Last Saturday night at Cal’s Liquors, under the el tracks at Van Buren and Wells, bike couriers Brent Olds and Mike Morell sat at the bar sipping bottles of PBR and prepping for the Chicago Loop Criterium.
Because you need a permit to hold a sports event on city streets and because participants routinely break traffic laws, alley cat races are illegal. Since the Loop Criterium involved a large group of riders circling the same territory again and again, chances of a bust were higher than usual. Nevertheless Olds and Morell were more worried about the safety of pedestrians around the Goodman and the Palmer House Hilton. “But everybody’s a courier and knows what’s up with urban biking,” reasoned Olds. “Everybody’s burned an intersection before.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
A few minutes later the lead riders whizzed through the intersection of Wabash and Van Buren just a few feet away from Dupree Martin, who was standing on the corner drinking coffee. Slower cyclists brought up the rear, the last few riding at a pace comfortable for conversation. Martin claimed he wasn’t afraid of being hit by the cyclists, although he said one of them had a close call with an el post. “I like to see fun stuff like this in the city.”
“It was hell,” said fourth-place finisher James Pray. “There were so many intersections to go through, and the way everybody was busting lights was so fucking ugly. I don’t like blazing through the lights–I don’t like pissing cars off. Nico’s just a badass, too. He’s strong, intense, and hyper as hell. He bursts through everything pretty good.”
“I think the car accident was some weird thing of karma,” said Olds. “The race was a definite success with no serious injuries. Then this happened right afterwards. It was almost like an exclamation point.”
