Independent Fabrication have strong roots within the world of bicycle couriers and the story of The Bradley Courier is an example of the supportive and generous nature of the IF staff and how they are willing to step up to support fallen comrades.
The Background
After work on New Years Eve 2003, Chris Rowe of Independent Fabrication went downtown to meet up with his messenger girlfriend and some of her friends. This included hooking up with Mark Bradley at the local courier hangout and after a few pints, Mark left early to go home to his wife. About 45min after Mark left, as Chris travelled home crossing over the Fort Point Channel (the site of the Boston Tea Party) he saw a bunch of police and ambulance lights.
Approaching the scene he could see a few bikes on the sidewalk and a nervous bus driver talking to the cops. Then he saw Mark hobbling around with a sore ankle. It turned out he had slipped and fell on some black ice and couldn’t ride home. Chris (suprisingly sober at the time) rushed home, grabbed his car, went back and picked him up.
Once Mark was in the car it was soon realized he had more than just a sprained ankle – He couldn’t put any weight on it and was in excruciating pain. After being dropped off at home to his wife, Mark went to the hospital where they found he was in need of some fairly serious surgery.
Upon finding out that Mark had no health insurance and was the sole rider for his messenger company (and his wife was his dispatcher), Chris Rowe and his girlfriend decided to organise a raffle to help him raise some money to cover the medical bills, with Chris offering his time and experience to create a custom paint job – but he had to clear it with boss Lloyd Graves before taking the idea further.
The raffle appeal
Chris broke the news to Lloyd the next day and then realised he had forgotten how Lloyd used to work for Mark in the days between the demise of Fat City and the birth of Independent Fabrication. In fact Mark was riding one of three prototype IF messenger fixed gear bikes. Lloyd quickly nixed the idea of a paintjob raffle and proposed that IF raffle a couple of custom frames.
News of the raffle was posted on a few messenger mailing lists, (including this message on the dccourier boards) and Chris’ girlfriend and some of her friends sold tickets to the local Boston bike culture community. The raffle was held at the after party of a messenger race and just minutes before being kicked out of the venue, Mark drew one name from Nebraska and another from Rhode Island.
The Nebraska bike is the one pictured on the site (currently proudly owned by Jeff Harr) and is known as The Bradley Courier. Mark got every penny raised in the raffle (IF donated all materials and labor) and went on to make a full recovery. Today he is back on the streets of Boston delivering packages every day…
The Bike
This special edition bike used some prototype tubes for the seat stays (round ones perhaps made by Dedacciai?) and also a bulge-butted 27.2 seat tube, so IF didn’t call it a Crown Jewel but rather aptly dubbed it The Bradley Courier. It should rightly be considered a one-off with some unique provenance, but most would recognize it as a Crown Jewel SE. As owner Jeff Harr says, “I wish the photos captured how luxurious the welds are – they look like the welds on the Moots seat post – very elegant“. More photos here in the register…
Chris’ artistry shines through with an extra special hot-rod flamed paint scheme which pays respect to the Irish tricolour flag (where Mark is from). The decals were prototypes at the time and the whole bike has a heavy coat of prismatique lacquer which sparkles in the sun. The fork is natural carbon Reynolds Ouzo, but Chris put some extra IF decals and coated it in prismatique as well, which you can see a little of in some photos. Upon building the bike, Jeff had a local graphic artist airbrush the “Cinelli” logo on the Integralter bars, which really sets it off!
Thanks to Mark Bradley, Chris Rowe and Jeff Harr for providing material used in the writing of this article.
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