#timecycle

history of courier employment 2009- present.

philly express/ridgways- when i was 17 i got hired as an in-house messenger at a printshop on arch st. technically i was hired by philly express who then subcontracted me to said print shop. super sketchy shitty paying company. made no money but they did have vending machines in the standby spot. i used to sleep on the big reams of paper and miss jobs all the time. there was another printshop in the neighborhood called service point (which is out of business now i heard) and sometimes the in-house dude there who was this gnarly old dude used to ask me to cover cause he was hungover or whatever and pay me a hundred cash which i thought was a kings ransom back then. i had to keep it hush because they were the “rival printshop” or whatever. the same gnarly old dude used to run a “messenger service” and used to call me at 2 AM to see if i could do “deliveries” for 20 dollars a pop cash. i also used to pretend i got a really bad “flat/mechanical” and do 2-bags amazon runs for cash under the table. i lived in a really weird north philly house with 2 other messengers and a social worker and a barista and all i ate were eggo waffles with peanut butter and instant iced tea because i had no money. i also tried to ride a skateboard deck down the stairs and put a huge dent in the wall. 

rapid delivery service- so i worked at ridgways for a few months and turned 18 and decided i hated sitting in a basement waiting to haul 25 lbs of paper for 200 dollars a week. i went to the PBMA photo and remember hearing constance was going back to upenn so i swung thru rapid and got the job and whatever. we used to have this wild run that was a roundtrip from 2nd and somerset to 16th and girard back to 2nd to somerset. i used to get so shook doing that run. there was a real crazy vibe there. everyone hung out in the alley next to the dispatch office and smoked weed and stuff. i remember playing dollar dice games and throwing snowballs at cars with mike t back there and eating a ton of chips from the deli around the corner. the first winter i worked there was real bad and i had to walk from my house over to broad st just because it was the only plowed st. i had my first real bad breakup around then too. eventually everyone quit and it was just me and matt savoia and two other dudes. there was this super old head dude who used to blast method man out of his phone and talk about smoking dust. he had a super cool cannondale with super loud chris king hubs. and the other dude was this fat annoying kid who lived mostly off his girlfriend and never did anything and was super whiny, so it was effectively a two man show. because i didn’t want them to hire more people i ended up doing both the early runs and late runs and started working 8 to 8 every day for like a year until i went to a different company. i moved out of the north philly house and moved in with this girl i met from standing by at this coffeeshop all the time and started dating. 

american expediting- i only worked here for like 3 months because i had to quit rapid, that 8 to 8 shit was fucking killing me. they promised me id make 450-5 a week here and i straight never made more than 350. the late guy didn’t come in until like 2 so he’d stay up all night doing coke and yelling into the radio so id wake up to lifetime or some other shit being blasted right next to my ear. i was totally the runt of the litter, everyone including the dispatcher used to just tell me to shut the fuck up when id call on jobs. its funny now but at the time i’d get so salty. my dispatcher used to call me “rex banner” because i didn’t drink. all this coincided with me and the girl i was seeing getting in this crazy fight and breaking up so i was living in a variety of unsavory places/situations until i ended up living in this basement crawlspace with a bunch of kids i played in this punk band with for like 200 bucks a month. that house was fucking insane. we stole an inflatable kiddie pool from the chinese supermarket down the street and set it up on the roof and had a pool party up there. it was also near this cool indoor bowl so i started skating there a lot after work some days. kids were always up on adderrall so id never get any sleep and it was always super fucking hot and i had no lights in my crawlspace so id accidentally sleep until 5 on the weekends. one night i was out at a warehouse show and my friend tape kept throwing trash at this kid sporkit and trying to get him to fight him. sporkit ended up coming back to the house i lived at and got all high and drunk and slashed my rear tire and i chased him down ellsworth st. with a kitchen knife in my underwear. his parents ended up buying me a new tire and tube after i threatened him a bunch.

timecycle- i worked at amex for a super short time and then devon called me to see if i still wanted a job so i started working for time. i remember hitting up amex to give my week’s notice and they were like “actually you can just turn in your radio right now” so i guess they fired me. i moved back in with the girl i had been dating and was chilling. right before christmas a cab busted a light on 17th and hit me. i went up over the hood, through the windshield and over the top. i was somehow okay but my bike was fucked. i had to walk home and then go buy a christmas tree the same night. outside of that i didn’t do much except work and paint for a while. then we broke up and i moved into this house in south philly with two dudes i played in bands with. so much mayhem around this time. i had this fucked passport run that was baba’s but he never wanted to do it so i had to do it because i was early guy. went on tour twice. i eventually got super sick/tired of philly after a bad relationship and started plotting a move. i used to kick it at milk boy in the morning, drink 2 mochas and skip breakfast and then do all my dailies and a few jobs then go back to milk boy and get lunch, then do all my afternoon dailies and go home. i got doored on 17th going like mach 10 on my road bike and the seam of the door peeled the skin on my knuckle back so you could see the bone. it was heavy, i started bleeding all over creation and ended up riding to the ER. i got six stitches in my hand and went back to work. i cut them out a week later. i was getting into a ton of trouble fighting at work and stuff and eventually decided to move to san Francisco. i hit up a few of my friends out there and nope put me in touch with a few dudes and booked a flight and split. 

SF

TCB- super weird startupish messenger 2.0 company. handled food, flowers, wine, perishables. had a weird time adjusting to it coming from 4 years of legal work. other than that, super cool. super good crew of dudes. spent most of my time there sleeping on couches or in the capp st. warehouse but everyone was super welcoming. coming from such a vibey angry city like philly to living in this weird mellow open air mayhem city was a crazy change for me, hella liberating. working until 10:30 at night was kind of odd though. ended up meeting a girl through orfn who let me sleep in her front room in noe valley for free which was tight. did a lot of exploring/tagging and running wine and food at night. ended up getting thrown out of the spot i was staying around the same time as the girl i was seeing wanted to move back to philly so i split town for NYC.

NYC

clementine courier- sick little co-op. was based in chinatown outta some art dudes apartment when i worked there. his mom was always wandering around in a nighty and there was some skinny white girl who i think produced rap videos? weird vibe. lotsa free coconut water and you could see a beat hangover from the window. me and shark caught tags on the roof. i got arrested by DT’s the second month i lived in nyc.

samurai messenger service- my current employer for the last year. really cool with letting me come in late cause of court dates. 

skate love park

sling packages

listen to reggae