I worked as a messenger on the streets of Stockholm, Sweden for 4 years. And in the same way BMX grabbed a hold of my heart, so did this.
To start with the work itself, it was this feeling of freedom, and yeah, we obviously had to go to the correct addresses to deliver and some people would argue that is not free at all. But I always had this feeling that Stockholm was our city, we knew every street and intersection, floating on top of all the traffic, nothing could stop you.
And then we have the people, this feeling of community. It didn’t matter which company your fellow messenger friend worked for, we were like co-workers even if the companies technically was competitors.
I always had the feeling that no matter how challenging and less fun the job got, it was never the job itself that sucked, always outside factors like weather, punctures or hangovers.
I remember one day in particular, because it was the day that led to me starting my own bag company.
It was a wet and cold November day in 2017, the coldest kind of day, the kind of day where your socks are wet from you start in the morning until you get off work next Friday… I was hauling these envelopes around the inner core of the city, really easy and well paid deliveries or “Smör” (butter) as we call them.
Just before the last drop the bag I had then gave in to the almost zero degree rain and started leaking, the last envelope got wet.