As the last surviving member of the Ramones, drummer Marky Ramone was bound to have plenty of road stories for his new biography Punk Rock Blitzkrieg: My Life as a Ramone. But while we were expecting to read about good times, bad gigs, and the highs and lows of early punk, what caught us off guard were Marky's war stories of his post-recovery days as an undercover bike messenger in New York. After working the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, Marky wasn't ready to return to music. Instead, he decided "the music would come from the spokes of a bicycle wheel."
"I became a bike messenger. I would get up at five thirty in the morning, eat a big breakfast, ride the subway in with my bike, and report to the dispatch office on West Twenty-Seventh Street. I wore sweatpants and bicycle shoes. I tucked my hair into a baseball cap. People may have known who Marky Ramone was, but that was not me. This was Bike Messengers Anonymous."
As it turns out, Marky isn't alone in his foray into the world of delivering packages by bike. In fact, if the stories of these well-known superstars (not to mention my own meteoric rise to the very bottom of Bicycling's masthead) are any indication, putting in hard time as a bike messenger might just be the best indication of future success.