Known as urban street messengers, today the modern bike messenger stands synonymous with their predecessors, the pony express, but rather than a horse or pony their trusted steed rides between their legs on two wheels. They’re gritty. Foul mouthed, rough and tough street couriers. Glamour aside, these men and women have an unforgiving job keeping them outside in sun and sleet, rain or shine, riding for good or bad. They remain lurkers of the urban streets wheeling between buses, semi trucks, taxis and oblivious street pedestrians, delivering the valuable documents that keep the wheels of progress turning.

San Francisco Bicycle Messengers, created by Beryl Fine, captures the charm and the obscurity. The rough exterior and the human character has been taken and abstracted by the camera’s 35mm lens, to revile honest portraits of these men and women.