Long ago, in the days before everybody and their brother rolled with a messenger bag, even before bike messenger extraordinaire Puck was on (and then voted off) MTV's The Real World, there was one messenger bag that everybody had to have: a black Timbuk2.

Sure, you may have gotten around town on a fixed-gear bike, and maybe you even wore an obscure Italian cycling cap with the brim flipped up, but without a Timbuk2 you were nothing. Straight out of the mean streets of San Francisco's financial district they came, and these bags took no prisoners.

Okay, so maybe these days you can order your own custom Timbuk2, and even Lands End makes a messenger bag. And, okay, perhaps the anti-establishment chic of the messenger bag is gone. But you can still go old school with a simple black Timbuk2.