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**** We Moved! Click for details! *****
BaileyWorks is a small bag shop in Portsmouth NH making really tough, really good bags for people all around the world. We build courier bags used in every conceivable way by every kind of person you can imagine. We build Messenger bags used by the most daring and the most reckless urban types. Mostly we build bags for people who use their bags alot and want bags that won't let them down.
I started making gear when I was a boy scout about 13 years old. I had it in mind that I needed a tent vestibule for my orange pup tent. I drew something up and took it to my mother. "Will you build this for me?" I asked. "No" she said, "build it yourself". From that humble beginning the BaileyWorks empire was begun. What it is about building gear and bags that has always had an appeal to me? Are you sure you want to ask that question? I guess that the idea of making something that is useful and functional but that is at the same time simple and does what it is supposed to do, dare I say elegantly is a very satisfying challenge to crack.
Most other courier bag companies share the same creation myth. "I was a hard working bike messenger. I couldn't find a bag that was tough enough, good enough. waterproof enough. Because there wasn't anything like what I needed I made my own. My friends saw what I had made and they wanted them as well." Luke builds his own light saber and becomes a Jedi. It is true that all of them created something that wasn't there. I admire all of my competitors and were you to pick almost any of the bags you would wind up with a superior product. I just wish they could say they started making bags because they wanted to sew bags. Exactly what they wanted wasn't available so they made it themselves.
I started making courier bags after I picked up a hitchhiker in Vermont who had one. His bag caught my eye as he climbed into my car and I asked him about it. Well that started about a 40 minute tear about the superior qualities of that bag and how much he loved it and how much it could carry and how it would let him go away for a month if he needed. It would carry his camping gear and allow him to blend into his environment or carry his guitar in the city if it was empty. It kept out water and prying eyes and all of the other ills the world can impart and it safely contained those things he needed, cared about and kept in his kit. He was like a cowboy talking about his favorite horse or someone talking about his best dog. It was a powerful example of bag love.
It was an old DiMartine/Globe Canvas bag from Chinatown in New York. These are the original bike messenger bags that started the category. Kevin Bacon used one in Quicksilver.
I knew right then that this was a bag everyone needed. I knew there were things that could be done differently and that there was lots of room to change and to work with the design. Bikes have always been part of my life and that is true with most everyone else I know.
That was mid winter in 1989 and I have been working on them ever since. In 1993 I went to San Francisco and did a stint as a Bike Messenger myself. I was following a girl. I also wanted to explore SF for moving my business to since Messenger bag companies tend to be in cities that have bike messengers. I also thought some 'street cred' would be a good idea.
I learned a great deal.
I learned that I am a nerd. That the fast paced urban lifestyle was not suited to my suburban wiring. That trying to be accepted by messenger society brought about a shyness my family would not have thought possible. That my inability to navigate would condemn me to $100 weeks and an unsustainable existence in an expensive city. In short I learned that I was not meant to be a knight but to build armor. That learned I came back to my beloved Portsmouth and set up my first commercial shop. After that I began working with messengers in New England and in Boston. I got to know the Boston Blackouts. A truely remarkable bunch of Boston messengers who offered thier friendship and periodic memory loss. I got to know other messenger groups in cities all around the US and other parts of the world. I have worked with people everywhere to refine the bags and improve them. The designs of these bags have been tweeked and improved with the help of more people than I could possibly name. To them I owe a tremendous debt.
Jonathan Bailey
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