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Requiem for a messenger bag.

For Chanukah this year, Heather got me a really nice messenger bag from Coach. While she didn't intend it to replace my Manhattan Portage bag, I've decided to do just that (because the new one really is nice, and it's a lot bigger than I ever would have thought). In any event, that bag and I have had quite a few memories together, so I thought I'd take a trip down memory lane. For what it's worth, in the five years that I've had that bag, it's never torn in any way, shape or form, and while it's faded from its original brilliance, after a good washing it looks remarkably new. The only thing on it that's broken in any way is one of the zippers, and even that works (it's just the tab that broke off years ago). That's some high quality stuff there.

So where has that bag gone over the last five years? Hooo boy...where do I start? It was covered in dust from the World Trade Center on 9/11, which I suppose ties it to history in a very strange way. In other NYC history, I carried it from Times Square to Park Slope on the day of the blackout, and it has traveled from Brooklyn to the Bronx and Queens on numerous occasions, and to Manhattan more times than I'd care to calculate (okay fine...it's been at least 5 times a week for five years, which is around 1,300...but that doesn't even count the many other trips I make on a regular basis). It transported my engagement ring the day I bought it, and kept it hidden as I brought it home, a full month before proposing to Heather. While I didn't have it with me the night I got engaged, I had it with me the day of my bachelor party, our rehearsal dinner, and even the day of our wedding.

It traveled to Italy with Heather and me on our honeymoon, has been to five E3s, been to Texas, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut, California, Virginia, D.C., Maryland, Louisiana, Illinois, Niagara Falls (on the Canadian side) and I'm sure lots of other places I'm forgetting at the moment. It was checked at the coat check at the Metropolitan Opera, carried into countless movie theaters, and checked at one Tori Amos concert. In the eight months that I've been at my current job, it has traveled nearly 28,000 miles across the country and back. It's been through rain, snow and hail, had beer, water and soda spilled on it, and it even survived one cat-related incident.

I have carried that bag with me on practically every single day (certainly every weekday) for the past five years. During that time, it has carried every single issue of Y the Last Man, Batman: Gotham Knights, Gotham Central and Fables, and thousands of Superman comics (at least one every Wednesday).

And so I retire this bag. I'm not getting rid of it...it's far too useful and in such good shape that it would be a shame to get rid of it. But it won't be with me on a daily basis anymore...it will be missed.

Posted by jason at December 12, 2004 02:19 PM | TrackBack | Read more: Geek Culture , NYC , Random Stuff