Sonia Serba was born and raised in Scarborough, Canada, a suburb of Toronto. She left home at 16 and was determined to make it work in downtown Toronto but ended up back home to finish high school before she left for the last time at age 18.
Having worked at a skateboard shop in the 90s, record stores, waitressing, and office temp jobs, she soon stumbled into bike messenger work in 2003. Alleycat racing soon followed in October 2005, on her first converted Kuwahara fixie she’d been riding for one week at that point. She almost crashed out the gate but came in first female and she was hooked.
Sonia’s come in first place in the female category in every Toronto messenger race she’s competed in – save for two: her first brakeless fixed race before she learned how to skid and one where the race fell apart and her competitor was DQ’ed.
She’s attended 5 Cycle Messenger World Championships around the world in Sydney, Dublin, Tokyo, Toronto and New York City.
She worked with the fabled Cyclehawk Messengers for a few months in NYC in 2011 and raced & placed in a few alleycats while there. She starred in a Bern helmet ad campaign the same year, photographed by messenger photographer Amy Bolger. Sonia was featured in the legendary messenger episode of the documentary TV show Tribes of the 21st Century in 2008.
In 2009 she ran a monthly cycling-themed dance night in Toronto’s Kensington Market featuring local bike videos of various disciplines, an open mic contest, and local cyclist DJs.
Having performed poetry in the late ’90s and made the leap to rap under the name “Sunny D” in 2001, she put out two EPs of original music and her love of underground Toronto rap still runs deep. She’s since retired her mic but her music gained her recognition and her aggressive riding style gained her respect among the worldwide messenger community.
Even tough she’s caught flack from many male organizers and competitors for it, she’s been a long-time vocal supporter of equal prizing for women’s and men’s podiums because she’s seen the unequal rewards for equal work first hand. She’s also a huge fan of female cyclists and has often loaned equipment and encouragement to help females to the podium at local alleycats and CMWCs.
Having transitioned from alleycat racing into sanctioned criterium racing, she is still known to kick ass at alleycats at the ripe age of 46. Last year, in 2023, she won both the 50km Mayday, and 27km Bike Gods Must Be Crazy alleycats becoming Toronto’s first female overall alleycat winner in over a decade, joining the ranks of only 3 other little-known females (Simone Charles, Crissima Pearce, and Kael Deverell) to do it in Toronto. She came in second place in the Female Masters’ category in her first crit race Tour Di Via Italia in Windsor 2023, and snatched first place in both the Kingston Spring Classic and Ottawa’s Preston Street Criterium this year.
Sonia has been officially off the road as a messenger since 2015, having served 12 winters on the streets of Toronto and NYC, though she’ll still mess occasionally if called in by her former company. She went to college in 2017 and got a diploma in fashion design and currently works as a machine operator in a garment factory in Toronto.
Pussycat is her first ever alleycat as an organizer. She realized that though she’s seeing more females than ever riding bikes post-pandemic, there are less female alleycat registrants than ever. Her goal with Pussycat is to try and inject a one-time boost of female participation into the alleycat game and hopefully help bolster the numbers of females registering in subsequent races. The time to pass the torch is coming soon!
Another reason Sonia is throwing Pussycat is to honour the amazing female messengers and racers who have come before her whose names and accomplishments are little known, though they paved the way for the women who ride and race the streets now. Too often we neglect to honour our female trailblazers and Pussycat aims to shine a bright light on those women who changed the game for the rest of us.
Let’s all come together on August 17th 2024 to celebrate females’ underrated contributions to the messenger, alleycat, and street bike scene with a huge party and race for one day this year.
