Suffer from Kozmo.com Nostalgia? This Video Will Cure Ya

A Kozmo.com messenger narrowly avoiding being crushed by a car in lower Manhattan, circa 2000

Kozmo.com died more than six years ago, but many Netizens (don't you hate that word?) still miss it. But take a gander at this 6-minute video of the back office operations, which aired shortly before Kozmo.com went kaput, and you'll see a different view: workers crowded in a dank warehouse, founder Joseph Park bragging that he "lives there in a sleeping bag," middle-aged employees noting that they work 80-hour weeks, and bike messengers careening around lower Manhattan, probably without health or accident insurance.

The video, which was clearly promotional in nature (it aired on a network called FinanceVision) attempts to show us how all the craziness and hard work paid off, but because we now know the fate of Kozmo's 1,100 employees and how dearly Kozmo cost investors, all the adolescent lunatic energy looks like nothing more than a bone-headed exercise in pure Netslavery.

For more on Kozmo, see Cyber-Nostalgia: Why the Web Still Weeps For Kozmo.com, originally published on Ghost Sites May 2, 2004, or click the "Kozmo.com" tag below.