Pedal

Best-selling author Peter Sutherland’s newest title, Pedal, is a wild ride alongside a band of New York City’s most feared and respected inhabitants: bike messengers. In a book of photographs and a documentary on DVD, Sutherland follows the frenetic trips and lives of the cyclists who live by their own rules of the road.

In Pedal, Sutherland documents bike messengers competing in the 2005 Cycle Messenger World Championships in New York City. Going straight to the center of this urban subculture, Sutherland serves up compelling portraits of the competitors from dozens of countries, in motion and at ease, checking out each other’s bags, lingering over modifications to bikes and bodies. Between events like sprints, distance racing, and skid contests, Sutherland shows us the riders’ elegant physicality, complex individuality, and unique community that crosses boundaries of race, gender, age, and class. And he doesn’t shy away from the blood and bruises that come part and parcel with the messenger’s life. Sutherland delves deep into the world of the messengers—a world usually seen from the outside—and returns with a dynamic document that evokes the unbridled anarchy and energy of its inhabitants.

The accompanying DVD is a fast-paced documentary film about surviving in the streets of New York City as a bicycle messenger. It features messengers from all walks of life as they battle traffic in a race to make their next delivery on time. Directed by Sutherland and produced by Ana Lombardo, Pedal the documentary lets viewers live the spectacle of the delivery itself. It premiered in 2001 at the South by Southwest film festival, and was later acquired by the Sundance channel, where it aired until 2004.

Peter Sutherland is a filmmaker and photographer. He worked as a director of photography on Stoked, a documentary film about famed skateboarder GATOR, directed by Helen Stickler. In May, 2004, he released his first book, Autograf: New York City’s Graffiti Writers (powerHouse Books, 2004), to worldwide acclaim. He has shown his work at Bape, Tokyo; colette, Paris; International Center of Photography, New York; and CC room, Berlin; among others. Sutherland is a contributing photographer to magazines such as i-D, VICE, and XXL. He lives and works in New York City.

Zephyr is a graffiti writer and former bike messenger. He is the author of Style Master General (Regan Books, 2001), the biography of Dondi White.

Ken Miller was born and still lives in Brooklyn, New York. Subsequent to his birth, he went to college, traveled the world, made movies, wrote books and articles, went to lots of parties, and met cool and interesting people. For the past three years or so he has been the editor-in-chief of Tokion Magazine.

SWOON has made public art in New York for five years, and has undertaken projects ranging from billboard alterations to site-specific installations. She is the founder of Toyshop collective, and has collaborated with collectives including Glowlab, Black Label, Change Agent, the Madagascar Institute, and the Barnstormers.

Ana Lombardo is a native New Yorker and a prop person on major motion pictures, most recently for Paramount, Universal Studios, and HBO. During hiatuses, Lombardo bicycles and scuba and sky dives around the world, and continues her research on global subcultures. She currently lives in New York and works on the hit HBO TV series The Sopranos.