Immortal Class, The » (Reprint)

Travis Hugh Culley, a director and playwright, has worked as a bike messenger in Philadelphia and Chicago, where he currently lives.

Travis Hugh Culley went to Chicago to make his name in its thriving theater scene, yet found in his day job a sense of community and fulfillment—and a brotherhood of like-minded individualists—that he encountered nowhere else.

In The Immortal Class, Culley takes us inside the heart and soul of an American urban icon: the bicycle messenger. In describing his own history and those of his peers, he evokes a classic American maverick, deeply woven into the fabric of society—from the pits of squalor to the highest reaches of power and privilege—yet always resolutely, exuberantly outside.

Culley’s voice is at once earthy and soaringly poetic—a Gen-X Tom Joad at hyperspeed. The Immortal Class is a unique personal and political narrative of a cyclist’s life on the street.

Christian Science Monitor - Joshua S. Burek

What's so refreshing about Culley's work is that he overcomes the temptation to hold his graduation from the school of hard knocks as an advanced sociological degree. He doesn't hesitate to point fingers (especially at brutal police and backward laws), but suffused throughout his book is a genuine spirit of modesty. Immortal Class intrigues, and its vignettes of life on two wheels make it one heck of a good ride.