fakenger

n. a person who imitates the fashion of, or uses equipment similar to, a bike messenger. Subjects: English, Automobiles & Transportation, Derogatory, Slang

Editorial Note: Synonyms are “posenger” and “pretendenger.” Etymological Note: fake + messenger

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Citations: 2004 [Chris Rocket (lypchris)] @ San Francisco, California Myspace (Dec. 14) “fakengers”: Okay, so what’s up with all the fakengers? That’s right, kids riding fixed-gear or track bikes, with their pantlegs rolled, sporting the messenger look, but without radios or usable bags. 2005 [The Joker] Courier Dispatch (New York City) (Apr. 14) “The Track Bike”: I started noticing them; hipster punks riding around on old road bikes with a fixed gear and (yuck) a brake or two. Most of them wore distasteful, mess bag like devices that are sold at the Gap and a shiny new kryptonite chain around their waists’.…Many couriers have funny names for these characters like culture-vulture, poser, dick-jocker, tourist hipster scum and fakenger. They don’t have real track bikes, but converted road “wack bikes.” ”its fashion, not function”, says Alex, who opened Bicycle Doctor (133 Grand street,), a Brooklyn bike shop catering to just about everybody that sells a lot of track bikes. “In the last year I have sold more track bikes than in the four previous years combined.” Being in Williamsburg a huge percentage of these bikes must be being sold to poser, hipster douche bag fakenger scum. 2005 [jojo] Den of Awkwardness (Chicago) (Nov. 22) “Poser”: Posenger? Fakenger? Pretendenger? These are just a few of the terms that I am sure went through every messengers head. But, who wants to be one of those kids? I was one for three years and it isn’t all that. If you want to get treated like crap for a living then you should be a messenger. If you want to use what works than you just happen to look like a person that knows what is going on! 2006 Ephraim the Track Bike San Francisco Weekly (California) (Apr. 26) “Ask a Track Bike!”: It is difficult to tell the difference between a hipster and a messenger. Same bags, same pants, same too-small shirt, same studded belt; tats, piercings, alterna-hair: check. I know that messengers like to call the hipsters “fakengers,” with disdain. Do [messengers] deserve to feel that the functionality and former distinctiveness of their dress and vehicle choices have been co-opted by society at large? Or should we all just respect each other’s choices and be glad that more bikes than ever are on the streets? 2006 Usenet: rec.bicycles.tech (Aug. 8) “Re: Portland: Fixies are Illegal”: That messengers like to call each other fakengers on the internet isn’t surprising—look how often nitwits on RBT demand (apparently seriously) whether other posters who disagree with them actually ride bicycles. 2006 [Mike Bene] BikePortland.org (Oct. 4) “Passing cyclist saves man’s life, makes plea for helmet use”: For centuries people have done some pretty silly things in the name of fashion, and right now in portland there is a prevalant bikie / “fakenger” fashion. the fact of the matter is that most people around here who choose not to wear a helmet do it to look fashionable. every day i see the anti-fashionistas riding around on their faux fixies checking their style in the reflection of storefront windows. 2006 Damon Poeter San Francisco Chronicle (California) (Dec. 31) “Critical Class”: “They’re dangerous,” says Larry Morris of nonmessenger—or “fakengers,” as he calls them—track bikes. Morris, 38, rides a largely self-built 9-speed Bridgestone mountain bike on the job for Western Messenger. His routes take him up and down the city’s brutal hills, making a fixed-gear bike impractical.

Posted 5 Jan 07 | Permalink | Tell a Friend

Reader comments:

Eyyyee, who’s the fakenger? I converted my 20 yr. old road bike to a fixed gear, ‘cause I like the pared-down simplicity, and the feel of the ride. I use a front brake, and egg beaters too. I don’t give a fuck if it offends messenger posers. Man, I walked into one of their stores, Trackstar I think, and those fuckers wouldn’t even talk to me. I felt like I was in high school. How many of those guys actually work as messengers anyways? I thought they were all put out of business by fax machines, emails and PDFs. The only guys I see making a living on bicycles these days are hispanics delivering junk food on junky mountain bikes.

by Paul Mathers 27 Mar 07, 0104 GMT

I’ve been known to troll the roads, in finest fakenger style, new Langster, timbuk2 bag, the whole thing - even the EMO glasses if I didn’t just prefer a contact lens in my good eye. And I made my living that way! I have a small biz, and decided to go bike only, and did! Put in decent miles every day, with that singlespeed - and had a bike with gears + a Burley trailer for heavy hauling. Mostly it was me and my Timbuks, I had two of them, would go around and do my buying with one, go home and drop that one off, grab the other and go do my grocery shopping, or maybe another buying run. In a way I was my own messenger.

I eventually got pissed by the difficulties of renting a car to do swapmeet sales, and caved in and got a car again - a Prius. However, as much as I like the Prius it’s still a car. I get no exercise because I end up using it instead of hopping on a bike. It costs me money. I’m no longer learning new roads and new interesting places like I was while biking.

So I may be fakenger’ing up the streets of Silicon Valley again sometime soon, making a living. I’ll be the one at the Sunnyvale Post Office with a Burley trailer fulla packages.....

I see a bright future ahead for those who “pedal their ass” for a living - as gas prices go up, and as the population ages, I see a lot of folks putting 2 and 2 together and finding it’s a lot easier to go carless and while they may do their own traveling around, some don’t have the time and some can’t (old etc) so I see people ordering a load of groceries, having various messenger type things done for a small fee. We may see lots of work for messengers to do a lot of the small jobs people used to drive their 5000-lb SUV to do.

by Alex Carter 17 Apr 07, 0756 GMT

If you ask me, a fakenger is someone who rides around acting like a messenger making deliveries for an imaginary dispatcher. Don’t confuse a fakenger with a hipster. If your a hipster, fly your hipster flag high, just don’t tell people your a messenger if your not one, that’s just sad.

by Mark Hooton 01 Feb 08, 0703 GMT

There’s two words: fake which is obvious and enger deriving from messenger.

Why would someone imitating the fashion be a fakenger?

by Emo 22 Mar 08, 0847 GMT