smh.com.au:

There was a time not so long ago when tattoos, cut-off shorts and shoulder satchels appeared to rule Sydney’s streets.

It was the late 1990s, the dotcom boom was in full swing and hundreds of bicycle couriers roamed the central business district at will, pausing for no man - or red light.

So hectored were pedestrians by wheel-borne urban cowboys that in 2002 the City of Sydney pressured bicycle courier companies to sign an accord, in which they promised to refrain from intimidating or endangering other road users.

Four years on, bicycle couriers have become the endangered species, their numbers dwindling in the face of an ever-greater take-up of high-speed internet, PDF files, digital photography and audio.

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