I remember one of my first conversations with Jerry Wayne. “How long have you been delivering?” I asked. “Well, I’ve been doing bike work of one kind or another for 7 years,” he told me. Then we both left with deliveries and I watched him ride up the left side of the street, between a line of parked cars and oncoming traffic. “How has he done this for 7 years without getting killed or arrested?” I wondered to myself.
A little context in talking about bike kids: A lot of my coworkers are bike punks. The bike kid scene in Charlotte is remarkably well-connected, and the community I’ve been privvy to centers around Common Market in Plaza Midwood. There are a handful of bike clubs, of which I have coworkers in two: RAD (Officially Ride and Destroy, although “Ride and Drink” is another apt moniker I’ve heard) and Jerry’s club, WAR (We All Ride). Jerry describes WAR as “a drinking club with a bike problem.”
So it was easy to understand Jerry as a bike punk. He resents authority. He drinks and smokes marijuana. Jerry could talk all day about the injustice of government and big commerce. And while he points out conspiracies and Illuminati symbolism in all sorts of cultural artifacts, when I asked if Jerry was an activist, he was emphatic that he was not. “I just bitch, you know,” he admitted.
One would be remiss to think of Jerry as merely a bike punk. Jerry and I have had countless chats on topics as varied as philosophy, local law and the traveling salesman problem in mathematics. He’s intelligent and curious. He explores Uptown while on delivery, trying to find accessible back rooms and rooftops. He knows much about such a variety of topics precisely because he’s curious.
Jerry’s primary source of curiosity is other people. He encourages the DIY approach. He pulls his friends together to put on events. Once, Jerry put together an alley cat race, on a whim, in two weeks. The messenger-themed bike race had almost a dozen volunteers, just as many participants and even a host of sponsors and prizes. The multi-stage race was a hysterical romp (I won a prize for finishing last.), and cyclists from as far as Indiana hung around kibitzing for hours afterwards.
Earlier this spring, Jerry also helped plan a regional all-day bike event. Park rangers corralled the bike kids to a suitable corner of Veteran’s Park, demanded that they put away their alcohol and ultimately gave up dealing with them. The event proceeded, complete with Jackass-inspired competitions like tall bike jousting (yes, this is even more dangerous than it sounds) and a bungee bike race. And then there was a scavenger hunt whose objectives included delivering cans of beer and hits of pot to Jerry Wayne, who had shown up already so intoxicated he hardly spoke.
I experienced Jerry’s sensitivity to people firsthand when he asked me to design a poster for his band. He had heard me talk about my dream of designing gig posters. He even had the consideration to ply me with beer, producing a PBR tallboy out of nowhere while we hung out at Common Market. And I have to admit, in the dumbest way possible, it actually made me feel seen and appreciated. Of all his contradictions, maybe this is the most surprising. Jerry Wayne is a bike punk people person.
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Author’s note: This story is just the tip of the iceberg. I plan to post more about Jerry and his friends next week.