The Car On East 86th Street

You may have heard that we had a blizzard in New York City on December 26th. They say it was in the vicinity of 20 inches and was the 6th largest snowstorm ever recorded here, but I don't know if it was really that big. It was certainly a huge storm, but men in general and weathermen in particular tend to exaggerate when it comes to inches.

In any case, the story here wasn't so much the storm itself as it was the failure of those in charge to clean it up. In New York the snow removal is done by the Sanitation Department. The army of sanitation workers, who are normally removing trash, become the people plowing and salting the streets. It's a highly organized, military-style operation when it's done correctly. The city streets are designated primary, secondary, and tertiary in importance and are attacked in that order. In Manhattan, this means the highways, avenues, and major cross-town streets are cleared first.

Taxi drivers need to be extremely aware of predictions of snowstorms, as the potential for disaster is everywhere even in relatively minor events. Unfortunately, most of us learn this the hard way. I was initiated by ice myself one night in 1981. We were in the beginning of a medium-sized storm and I was driving a Checker cab which had a two-way radio in it for business purposes (no longer allowed in yellow cabs). A call for a lucrative out-of-town ride kept coming through and no one would take it. Eventually the dispatcher was sounding desperate and I hesitatingly agreed to do the job, taking an executive from "Black Rock", the CBS headquarters on 6th Avenue, to his home in Darien, Connecticut. Although the snow was steadily falling, I had no problem getting the fellow to his residence. But a couple of minutes after dropping him off I skidded into a snow drift as I came down a hill and got completely stuck there. The Checkers (like the Ford Crown Victorias we drive today) had rear-wheel drive and thus had terrible traction in the snow. These were the days before cell phones, of course, and I was on a back road at midnight with no civilization in sight, so I was truly stuck and quite upset with Checkers, the weather, God, and especially myself for having taken the job against my better judgement in the first place. Luckily, a couple of very nice people in a four-wheel drive Jeep eventually came along and towed me out of there, even tagging along behind me to make sure I made it back to the highway safely. Lesson learned, and here it is. (New York taxi drivers, take note.)

1. If possible, don't drive at all during a real snow storm (more than three inches). Your chances of having an accident are enormously greater than normal and you won't make decent money, anyway, because the weather will slow you down to less than half speed and there isn't much business on the streets. People tend to stay indoors while the snow is coming down.

2. Wait a few hours until after the snow has stopped falling before venturing out. If the Sanitation Department is on the ball, the primary roads will be plowed and salted by that time.

3. For 24 hours after a major storm, ride with your "off-duty" light on and your doors locked. Ascertain that a passenger isn't leaving Manhattan before you allow him into your cab. The reason for this is that however bad the secondary and tertiary streets may be in Manhattan, they're much, much worse in the outer boroughs. Plus it will take you forever to get back to Manhattan (without a passenger) if you make it back at all.

4. Use the avenues and major cross-town streets as much as possible while driving in Manhattan. If a passenger's destination is on a street that hasn't been properly plowed, ask if it would be all right if you could drop them off on the corner (unless the passenger is disabled in any way).

Following my own rules, I called my garage when the storm was just beginning and told the dispatcher I would not be coming in, even though it was a Sunday, normally one of my driving days. He said that was okay, a fortunate response because the owner of the garage (my boss) might have instructed him to tell any driver who didn't come in that he'd have to pay for the shift even if he didn't work it. That's the way it's been since the recession started in '08 and garages have been overflowing with drivers, some of whom are turned away because there are no cabs for them. This surplus of drivers is a new thing in New York, by the way. In all my years in this business, there had never been a time when there were enough drivers for all the cabs. Until now.

Anyway, I agreed to drive the Monday night shift. It was seemingly a good strategy because the snow, as predicted, stopped falling on Monday morning and that gave the Sanitation Department over six hours to salt and plow the primary streets before my shift would begin at 5:00. That should be enough time, right?

Wrong!

I was alarmed when emerging from the subway to see major Manhattan avenues unsalted and snow-covered - not good! Walking a few blocks to my garage, I stared in astonished dismay at a bus that had been abandoned and was left completely blocking an intersection. It was an eerie sight I had never seen before and looked more like post-disaster than post-snowstorm.

I entered my garage where employees were coping with the chaos that blizzards create in the taxi world. I was given the keys to a cab and told it was "ready to go", meaning it wasn't stuck in a snow drift. An hour later, after clearing the cab and freeing it from the drift it wasn't in, I pulled out into the slippery night, wondering if what I'd seen between the subway stop and my garage had been an aberration.

It had not been. Manhattan was a mess. The avenues and major cross-town streets such as Houston and Canal had been plowed perhaps once before the snow had stopped falling and then were newly covered with a few more inches, enough to keep the top speed of vehicles at around ten miles per hour. Even Times Square was a slippery adventure at 8 p.m. And that's how things remained throughout the night. It wasn't until 2 a.m. that I finally saw some salters and plows on a few of the avenues. And the abandoned bus that I'd seen on my way to the garage was not alone - I encountered at least half a dozen more during the course of my shift.

As the night wore on, veterans of New York snowstorms such as myself and many of my passengers realized something was amiss and we began speculating through our anger as to what the hell was going on. This storm had not been a surprise. It had been forecast accurately more than a day before it arrived. Where was the Sanitation Department? Suspicion began to grow that this may not have been merely incompetence but may have been a union tactic against management - the conspiracy theory! The mayor, who is still trying to master the art of speaking from both sides of his mouth, at first was making excuses, saying that we'd "never seen a storm like this". (Oh, really? I have.) Then, noticing the rising tide of outrage, he started putting heads on pikes. Investigations have since been initiated by the City Council and even prosecutors, so we may someday get to the bottom of it.

But be that as it may, I realized in retrospect that, like many inconveniences and minor disasters, something of value had been inadvertently created by the mess. It was something I'd seen during the night but which took me until the next day to comprehend that it potentially had the stuff of legend about it. Something symbolic. Something that could stand as a metaphor for the angst of urban living.

It was the car on East 86th Street.

At 10 p.m. I picked up a woman at 86th and Amsterdam on the Upper West Side who wanted to go straight across the Central Park transverse to 91st Street and 1st Avenue on the Upper East Side. Our route would take us all the way across town on 86th, a major, four-lane cross-street that runs in both directions (in other words, it's not one-way, like most streets in Manhattan). It was this woman who told me about "the car". Apparently this vehicle had achieved instant infamy in the neighborhood.

She said that not too long after the snow had started coming down heavily during the previous night, at around 7 p.m., a car had been abandoned right in the middle of 86th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues. Not double-parked. Not pushed off to the side. Just sitting there in the middle of 86th Street. She, like I, had seen many big snowstorms in New York City, but she could not recall ever seeing a car just sitting there in the middle of a major crosstown street. Neither could I.

She went on to tell me that earlier in the evening she had taken a bus across town to the West Side, where I'd picked her up. The route of this bus went along 86th Street, but had encountered a problem in transit. It couldn't make its way around this abandoned car - which was still there eight hours after the snow had stopped falling - nor could any of the other buses on the 86th Street route.

Solution? Take a detour. All day long and into the night the buses that normally go straight across 86th had instead been making a left turn onto 2nd Avenue, going down to 79th Street (the next major cross-street), and then coming back uptown to 86th on 3rd Avenue in order to avoid "the car".

Slip-sliding along 86th Street, we wondered when we got over to the East Side if "the car" would still be there between 2nd and 3rd Avenues. Actually I was hoping it would be, as I wanted to witness the spectacle for myself.

It was!

We had a mutual lamentation about the absurdity of it. How many individuals and city agencies had dropped the ball here? First, of course, the person who had walked away from his own car and had not come back to get it out of there, even many hours after the snow had stopped falling. Second, the people in the area who assumingly could have at least helped him push the car off to the side. Third, whatever towing service the owner of the car could not get help from. Fourth, the Traffic Department which normally will tow your car away if it is twenty seconds beyond the time posted on the "no parking" sign. Fifth, the Police Department, which has tow trucks of its own. And sixth, the Transit Authority which we can assume was too busy trying to get their own buses out of the snow to do anything about a car that was blocking one of its routes.

There was, however, one city agency which had not dropped the ball.

The Sanitation Department.

For surrounding "the car" on both sides were piles of snow which had been deposited there by the plows attached to city garbage trucks, thus creating an impassable island in the middle of 86th Street.

You've gotta love irony.

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Three Nights

I've often said that in nearly any night of cab driving in New York City something memorable happens, either in the cab itself or out on the street. If you could accurately remember each night behind the wheel, you'd most likely recall that, oh, yeah, that was the night that that happened. Or that was the night I saw that on the street. Last week was no different:

 

Sunday, 3:30 a.m.

The "city that never sleeps" was taking one of its catnaps. I had been cruising on my usual routes for more than half an hour without finding a fare, and it's at times like these that a cab driver can let his guard down, meaning that you may be so glad to get a passenger - any passenger - that you ignore the fact that the person who just got in your taxi looks exactly like Godzilla. Translation: it's a teenaged male who looks like a thug. He may turn out to be a nice kid, but you don't know that when you see him on the street. He just looks like a modern, urban version of the monster from the Japanese movie.

So I stopped for this kid on 6th Avenue at 56th Street, a "good" part of town. Even before he opened the door I felt I had made a mistake. When you've handled the same particles for many years, the oddities stand out. You may not know exactly what it is that keeps your attention on it, but you know that the particle hasn't made it through your internal filtering system. Call it instinct.

The kid was all wrong. Yes, he looked like a thug with his baseball cap pulled half-way down across his face, but many city kids look like thugs today. It's stylish. When he sat down in the back seat and told me his destination, 86th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, his speech seemed to be affected by drugs. He was coherent, but there was an odd slurring to his words. Nevertheless, I felt comfortable with his destination, also not a bad part of town, so I started driving.

Next, I tried to make some kind of conversation with him, but it turned out to be impossible due to his iPod earphones. The kid was in his own little world back there and could not be communicated with. But I wanted his money for the ride, so I ignored this additional danger sign and kept on driving.

Now, this is a big flunk on my part because I have a system for handling passengers like him (see The Three Strikes and You're Out System) but I failed to employ it. And it's especially a flunk because there have been a few taxi driver murders in New York City in the last couple of months and this kid could have been the one. Fortunately he didn't pull out a weapon. But what he did was this...

First, he changed his destination at the end of the ride (another danger sign) - now he wanted to go to 88th Street, which he mumbled in that slurred voice, just as we approached 86th. Then he wanted me to turn on 88th, which I did. Then, after some indecision, he told me to stop in the middle of the block. Then he opened the back door without paying me first. Then he stepped outside onto the street. And then he did what the experienced fare-beater has learned to do.

He ran at top speed in the opposite direction. Don't tell anyone, but that's the best way of getting a free ride. (Other than just asking for one.)

So his semi-stupor was an act. I felt the sting of being had, but wasn't really that upset about the $7 I'd lost on the ride with this punk. I was more upset with myself for having been so careless. Still, the game was on, so I put the cab in reverse and backed out of the block, hoping to catch him even though that was close to impossible. Then I circled the block one time thinking maybe I'd spot him and then get extraordinarily lucky and find a cop at the same time. But of course that didn't happen.

So it was money and time lost. But it was memorable. And if it was memorable, then it's a story. And a story has value, so I guess it wasn't a total loss after all.

Monday, 2 a.m.

And speaking of stories, one of the best sources for them in the world of taxi-driving is road rage. In a city of limited space but unlimited vehicles, the struggle for turf and manners never ends. Every taxi driver in New York has road rage stories. And Monday at 2 a.m. provided me with yet another one. And it was in a rather exotic category - "Road Rage Incidents With Garbage Truck Drivers".

Of all the different types of vehicles competing with each other for space in New York City, I think the struggle between taxicabs and garbage trucks is the most vicious. It's primarily a matter of size. Garbage trucks are enormous and often block the narrow, one-way streets while loading up. And there sits the taxi driver behind the garbage truck unable to go where he needs to go to find his next passenger or to bring the passenger he already has to the destination. It's an automatic turf war.

What often makes the situation worse is the fuck-you attitude of the garbage truck drivers. There is rarely an apology or a thank you from someone who has just taken several minutes of your time (and therefore money) so he could do his job. And there is no tit for tat in this relationship - the taxi driver never gets to take up any of the garbage truck driver's time, except for the occasional drop-off of a passenger in the middle of the block. And that's only for a few moments. Anyway, this endless conflict is a part of the life of a taxi driver and we learn to endure the suffering.

But there is only so much a person can take. And Monday at 2 a.m. was the last straw for me.

I had picked up a passenger on 56th Street between Broadway and 8th Avenue who was heading for Queens. This meant that we would drive straight across 56th to 3rd Avenue and then make two more turns to get onto the Queensboro Bridge. 56th Street happens to be a superb street for catching green lights and, wanting to impress my passenger (an attractive blonde) and at the same time start a conversation, I said to her that I thought we could get a green light at every intersection all the way to 3rd Avenue. She was doubtful that this was possible, but was curious to see if it could be done, which was the effect I'd hoped to create.

So off we went.

We indeed did make every light all the way across town. The blonde was impressed. And then, like in a scene from a movie, just at the moment when I was about to drive through the final green light at 3rd, a man walked out in front of the cab with his hands in the air. I stopped, thinking he was some kind of an idiot who was crossing the street against the light. But he didn't cross the street. He stood in the middle of the intersection for a moment, then turned around and made another hand signal to his buddy in a garbage truck who proceeded to back the truck onto 56th Street, completely blocking me and making it impossible to pass.

So instead of waiting two seconds to allow me to go through the green light - and it should be noted that there were no cars behind me - these guys felt the right thing to do was to stop me in my tracks and let me wait a couple of minutes so they could load a large pile of garbage from the sidewalk into their truck.

I was outraged. It was an insult, and an unprovoked insult, at that. I had done absolutely nothing to antagonize these guys. This was pure thug-ism, I'm-bigger-than-you-ism, civilization versus barbar-ism. It was so bad I felt it was worth it to do something which in retrospect might be called stupid, something that it says in the "Road Rage Manual" that you must never do.

I got out of my car.

Never, never, never get out of your car unless there's an accident. It's an unwritten rule acquired by the wise. But I did. I walked over toward the guy who'd been driving the truck and commenced shouting at him, pointing out that he could have let me go through the green light, among other things.

His response: "Shut up and let me do my job." A bit of irony there, considering the circumstances.

Needing to get in the last word, I shouted back "HURRY UP!" at him as I returned to the cab, knowing quite well that being ordered to do something by a cabbie would drive him crazy. He replied that, okay, now he was going to go as slow as possible. I didn't really care. It was no longer so much about time lost. It was about pride.

He and his co-worker finished hauling the plastic garbage bags into the truck in about two minutes, actually faster than I'd expected. They then started to move the truck forward through the green light and went about half-way across 3rd Avenue. I steered my cab around the right of it and into the intersection, thinking that hopefully they would turn left onto the avenue and be on their way. But I had a feeling this thing wasn't over. Thugs in big trucks have a habit of using their vehicles as weapons when they have found a way to justify acting out their destructive impulses.

Seeing that I was trying to make a left turn around him, the driver kept moving forward to block me. Then he stopped the truck completely. I stopped as well, waiting for him to move. But instead of seeing the truck go back into motion, I saw the driver coming toward me on foot with a truly crazed look in his eye, shouting obscenities. It was about to become physical.

I had three seconds to make a decision. Either stay put and get into some kind of altercation with a lunatic sanitation worker or drive away.

I drove away.

It meant continuing straight on 56th Street toward 2nd Avenue and then taking a detour to 1st Avenue in order to get to the bridge to Queens. And it meant swallowing a little bit of pride in order to avoid a situation that was right on the brink of getting not only ugly but dangerous, both in a physical and legal sense. Jail sentences and funerals are often conceived in situations just like this.

My passenger, meanwhile, had sat through the ordeal somewhat in shock, I think, and it led to a friendly debate about the pros and cons of taking a stand. Her opinion was that it wasn't worth it to get so fired up, that these guys were jerks, and "that's why they're garbage men"; my opinion was that there are instances when turning the other cheek causes more stress internally than the feeling of moral superiority is worth. At the end of the ride our conversation resulted in a very above-average tip and a cheerful wave goodbye from the sidewalk after she exited the taxi.

Which made the incident all the more memorable.

Tuesday, 4:30 a.m.

I was looking for one more short ride at the end of my shift when I spotted a man and a woman emerging from the Brill Building at Broadway and 49th Street who were looking for a cab. Two things were remarkable about this sighting:

1) The man was a celebrity, documentary filmmaker Michael Moore. The lady who accompanied him turned out to be his assistant.

2) I knew before stopping for them what they had been doing in that building and why they were leaving at this wee hour of the morning.

They got in my cab and told me their destination on the Upper West Side. Without even acknowledging that I knew who he was, I immediately said, "So, did you finish editing the new movie?"

They were kind of stunned.

"You know, the one about capitalism," I added.

They were doubly stunned.

Michael Moore smiled. "How did you know that?!" he asked.

It's a rare and particularly satisfying situation to drop some information on someone who could have no idea of how in the world you could possibly know something. It would be like approaching a stranger in a restaurant and leaning over and mentioning that "your sister Jenny- the one who lives in Ohio - wants you to give her a call". The stranger would think you have superhuman powers.

"I could go into my psychic routine," I replied, "but the truth is I had someone in my cab last night coming out of that building who was working on the film. He told me all about it, how you have something like forty people on the project and it's been going on for three days."

"Small world," said Michael Moore.

The ice having been effectively broken and even melted, we rolled up 8th Avenue toward their destination. Michael Moore is a man I have long admired for his courage in exposing the greed and corruption of powerful vested interests and his movie, Sicko, about the health care disaster in the United States, has been influential in shaping public opinion about the issue. With debate raging in this country at the current time, and with health care reform being debated and formulated by the federal government even as we spoke, I had one of those karma feelings I get from time to time while driving a taxi. My attention is on this health care battle. And then Michael Moore gets in my cab. Karma or coincidence? Hmmm...

I mentioned to him that I was a perfect example of the person who is being shut out from access to health care in the United States. The taxi powers-that-be, which is primarily the Taxi and Limousine Commission, deemed all taxi drivers in New York "independent contractors" many years ago even though in reality we are anything but. As such, owners of taxi garages don't have to provide benefits to the drivers. And even though I work a forty-hour work week, a full-time job, I do not make enough money to afford an individual health care policy. And I make too much to qualify for Medicaid. So I'm left in the middle.

"If you were living in any other industrialized country in the world," said Michael Moore, "you'd have access to health care."

"How do you think Obama is doing in regard to the health care issue?" I asked.

He replied that he thought the president needed to stick to his guns and not back down from political opponents.

Our conversation turned to his current project. It's a movie about what caused the financial crisis and how democracy is being stifled. He told me that he and his crew had been working around the clock for the last few days in order to get it done in time for consideration for an Academy Award. The deadline had been earlier in the evening and they did indeed finish in time. Talk about pressure!

It was nice to see for myself that someone you've admired from a distance doesn't turn out to be a prick in person. Michael Moore, I'm happy to say, was friendly, conversational, unpretentious, and even humble (calling me "sir"). He stayed in the cab for an extra minute at the end of the ride to finish up our conversation. And he shook my hand warmly as he left.

His assistant went on to a second stop and told me he'd barely had any sleep for the last four days, which made his congeniality all the more impressive. The next day, she said, they would be off to the Venice Film Festival.

An interesting peek into the lifestyle of one of the effective agents for change on this planet, I thought. And one of the really good guys in my opinion.

********

So those were three nights of memorable, and not untypical, occurrences while driving a cab in New York City. Yet as scary, enraging, exciting, and fascinating as those incidents were, they would pale in comparison to what was even more memorable for me on each of the three nights. Stay tuned...