives (NoBAWC, pronounced “no-boss”) defines a worker cooperative as an enterprise that produces goods, distributes goods and/or provides services and is owned and controlled by its worker-owners. Ownership of a worker cooperative is vested solely with the worker-owners on an equal basis. Moreover, worker-owners control the resources of the cooperative and the work process. Each worker-owner has equal decision-making power and ultimate authority rests with the worker-owners as a whole. Worker control can be exercised directly or indirectly by worker-owners. If exercised indirectly, members of representative decision-making bodies (e.g. a Board of Directors) must be elected by the worker-owners and be subject to removal by the worker-owners. Cupid is a long-time member of NoBAWC.

CUPID COURIER COLLECTIVE - Serving the Bay Area business communities needs quickly, efficiently and responsibly since 1999.

June 16th 2009

It's pretty hard to believe that 10 years ago I was just quitting my first messenger job working at kozmo.com. Who out there even remembers kozmo? It was an online video-rental/convenience store. Remember the orange ads everywhere? In fact, it was a pretty great service for some folks. Heck, whenever I'm sick these days, I wish I could go online and order a movie and ice cream, wait an hour and have a messenger deliver it right to my door. The problem with kozmo, of course, was its wacky business model. Actually, everyone, especially in SF, can probably think of a whole slew of poor businesses during the 'dot-com' bubble. Most of those companies really existed on 'imaginary' money. There really was no long-term profit plan at kozmo (pretty slim margins already on $3 movies and $4 dollar ice cream) but as long as people kept investing money on top of other people's money...well you get a running enterprise that hopefully you cash out of before everyone realizes what's going on. Sounds a bit like the current 'housing bubble,' huh?
Luckily, around the same time that I was quitting my job delivering movies with investment capital, a couple of people were creating a new business model for the messenger industry right here. A company that had close to no margins, no need for venture capital, and, well unfortunately, no ice cream. Yup, ok, Cupid Courier is turning 10 years old! That's right, our birthday is this July 4th weekend, and boy are we proud. It's pretty amazing to think about all of the different partners over the years that have been involved with Cupid, and how our company still exists, especially that it is still a 100% worker-owned and a democratically-run operation. (Although if anyone knows any wealthy venture capitalists that want to invest a couple million in 'e-cupid.com' or 'cupid real estate holdings', I'll be happy to give them my card).
That said, come celebrate our decade of existence with us! We're having a bbq out at Golden Gate Park on the 4th of July. There should be a ton of food, and some fun 'n’ games. Look for us out there all afternoon by the horseshoe pits (northeast corner of the park). Ask any one of us for more details, or just stop by for a beer.
Also, if you haven't gotten a chance to come check out Sarah's new shop, this Friday is the perfect opportunity. Nice Tim is having a show of some of his photography at the shop. That's at Pushbike 3045 24th St. (@ Treat) from 6pm-9pm.
Lastly, Cupid Courier will be CLOSED on Friday July 3rd, for the Independence Day holiday.-bryan

June 1st 2009

There has to be something other than the effects of the current economy about which to write, there just has to be. We and all of you are getting pounded, by the feel of it out here on the streets. We really need to get more work/clients, which is a years-old situation magnifying our current difficulties. Please keep Cupid in your thoughts if you hear of anyone needing urgent deliveries done.
I have been tripping out on cell phones lately. We are reaching oversaturation when people need to see legislation passed forbidding them from doing it while driving. From the cyclist’s POV, nothing is worse than seeing someone’s head tilted, elbow out, while behind the wheel. Or maybe it is good - you know they are guaranteed to the stupidest thing possible, so you can prepare for the worst.
Texting drives me nuts. I am an old man, to be sure, but what is the attraction? To have two (or more) conversations going at the same time? To not have to actually use the vocal chords? To not enter fully into true dialog? Is it sneaky/cute/endearing? American kids are averaging around 80 texts per day, taking valuable rest time away from (hopefully) still-developing minds. Scientists are worried. Twitter freaks me out. Where do people find the time for all this stuff. Communication technology sure has seemed to speed up and increase its volume, but seriously downgraded its over-all quality. You know you are a curmudgeon when you view most modern means of communication as tools mostly of rudeness.
Some other companies now have software that allows them to receive orders from clients via e-mail. And this is seen as an improvement. Speaking to you all on the phone is such a part of our business that I can’t see how. Definitely let us know if this sounds interesting to you, and we can investigate further. The voice, in its tone and content, can convey so much more information faster than any fingers and thumbs, right? And it seems so much more real. I’d hate to not talk to you all any more.
We had a situation come up a few weeks back, where a sister company liquidated its bike ‘board.’ This means firing all cyclists and subcontracting out all the work. We are pretty sure we could have done all that work and taken one of the riders, but lost out in the deal to another company, basically because of speed. We ‘wasted’ time sussing out the whole situation. We spoke to friends (the firees and firers), talked among Cupid, and spent a lot of energy trying to grasp a quickly moving opportunity. We lost to another company that got in there instantly, one owner that leapt at a large discount and made some promises that will hopefully pan out for those involved.
Which hurt. Not only could we have used the business, but it, for the first time ever, brought our business model’s viability into question. We can not move quickly. Or not as quickly as one person can, anyway. It has taken some time to ‘get over it,’ but I am ready to stand firm with the model once again. The only way we could have ‘won’ would have been by acting very rashly and very competitively. I feel like the model has always been resting squarely on a very sturdy table of high ethics somewhere along the high road of ideals, supporting its clients, its community and its members as best it possibly can. We are your, and our, Cupid.-Rev

May 16th 2009

When European scientists first came across termite mounds in Africa they were so impressed by the complexity that they imagined they were built by an intelligent creature comparable to humanity. The mounds which can be over 30 feet tall show a complex city-like organization and social structure. If you think bike messengers can be smelly, imagine communicating by secreting odiferous chemical trails like termites do.
Our conventional wisdom is that human society is something distinct from “Nature”; that we have our cities and suburbs and that nature is something we go visit at a National Park. I’d say though that a skyscraper is not fundamentally different from a termite mound. The Earth is a closed system, just as millions of insects collaborate to convert the surrounding soil into a towering home, all our stone, steel and concrete come from natural resources. Unless we really were planted here by UFO’s thousands of years ago, humans and our endeavors are just as much a part of the natural world as dolphins or waterfalls.
One could worry that this belief that whatever humanity does is ultimately “natural” could be used to justify any activity no matter how destructive. However, we also have an arguably high level of self-awareness. I feel that if we really took this to heart, that we are the Earth, not just upon it, the way a Buddhist recognizes that there is no separation between oneself and the world around you, we’d take more care with it.
One of my favorite Far Side comics by Gary Larsen shows a pristine landscape with a naked couple scampering off from a broken specimen jar labeled “humans”. From the heavenly clouds above we see God saying “oops”.
-tim

May 1st 2009 "MayDay!"

Hi!
Some of you may have noticed that I only work two days at Cupid. I've been preparing for my other business. I'm happy to announce that it's launching this week! Pushbike! It's a clothing and accessories shop for cyclists. Don't worry, I'll still be with Cupid. I love being a bike messenger!
Pushbike is located at 3045 24th St. at Treat St. Open every day, 11-7. We stock Swrve cycling apparel, Freight Baggage, Chuey Brand, Fabric Horse, and more! It's a lifestyle shop for today's city cyclists! We stock a mixture of practical and fashionable clothing, allowing our customers to build a utilitarian cycling wardrobe. We want to bring together products that we believe in, with an emphasis on locally manufactured goods. Cycling knickers, jeans, windbreakers, hoodies, techwear, bags, and hats!
The cycling movement in San Francisco is growing for environmental, economic, fitness and fashion reasons. We plan on making the shop a hub for the cycling community and will encourage our new customers to join us for group rides, local races and events.
Also, don't forget Bike to Work Day is Thursday, May 14th! There will be various energizer stations along popular commute routes. Check out www.btwd.bayareabikes.org for info. I'll have some treats at the shop during the after-work commute!-Sarah

April 16th 2009

My favorite way of knowing that Spring is upon us? Well, it's the start of baseball season, of course! In fact, my own favorite team has just come through the Bay Area. Although I was excited and had my tickets already, I unfortunately have to fly out of town. These two things (flying and baseball) actually tie into something that a couple folks have asked me about lately: pricing. To be exact, it's quite common for me to field the question,"So what do you guys charge for a delivery?". It can be difficult at times to answer, because we have dozens of possible charges.
What, you ask, does our delivery pricing have to do with baseball and flying? Well, if you go to a baseball game, or fly commercially, everyone else at the game or on your plane has paid a whole range of prices for seemingly the same thing: the same game or the same flight. I know this first hand. My flights this week are really expensive (last minute) and my baseball tickets were both really expensive (good seats) and really cheap (2 bucks for not-so-good seats).
There are a couple of reasons pricing is variable like this. Sometimes it's all about charging the most you can, depending on your client. Movies are an excellent example: it's the same movie, but they've figured out that adults can pay $10 while students and seniors can only afford $8. It seems like they’re doing a service, and they are a bit, but really they're charging everyone (approximately) what they can afford.
Messenger companies do this to a degree. We offer rush rates for those clients who need them. But really, it's all a bit more complicated. Airlines are a great example: if all of their passengers booked flights a year in advance, prices would be really cheap, as they could structure routes, planes, and times to maximize efficiency. But in real life, there's people like me, who need a flight right now this week! And what do they do to offer this service? Well, they charge me a whole bunch!
Cupid is similar - if all of our clients called in their deliveries the night before, and gave us 24 hours to do them, our lives would be so easy, as we could line deliveries up in a row and just act like a paperboy with one big route. But really we have to figure out prices that can make sure that couriers are available if three different clients call in rushes going in three different directions all at once. I've worked for maybe 12 different messenger companies in 4 different cities before joining Cupid, and it's an industry standard: lots and lots of different prices. Hopefully, with Cupid, the differences in price for any particular delivery make sense and are competitive with the industry as a whole. If you have questions about why your bill shows up with lots of different prices, just ask any of us. I'm sure we can explain why that is. Also....Go Red Sox! (or Giants or A's or whoever your favorite team is (except the Yankees). And here's to Spring!-bryan

ps Did you know that Cupid offers a discount to nonprofits? If you know of anyone in the nonprofit world who could benefit from a messenger service, let 'em know!

April 1st 2009

It is with great sadness that we at Cupid announce the end of our great nine-and-a-half year run as the first and longest-operating worker-owned messenger company in the SF Bay Area. It has been a great honor and pleasure serving you. As you receive this bill, the FDIC and the ATF are undertaking a rapid interdiction and review of our finances, and complete seizure of our assets. A series of risky loans, both underwritten and undertaken, as well as heavy leverage in the credit default swap markets and massive exposure in the Lehman Brothers dissolution, not to mention cheap foreign competition, outsourcing, reserve shortages and prospective gun control by the new administration in Washington have all brought us to this great great day of unknown provenance.
If Hallmark invented Mothers’ Day, who invented April Fools’ Day? Budweiser? Spencer's Gift Shop? Even Wikipedia is surprisingly unhelpful. There seem to be a few vague and/or fake-sounding ideas, shocking in the wiki world.
A few weeks ago, there was an over-long and -explanatory article in the NYTimes about the new vegetable garden at the White House. It brought me back to about a year ago. I had been reading about Michelle O and her nutritional ideas. Just after that, I stumbled onto a televised Q&A panel with restaurateur/food activist Alice Waters. She was asked what see wanted to see for food in the future. She began her reply,”Well, I want to see a Victory Garden on the White House lawn.” It has stuck with me because I love food, but also because a chill went up my spine. People were actually talking about Barry-O as a real contender right about then. And I remember still not really believing it. Still pessimistic and unhopeful.
This brings me to capitalism. When you are flush, and have reserves, well, that is wealth. One need be wise with it, though, because tough times always come. When they do, you will be able, in all likelihood, to help others as well as yourself. There is capitalism of ideas, of diplomacy, of faith, of politics, of everything. Markets do work, because markets are just another word for nature, be it human or global. The last administration got elected because enough people thought we could afford to have a man with no brains[struck through] business acumen or diplomatic skills but all faith in the big white house. And he spent every last bit of international standing, and as much money, as he could. This to the point where we are deep in debt, literally and existentially.
We’ll see how long this honeymoon with the new guy lasts, but remember how impossible it seemed even two years ago? A presidency like this? Wow. November was 5 months ago now, and there is still hope capital for me. Is it real? I keep hoping. No foolin.’-Rev

P.S. Pumpkin’s AIDS Ride fundraising continues with another alleykat race this Sunday. 2pm $10 registration, 3pm start, ending at the Knockout, 3223 Mission St. where lots of prizes will be awarded. Ride around, or just head for the KO around 4pm to donate and/or hang out with some fun peeps!

March 16th 2009

Last week I was having a drink after work, and the bartender told me that I was part of the most romantic nights of her life. Of course, my first reaction was, “Uh oh, who are you and boy am I sorry...” As it turns out, years ago when I trying to make a living by pedicabbing around the mission at night, I had rode her and her current boyfriend around on their first date. She remembered me from way back then.
So I decided I wanted to take them out again, even though I haven't ridden the pedicab in years. Then I thought, if I'm going to go through all the trouble of fixing it up, maybe I should ride it around other nights of the week when I have the time. First day of spring is this Friday, and I imagine people could use a lift in spirits. It could also help me raise a little money for the AIDS Lifecycle ride that I'm participating in this summer.
Maybe some of you already know that I'm riding to Los Angeles the first week of June to help out the SF AIDS Foundation and the LA Gay and Lesbian Center. It should be a great time, and I'm looking forward to it. Hey, if any of you know anyone between here and LA, maybe you should check out the route map at aidslifecycle.org. Maybe I might pass through their town and drop off a letter for you! How awesome would that be, Cupid delivering all the way to LA by bike!!

-Sean Mosley aka pumpkin

March 1st 2009

I get asked for directions a lot. A bike messenger is probably an obvious choice when you’re driving around an unfamiliar city and you get lost. I do have a good friend though, a recently retired messenger, who had a pat answer when asked where something was; “Oh that’s 2 blocks up and one block over.” He’d say this even if he had no idea what the answer was. This wasn’t really malicious (though he’d make sure he was going in the opposite direction), he just liked to have an answer for people. It reminds me of how, while trekking in Nepal I was advised not to ask directions in the form of a yes or no question. “Is the village of Ghorepani this way?” This is because as a generally friendly and positive people the Nepalese often just want to give an affirmative answer even if they have no idea what you’re talking about.

I personally take pride in giving people good directions if I can. I was once asked for directions to Fresno, which I thought was a strange thing to ask someone on a bicycle in downtown SF. However, I know the answer, and gave the best route. What people do with this info is another question. I often feel stumped by people, not because I don’t know how to get somewhere but because I know that someone shouting at me from a car window is only going to remember the first few turns at best and if they have to cross Market Street you know they’re going to get confused. I guess you get them going in the right direction and they’ll leap frog directions from someone else.

It’s possible that with this topic I’ve stumbled onto another minor obsession of mine. I usually like to know where I’m at and where I’m going, literally if not necessarily metaphysically. I love maps and getting to know the lay of my surroundings and beyond. I earned a reputation, while traveling around to worldwide messenger gatherings, of being the guy to shepherd an unruly pack of messengers back to whatever couch, floor, basement or bush we were sleeping at after a long night of revelry in an unfamiliar city. One can see how this talent is part of what led me to my chosen profession. An ability to know where one is going (in the short term anyway) is a common trait of a good messenger. I’m often surprised by the arcane info we store in our brains. I often don’t know where I left my house keys but I can remember the suite number of an office I haven’t been to in 2 years.

-tim

February 15th 2009

Well, I hope y'all had a great holiday weekend. Boy, Friday the 13th, Valentine's Day, and President's Day, all in one weekend! Valentine's Day, for obvious reasons, is particularly important for us here at Cupid. I think it is a shame that it fell on a Saturday this year, as I think it's fun to see all of our clients on our 'special day.' Hopefully everyone had a special someone to spend it with. Tim, Sarah, and Pumpkin did a good job of putting together a last minute 'Cupid Courier Valentine's Day Challenge' on Saturday. Some little kid's bikes, good friends, and a few beers in the park sure can make for a good time (even if the weather isn't our normal California sunny).
Wow, speaking of weather, it sure feels like winter has finally arrived. I think the unusually dry and warm weather of recent times has made me a bit soft, 'cause man, that rain is cold! Even when hiding out at my house, I feel it. I don't think that my 100+ year old apartment has ANY insulation. A reminder, though, for you, the clients: please take the wet weather into consideration when sending out packages, especially if you think that your delivery might be large enough to stick out of our weatherproof bags. This even goes for the few packages that will probably be done in a car, as we will most likely pick or drop them off by bike (saving us the trouble/time of parking).
Cupid has also recently added a couple new clients to our business, which is always great, but especially during our current economic situation. While signing them up for our service, we handed out some stickers, brochures, etc. Which got me thinking: many of you have been using our service for a number of years now (of course, awesome!), but may have never seen our brochures. Please, if you or your officemates might think it would be nice to have quick reference guides to our service and rates, just ask and we'll drop some off. We also have stickers and business cards if anyone would like them. Is there anything else we could supply that would be handy, useful, or just fun? Let us know (especially now, as we will probably try to come up with fun 10 year anniversary stuff). -bryan

Last minute note: Sarah did a great job of putting together some Cupid Courier cycling caps. They're handmade by friends of ours and look really great. You'll probably see us wearing them, and if you or anyone you know might want one, just ask us. There are a few different styles left for sale.

February 1st 2009

What an honor to get to write the first post-inaugural newsletter. Did you watch the inauguration ceremony? It really felt like the whole world was tuned in, like the Apollo 11 lunar landing. There never was a defining soundbite, like JFK’s “Ask not...” line that defined the Camelot years (and went a long way in inspiring people and progressivism that made the late ‘60’s roar). But it wasn’t missed - I still could (can) not believe what I was watching. It was hard to choke back tears of disbelief and wonder. Maybe it was just a personal feeling. It really is something that can give an entire global society some hope. Maybe it will never pan out, all the great things people expect, but for now we can dream again. Which is a lot better than the cynical, regressive, fearful and angry power-projection politics that we have been exposed to for at least 8 years. The politics that made me embarrassed to be an American, not in an unpatriotic way but in that I knew we could be SO much better. So we are here. Good luck to us all, and especially the skinny left-handed dude in the big white house.
It is time to get ready for the tax man, sad as that sounds. Here’s wishing that none of us owes any taxes. Things seem pretty tight as it is for just about everyone you talk to these days. Cupid has seen a marked slowdown in January, which isn’t that abnormal. We just hope that you and us all see business pick up real soon.
That being said, it is time for us to issue our annual “Please pay us soon” plea/mantra. It really keeps the books clean when we get paid for all of the preceding year’s invoices before we submit our final numbers to the tax preparer. You all as a group are doing really well, with just a couple of stragglers out there. At this point, though, all 2008 invoices are at least two weeks overdue.
Maybe the great American holiday, Super Bowl Sunday, will be the great unblocking of the international economy. All the amazing commercials will stimulate people’s appetites for stuff, to get that car to go mountain-climbing in, to get that tv to watch NEXT year’s Big Game (and its ads) on, and so on. We often speak in a more Luddite, slightly anti-consumerist and eco-friendly tone here at the bottom of the page, but what this economy really needs is people buying stuff. I bought a new oven the day after Christmas in a Doorbuster sale, so now it is your turn. Ok, just kidding, but have a great February!-Rev

January 16th 2009

Most of us, when we think of nature and evolution, think of competition as the predominant factor; survival of the fittest, with superior traits winning out through natural selection. Cooperation, though, can be an equally strong force, and some would argue that it is an equal if not more important element in evolution.
Herd animals are an obvious example of survival through cooperation. Think of elephants or muskox (what a cool ice age relic) sharing the protection of their young for the sake of the group. There are lots more subtle examples as well, including some strange inter-species relationships. Flowers would be lost without honeybees, but plants also have fungal and microbial friends that they rely on underground. We’re not left out either. Inside us are innumerable tiny organisms that we quite literally couldn’t live without. One is never truly alone.
Competition has it’s value as well, promoting innovation and efficiency. However I often feel we revere it too much in our profit-driven culture. When the s*** hits the fan, I’d think folks looking out for one another will be more effective than a Mad Max world of might equals right (as much as I love the genre).
At Cupid we took the traditional messenger model and sort of flipped it around. Instead of a crew of messengers competing for a limited pool of work with the fastest or smartest getting the best work on commission, we choose to work as a team, sharing the fruits of our labors. Both methods can be equally effective when times are flush. But when the work thins out in an competitive environment, things can get a bit ugly.-tim

p.s. Speaking of working as a group, our fellow Cupoid, Sean (we like to call him Pumpkin) has signed up to do the Aids Life Cycle Ride this June. He’s going to need plenty of help meeting the fund-raising goal. If any of y’all are interested, feel free to let us know.

January 1st 2009

Wow, 2009 is upon us and the new year is already looking like it's going to be a great one! First off, many of you may have noticed (or remember!?), but Cupid Courier was started back in 1999, which makes this year our 10th calendar year in business! That's right, by this summer (July 4th), we will be a decade old. Keep your eyes peeled, 'cause I imagine their will be festivities abounding when the anniversary comes. Boy, it would be pretty cool if we could get some, or all, of the past Cupoids to participate also...
And what about the dude who co-founded (with our friend Meghan) this whole operation back in '99? Well, Jim has had quite a great start to his new year, as he and his terrific wife, Cat, just moved into their new house in the East Bay. Yup, instead of paying rent like the rest of us, he gets to reside in his very own abode (ok, maybe it's mostly the bank's) and join the Landed Class. Seriously though, their new place is already looking amazing, as they've been putting in a TON of work in it. I think seeing him and Cat go through the process has been one of the most inspirational things I've been around lately. If you get a chance, make sure to congratulate Jim as he comes through. I think he's pretty stoked.
2009, let's hope, is also going to produce a fresh start to the economy. I can imagine the recent times have put strains on everyone's businesses/jobs/bank accounts and I am always happy when our clients continue to call in deliveries. I feel like we've even heard from a few of our infrequent clients lately, which is just great. As a worker-owned co-op, none of us are in the position of being laid off, but we have had to make some adjustments. I think Tim has mentioned this already, but it's been really great to see our team adapt. These changes are not only saving our 'bottom line', but more importantly I think we've been able to improve our service in the process. There has been a good deal of 'back patting' going on here at Cupid.
Lastly, this year is finally going to bring in a New President! I know that putting much faith in any administration is probably not the best idea....but man is it going to be nice to wake up to the news in the morning and not have to hear the current guy talking about anything. I feel like even those of you who might not have voted for Obama might agree with that!
Please Also Note: Cupid is Closed on Monday January 19th for MLK Day.Here's to the New Year!-bryan

December 15th 2008

News (check the holiday stuff):
Brrrrrr. Brrr. ‘Tis the season, eh? Ok. Another reminder about the holidays! Listen up, pea-puhl! This gets confusing, even for me. After extensive research and exhaustive interviews, Cupid is ready for the end (of the year). We are indeed closed Dec. 25-26, and Jan. 1. Holiday rates apply on Dec. 29-31 and Jan 2nd. These are similar to late-night rates except there is no automatic rush upgrade. In-town jobs see a $20 add-on, and out-of-town jobs see one for $40. Very few of you are even open at all during that period, so enjoy yourselves! We will try to remind each caller in that period about this plan, but please pass on the word through your office if you think people will need work done.
Nice Tim has once again done a beautiful job on our holiday cards. Sometimes it is hard to not think, is this all we can do? You are all so awesome! The sentiment inside the cards is very sincere, and we try to iterate this message with almost every newsletter, but do you all really get the message? You rawk!
Has everybody seen the Gus Van Sant film Milk by now? It is pretty great. We never did a post-election wrap-up op/ed piece in this space, and it really returned some feelings to this past November. Somehow the old Prop 6 fight was reborn 30 years later and this time the ‘left’ lost. So bizarre after such progressive change was seen with Obama’s impending accession and the many other Cal Props that were on the ballot. I understand there is nuance and the potential for even more emotional attachment on the Prop 8 issue. But jeez. Really?
Join the hajj and go see Sean Penn on-screen at The Castro Theater until Dec 23rd. After that comes (what I bet is extremely popular and hilarious if somewhat grating on the nerves) Sing-along Sound of Music. Ooh, Julie Andrews is so fab-u-lous.
Ok, probably I could ramble on about the Milk/election thing, but that’d take more space than we got here. We’d just like to wish you and all Californians and all earthlings a great season. It is a time of year that for some is based on love and sacrifice for others, by a guy whose absolute single-most self-professed important message was to treat others as you wish to be treated. That is it. Peace and love to all, now and on into 2009, Rev. Jim

December 1st 2008

You never step in the same river twice. That's one of my favorite Buddhist aphorisms on impermanence and change. There is also a quote by the poet Diane DiPrima that I can't seem to find so I'll paraphrase; since we all change as people over time, one should be conscious and intentional about that change rather than being changed arbitrarily by circumstance. With this in mind I found the theme of our recent political season amusing. There is a certain brilliance in selling the one thing that is truly inevitable in the universe, heck even so called "conservatives" seem open to change. Though I'm as optimistic as the next person about the direction of things, positive and meaningful change is rarely handed down from on high. My hope is that the inspired enthusiasm I see is reflected in our actions.

As a small, democratically run workplace I feel that Cupid can adapt a bit more quickly and creatively than most. For those who don't know Cupid is closing in on it's 10th birthday. Over the years we've used many methods to meet our clients needs and our own. It's actually hard for me to completely remember how it was when I first began working here because our workload and road team has evolved so much. I'd like to think that we are able to accommodate our clients, especially in the small details like troubleshooting, in ways that a larger or more rigid company couldn't be bothered to. With each delivery it's nice to know that we have a full range of options on the table. We've used cars, trucks, trains, boats, blimps(ok not yet but someday!), and of course our overwhelming favorite, bikes to get stuff from A to B, or C, D, E... For the record it's the limiting factors (time frame, distance, mode) on these methods that affect the cost of what we do. In general, the more options we're given on your delivery the more affordable it will be.

A reminder about our holiday scheduling. We will be closed on Dec 25th & 26th as well as Jan 1st. Holiday rates will apply on Dec 29th, 30th & 31st and normal service will resume Jan 2nd. As always, feel free to call with any questions.
-tim

November 15th 2008

Wow, almost eighty degrees here in the city for the last few days, and I can't believe I'm writing the pre-holiday newsletter! I have to say, I'm heading out to the East Coast here in a couple weeks and it makes me want to never leave our temperate, warm California weather. It is funny though, and I believe Tim pointed this out to me, that this recent heat spell is a bit rare during any season here in the City, and could also happen during any season. So goes our strange local weather pattern. Anyways, I don't think anyone's complaining, and I'm sure not!

A couple seasonal/weather reminders though. First of all, believe it or not, but we have definitely entered the rain season here in the Bay Area. Please keep this in mind as you send out packages throughout the next few months. We here at Cupid try to use the best waterproof bags and equipment, but wrapping up packages with just a bit of extra care during these months is always smart. Also, next week is Thanksgiving already, and we will be closed for that day and the following day (11/27, 11/28). We will probably also turn off our phones an hour early on the Wednesday before (11/26) (closing at 6 pm versus our regular 7 pm late-night service). Please, please, please feel free to let us know if you might need courier service for that Friday, 11/28, or late-night service on Wednesday, 11/26, and we will attempt to accommodate your needs.-bryan

November 1st, 2008

Wow!  What amazing times we live in.  I can’t help but think of the terrible film “Point Break,” starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze.  Often when things seem really special/outrageous/spectacular/unprecedented, it brings to mind Bodhi’s 50-year wave (if you haven’t seen the flick, don’t).  And getting handcuffed in the surf by Neo, the ultimate b****slap.  Ow.
     Greenspan calls the economic situation, one that the brightest minds of these living generations could not foresee, a once-in-a-lifetime tsunami.  Imagine, rampant (and often insanely risky) debt leads to catastrophe.
     Election Day Tuesday, 4 Nov 08!  The Democratic Party is looking mighty strong right now, for the first time in decades.  They stand a good chance of making history by putting a non-white man in office (and do so thanks to a woman who created a positive tension in the nomination race which in turn helped sharpen his message).  The Republicans counter with a VP candidate who is a woman in her 40’s.  Jeepers.
     But what about all those Propositions?  Locally and statewide initiatives are keeping us riveted.  No matter which side of the aisle you sit or stand or hop in, there is a lot to look at.  Can’t imagine the ones costing a ton of money will go through in this economic climate, but Touchstone California has all eyes watching.  Prop 8.  It is probably more professional to keep politics out of this newsletter, but is anybody in SF going to vote for that?  Hard to imagine.
     It’ll be good for everyone to see Dubya go.  Even for him;  I bet he is just plain exhausted.  Will he or any other neo-cons be able to travel abroad in their lifetimes?  For all the vitriol they’d face, it might be good for them to renew their passports and see why Americans care about what the rest of the world thinks about Americans.
     Stocks cliffdiving!  Houses foreclosed!  Soup kitchens?  Cupid for one is definitely hurting.  Which means that some of you, our clients, are probably hurting.  The next president won’t solve this international upset overnight, so keep cool under pressure, be Jonny Utah, and don’t be the one wearing the cuffs looking at that titanic wall of water.  We’ll hopefully be out of this little situation with a little patience, if not pleading.-Peace-out, Rev Jim

June 30, 2008

I recently finished reading Alan Weisman’s much-talked-about book, The World Without US. In it, he examines how the various impacts of human culture would change if the entirety of humanity were to vanish suddenly; i.e., the rapture, the alien mothership scooped us up, or some super-virulent disease quickly wiped us out. With a couple notable exceptions, most of what we think of as solid human endeavors would become reincorporated into nature, often rather quickly. Untended radioactive waste would be an extremely long-lasting mess, but these glass and concrete cities, our sprawling suburbs and even the mind boggling quantity of plastic we create would all erode into a not particularly impressive layer in the geological record.

Weisman suggests that it wouldn’t take too many seasons of freeze and thaw cycles to make all our billions of miles of paved roads all but impassible. Maybe for cars, but I’d hold out more hope for bikes. I love a nice section of freshly paved asphalt as much as the next roadie, but I also know that even bicycles with skinny road tires can get through where cars would have to turn back. I found myself on just such a road a couple of weekends ago when and a friend and I took a bike-camping trip down the coast. Just out of Pacifica is an abandoned blacktop that hasn’t seen an automobile in maybe 50 years. It’s a fun way to bypass the none-too-bike-friendly Devil’s Slide. Some friends of mine dubbed it the “Planet of the Apes Road” for it’s resemblance to the crumbling infrastructure of a long-vanished human civilization. The pavement is cracked and crumbly throughout and missing at some points. In many other parts the foliage has overgrown, leaving a tight path through the scrubby bushes and poison oak. Most any òbike with a modestly determined rider can make it up and over to Montara. It’s the perfect place to practice your post-apocalyptic bike-handling skills.

In the meantime, there are some more immediate items on our bike agenda. This Saturday, July 5th, as part of a weekend-long messenger event called the Quake City Rumble, Cupid and a group of other “indy” messenger companies will be hosting an Independents’ Day BBQ. Feel free to join us at Marx Meadows in Golden Gate Park (near 25th and Lincoln). This also happens to mark the 9th birthday of Cupid Courier Collective!

Also if you get a chance, check out this deck of cards at: http://www.chromebags.com/products/accessories/show/59/. They were made earlier this year to support various messenger associations, and there happens to be a couple of Cupoids featured. If you’re curious ask one of us where you can pick up a deck directly.-tim