The Comment That Went Viral

I subscribe to the online edition of the New York Times.  There's a feature in it -- the comments section -- of which I'm particularly fond. Roughly half the articles, and nearly all of the Op-Eds and Guest Essays, have a comments section.  On any given day there are thousands of comments from readers -- in fact, sometimes a single article by itself may receive over a thousand.  It's like the old "Letters To The Editor" of the print era on steroids. 

It's easy to make a comment.  Here are the rules of the game:

-- comments are moderated for being "on-topic" and "civil"; 

-- they cannot exceed 1500 characters;  

-- each article which permits comments has a time limit for submissions.  If you get to it too late, it will be closed;

 -- you can make a comment to a comment (a "reply").  Thus discussions occur among commenters.

-- comments can be "flagged" by readers as inappropriate.  They may then be removed by moderators.

-- you can click "Recommended" beneath a comment if you really like it.  These "Recommended" comments can then be viewed in a window of their own when you click on "Reader Picks".  They're listed in order of which got the most.  This creates a popularity contest of sorts among the readers.  

-- there's also a section called "NYT Picks".  Click on that and you will see the comments chosen as most deserving of attention by the moderators of the Opinions Section. 

-- and finally there's an icon for "All" comments, listed in chronological order.

Because the Times is one of the most widely read and respected papers in the U.S. (and the world), it attracts readers who are often quite well-versed in the subjects being written about and their comments may offer a new perspective that had been overlooked by the author of the article.  It tends to be a smart crowd.

I consider myself well-versed in certain areas: New York City in general; taxi driving and the taxi business; transportation; and, of course, my own experiences with the human race as a longtime NYC taxi driver.  If I feel I have something relevant to say to an article in these zones, I will often make a comment using the pen name "Old Yeller".  

So here's what happened...

On August 24th last year the Times ran an Op-Ed by Jerry Seinfeld called "So You Think New York Is 'Dead' (It's not.)"

In his piece Jerry came down pretty hard on "some putz in LinkedIn" (the owner of a comedy club in Manhattan who, after relocating to Miami, had written what was basically an obituary on the city.) Jerry kicked the guy's butt, so to speak, and made a good case for the city's resilience and revival.  Before the comments section was closed it received a whopping 2,740 comments. One of them was mine.  And thus began the journey of a comment...

-- I started my day on August 24th as I always do, reading the Times over breakfast.  And after breakfast.  I did not see Jerry's Op-Ed.  

-- Later in the day I received an email from my buddy in the U.K., Jodie Schofield, alerting me to Jerry's article and providing a link.  How could I have missed this?  I read the article, loved it, and immediately wrote this comment:

"I've been a NYC taxi driver for many, many years. My favorite type of ride is the rare one of picking up a man who has just emerged from a hospital following the birth of his first child. It is the best day in his life and I usually find it difficult to hide my own tears of joy as he tells me all about it.

My second favorite ride is similar. It is a young person with a dream who is coming to New York City for the very first time. I am the taxi driver taking him or her to Manhattan from the airport. I insist on the Upper Level of the 59th Street Bridge as our route. Excitement grows as the city grows larger and larger as we approach Manhattan. Finally, almost at ground level, the ramp takes us so close to the surrounding buildings that we can actually see the people inside. Touching down on E. 62nd Street, my newly minted New Yorker is experiencing for the first time the "energy" that is so often spoken of. It's like watching a child approaching a roomful of birthday presents. All things are possible. It will take more than a crumby pandemic to change that."

-- About 15 minutes after I submitted the comment I received an email from the Times telling me it had been approved. (Normal procedure, they do that for every comment they publish.)

-- An hour later I checked the comments section of Jerry's article to see if I'd received any "recommends" or, better yet, if my comment had been chosen as a "NYT Pick". It had received a handful of recommends but was not a NYT Pick. Oh, well.

-- After another hour, I checked again. I discovered that my comment had miraculously been switched from the "All" section to the "NYT Picks" section! Wow, that never happens, at least not to me. Wondering what could have caused this momentous turn of events, I found that a reader named Flaminia from Los Angeles had made this reply to my comment: 

"@Old Yeller, THIS should be a Times pick."

Apparently a moderator agreed. In the contest of Which Comment Gets The Most Recommends, this is a big deal. The elite "NYT Picks" comments are seen by more readers than the ones in the "Reader Picks" and "All" parts of town. More views means more Recommends.

Unbeknownst to me, a fire was being lit. I'm not sure of the exact timeline, but as far as I can tell it began in the morning of Aug. 25th with a tweet from Morgan Von Steen (@mvonsteen, who tweets about "design & technology in government, especially New York"). She tweeted:

This comment on

@JerrySeinfeld

's piece in

@nytimes

made me tear up.  

And then she posted the comment itself.  

As the day went on, Morgan Von Steen's tweet generated over 9,000 retweets, more than 1,400 Quote Tweets, 76K likes, and a swarm of comments, many reminiscing about their own first ride into Manhattan, their ride in a taxi on the day their first child was born, and especially about their love affair with New York City.  

We were off to the races.

-- Upworthy.com on Instagram posted Morgan Von Steen's tweet, generating another 53K likes:

-- The attention the comment was generating got on the radar of the NY Times Opinion Section people.  They highlighted it on LinkedIn:

-- My daughter, Suzy, and my nephew, Sanjay, alerted me that my comment was apparently going viral.  That was exciting, but, wait! People reading it would only know that some cab driver in NYC calling himself "Old Yeller" had written it.  I want people to read my book and my blog, of course, and they don't know that "Old Yeller" is me.  Some clever way to identify myself was needed...

-- I went back to the replies to my comment in the NYT Picks.  I discovered that Patricia Caiozzo from Port Washington, New York, had written: "@Old Yeller.  Your post is excellent.  Perhaps you write in your free moments?  You should."  

Perfect!  

-- I replied: "@Patricia Caiozzo. Thanks, Patricia.  In fact, I do.  I have a blog called 'Cabs Are For Kissing'.  Hope you'll stop by."  And then I added a link to my blog.  Now not only readers of the Times could find me, but the moderators of the Opinions Section could, too.  And for the next few days, presto, the hits on my blog went out the roof.

-- At the same time Suzy got on Twitter to inform commenters who were wondering who this "Old Yeller" guy is and shouldn't he write a book or have a column in the Times or something, that Old Yeller is her father and he did write a book, and here's the name of the book, and he has a blog, too, and here's the link to that.  (This is why you have children.)

-- Jodie in the U.K. did the same thing, except for the part about me being her father.  There is no truth to that rumor.

-- A few hours later Sanjay alerted me that Gov. Andrew Cuomo had retweeted Morgan Von Steen's tweet and had added: 

Governor Andrew Cuomo 

August 25, 2020  · 

The naysayers have predicted the “decline” of New York before. They have always been proven wrong — and they will be again.

Read this beautiful comment written by a NYC taxi driver on Jerry Seinfeld's New York Times op-ed.

#NewYorkTough

-- My head was beginning to swell.  Governor Cuomo, wow!  It was almost enough to make me forget that he had renamed the new Tappan Zee Bridge after his own father.  

-- And my head-swelling problem was not helped when an article from the online business magazine Fast Company was brought to my attention, claiming that "the best thing about about Jerry Seinfeld's 'NYC Is Not Dead' article is this cab driver's response" (click here for that.)  Could my comment have upstaged the great Jerry Seinfeld?  Is that possible?  I'm thinking I may need to have the doors in my house widened so my head can fit through. 

-- To make my head-swelling matters worse, there was this from supermodel Bella Hadid, with 32 million followers on Instagram:

-- And then her sister, Gigi, another supermodel who has 50 million followers on Instagram, did the same. 

-- On Aug. 26th, more media attention in this article in the Daily Mail in the U.K. 

-- After that it became difficult, if not impossible, to figure out the numbers the comment generated.  If there's some way of calculating this I'd like to know about it, but I guess it's safe to assume it must have been in the millions.

 

NY Times Interview

On Aug. 27th I heard from Shannon Busta, an editor on the NY Times Opinion Desk, informing me that as far as she knew this was the first time a comment to an article in the Times had ever gone viral, and asking if I'd be interested in being interviewed.  I was.  It was half an hour, live -- which is the interview equivalent of walking on a tightrope.  

Click here to see the interview.

Why Was The Comment So Popular?

For one thing, it was short and to the point.

It was written at a time when virtually the entire human race was suffering from a mutually shared reality, and with no end in sight.

More than that, I think, it was because it has the power to rehabilitate the personal purpose line lying dormant in the minds of those who read it.  There are certain people -- you could call them dreamers or creatives -- who at some point in their lives have had an epiphany.  They have discovered exactly what their purpose is in this lifetime.  They have made a promise to themselves to pursue that purpose, no matter what it takes.  For many, this means coming to New York City.  The skyline of New York, one of the great sights of the world, is symbolic of that dream.  To recall that first moment they ever laid eyes on it is to blow apart the barriers that have been holding them down and bring their purpose back to life.  

You could just about raise the dead with that.

Two Concise Paragraphs

I've been asked where the full versions of the two stories that are tightly packaged into the comment can be found.  The story of the "newly minted father" is in this blog.  It was published on March 16, 2013.  Go to The Best Day of Your Life.

The story of the dreamer coming to the city for the first time and seeing the New York Skyline as we approached Manhattan was published in my book, Confessions Of A New York Taxi Driver.  I am including it here in my blog for the first time.  Go to From JFK or just scroll down.  It's right below this post.

And Then There Was This

In November a facsimile of Jerry Seinfeld's op-ed on a gigantic billboard was attached to the facade of a luxury apartment building under construction in the Upper East Side.  Unfortunately the Comments Section was not included!  Read about it here.

Get `Em While They're Hot

What's that?

You still haven't bought my book, Confessions Of A New York Taxi Driver?

Well, good news, your holding out is about to pay off, at least if you own a Kindle.   HarperCollins is now offering the ebook edition for a mere $4.99 on Amazon.com. The price had always been $10 and change, so... what a bargain.

Just click here and you're on your way.

Say what?

You need further convincing?

A promotional video or something?

Well all righty, then, here you are:

Running The Gamut, Number Three

One of the great things about driving a taxi in New York City - perhaps the greatest thing - is that on any given day you may run the gamut: that is, you may pick up people who are able representatives of both the top and the bottom of the social spectrum. Your first passenger may be a nun who works for God and your second a street hooker who works for Jake the Snake, her pimp; your third an assistant district attorney and the fourth the guy he’s sending to prison. And so it goes - the parade of humanity enters and exits through your doors. It’s magnificent, really.

(Note: I’ve written two other posts on this subject, “Running The Gamut”, and “Running the Gamut, Number Two”. If you’d like to read them please click here and here.)

So, in this episode of Running the Gamut, we’re going to zero in on a specialized zone of activity in New York City, the world of baseball. For those of you who may live in a part of the planet where baseball is not played, let me fill you in on the basics:

- baseball is the number one sport in the United States. It is played on many levels, but the ultimate goal of any player is to make it to the top level, which is called the Major League.

- the first Major League game was played in 1871.

- there are thirty teams in the Major League, spanning across the country in most of our principal cities. The season goes from April until the end of September, with the three-tiered playoff games continuing until the end of October. The regular season consists of 162 games for each team.

- in New York City there are two baseball teams, the Yankees and the Mets. The Yankees came into existence in 1903 and have long been the premiere team of the sport. Many of baseball’s iconic players (such as Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, and Mickey Mantle) were Yankees. They have won 27 championships, far more than any other franchise. Their home is Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. The Mets have been around since 1962. They have won two championships in their 52 years. They play in Citi Field in Queens.

On August 7th, a Thursday, I started my shift at 5:30 pm, as I normally do. My first passengers were two ladies - one middle-aged, the other a twenty-something - going from Columbus Circle down to Penn Station. They were both wearing the pinstriped jerseys of the Yankees - the familiar, interlocking “NY” on the front and, I noticed, the number 2 on the backs of both of them. The Yankees had played a game that afternoon so I knew without even needing to ask where they were coming from. A conversation began.

Yes, they told me, they’d been at the game, adding that there was some kind of delay on the subway, which was why they were in my cab - and they had only twenty minutes to catch a train to New Jersey. Could we make it? I told them to relax, I’d get them to Penn Station on time. And we were on our way.

I soon discovered that they were mother and daughter, both big Yankee fans, that they go to at least one Yankee game together every year (“it’s a tradition”), that the game they’d just attended was the only game for them this year, and that, hooray, the Yankees had won. Still, the mother said, they were “greatly disappointed”.

“Why?” I asked (of course). I mean, the Yankees won, you’re supposed to be happy.

“Because Jeter didn’t play!” they both answered, almost in unison.

“Oh, gee, that’s too bad,” I said, completely understanding their dismay.

Again, for the benefit of those readers who may not know baseball, allow me to tell you why this fellow named Jeter not playing in that game would be such a letdown to my passengers. Derek Jeter has been a star player - the captain of the team, actually - for the Yankees for the last twenty years. During his tenure the Yankees have won five championships and gone to the playoffs 17 times. On a personal level he has broken so many statistical records that they seem endless. He ranks sixth on the all-time hits list. (That means that, going back to 1871, only five players have had more hits than he.) And off the field he has been the very epitome of what we would hope a star athlete to be. Hard-working, generous, respectful, always upbeat, never involved in a controversy, never a bad word said against him - he is truly a role model not only for America’s youth, but for everybody. All around the country he is regarded as the “face of baseball”. People are naming their children (and their pets) after him. And now, at the age of 40, he has announced that this season will be his last. Fans of opposing teams are crowding into their own stadiums to get one last look at him when the Yankees come to town and are giving him standing ovations when he comes to bat. He is the superstar of the world of baseball.

So this was why my passengers were so disappointed even though the Yankees won the game. Being devoted Yankee fans and fans of Jeter in particular - the number 2 on their jerseys is his number - they, too, had wanted to see him play one last time. But, alas, he’d been given the day off, something that happens from time to time during the course of the long, long season.

Nevertheless, my passengers were in good spirits as we approached the entrance to Penn Station at 34th Street and 7th Avenue, despite the presence above us of a gigantic Nike billboard featuring a thirty-foot image of Derek Jeter acknowledging the adoration of his fans.

“Re2pect” was the only text accompanying the image.

As mother and daughter left my cab with smiles on their faces and five minutes to spare, my eyes wandered to the shop directly on my right. It was a Modell’s Sporting Goods store, one of many in the city, where they sell mostly apparel for fans. The entire window displayed t-shirts, jerseys, hats, buttons, and every other imaginable form of commemoration featuring, guess who?

Yes, it has been a Derek Jeter year in New York City, if not the entire country. “We need our heroes,” I thought, as I pulled out into the quagmire of traffic on 7th Avenue. And indeed we do. In this age of super-cynicism, is it not something of importance to have a counterbalance to the liars, the cheats, the pretenders, and the thieves who show up for a free meal at every opportunity? It is important. Let the good guys win every once in a while.

I slogged along in the evening rush for the next few hours. At 6:50 three out-of-towners went from 77th and York down to the Astor Place Theatre in the East Village to see Blue Man Group, a nice twenty-dollar run on the FDR Drive. Then there was a short ride over to Alphabet City. On my next one, from the Bowery down to the intersection of Allen and Chrystie, I found myself sitting in a bumper to bumper jam-up on 2nd Avenue. Looking around at the environment, I noticed one of those gigantic double-decker tourist buses just to the left of me which was decorated with - well, will you look who’s here again? - fifteen-foot-high Derek Jeter action images on all sides. “Jesus,” I thought, “this guy is everywhere.”

The next few fares took me to the West Village, up again to the Upper East Side, down to 60th and 5th, and then, at 8:30, to 22nd and 8th in Chelsea. 8:30 is around the time for my ritualistic coffee break, so I parked at 6th Avenue, went into the Starbucks at the corner, got my tall Pike (no room for milk), returned to the cab, dug through my bag to retrieve my carrot muffin sliced into bite-sized pieces the night before, and began munching away in happiness. Ah, that feeling of the hot coffee meeting the muffin… bliss.

Okay, back to work. My next fare was a chatty fellow going from the popular Eataly restaurant and market on 23rd and 5th all the way up to 157th and St. Nicholas Avenue in Harlem - $28.50 on the meter and a $5 tip - a great ride. After that it was 73rd and Columbus down to 15th and 5th, followed by 14th and 4th down to Gold Street in the Financial District. The night was wearing on, and I was doing pretty well, both in spirit and in money.

At 11:12 a twenty-something woman beat out another twenty-something woman in a rush to get to my cab at 27th and Park - it can get quite busy in certain sections of Manhattan at around that time on a Thursday night - and directed me to drive to LaGuardia Place and Houston Street on the southern boundary of Greenwich Village. When I arrived there eight minutes later I pulled over on Houston at the intersection but had to wait a bit for her to swipe her credit card - it took several swipes to register - and then to gather her stuff together and open the door. As she did so a particularly attractive young lady standing a short distance away noticed that my cab was becoming available and began moving quickly toward me with her hand in the air. Seeing the hail, I remained at the curb instead of pulling out onto the street. She hustled up, opened the door, got in, and said, “Someone else is coming”, with a concerned look on her face. About five seconds went by until the person we were waiting for came jogging toward the cab, being pursued by three or four shouting females who were basically begging him to pose for a picture with them. He stopped at the opened door of my taxi and stood with the girls for a few moments, flashing a very familiar smile while they snapped away and thanked him profusely.

And then Derek Jeter got into my cab.

“It’s number 2,” I said, sort of half to myself and half to them, and a bit in shock.

“Hiya buddy,” said Derek Jeter.

“I can’t get away from you!” I exclaimed (in jest).

“I’m following you, buddy!” Derek replied, smiling.

Their destination was a street in the West Village, so this was to be a short ride, only five minutes or so. Immediately I knew I had a problem, and a sort of panic set in. Derek Jeter has descended upon my cab from outer space and is all mine for five minutes. I knew from his friendliness upon entering that he would be open to conversation - but what should I talk to him about? One thing I’ve learned about major celebrities is that you try not to talk to them about the thing for which they’re famous. When I had Paul Simon in my cab, for instance, did I speak a word to him about his music? No. We had a memorable conversation about baseball, actually. (That story is in my book, by the way.) So here was the Crown Prince of Baseball sitting in my cab. If not baseball, what should the topic be? The answer hit me with the impact of a Randy Johnson fastball.

I had heard several months ago what Derek plans to do after he retires from baseball and, when I heard it, it really grabbed my attention. It’s not what you would expect. You’d think it would be broadcasting, managing a baseball team, or even becoming the owner of one. Something along those lines. But no. He plans to publish books. Derek Jeter, book publisher - doesn’t that open up a side to him we never knew existed? Amazing. So our five minutes together were spent primarily discussing books.

Out of respect - or should I say “re2pect” - for the confidentiality of a private conversation, I will not say more than that. But I will say this:

1. One of the fears some people have upon meeting a celebrity they’ve admired from a distance for many years is that the guy or gal will turn out to be a jerk in person. There should be no such fear regarding Derek Jeter. He wears it well, as was said of Jackie Kennedy. Derek Jeter is a nice guy, a caring person. There’s a kind of goodness that radiates from him.

2. Many people, when I tell them I had a certain celebrity in my cab, want to know about the tip. “How much did he tip you?” they ask. Well, I won’t say that, either, but I will say that Derek has surpassed Leonardo di Caprio as the best celebrity tipper I’ve ever had in my cab, a mark that had stood for 18 years. (That story’s in my book, too.) So there’s another record broken by Derek Jeter!

3. He likes to call you “buddy”. Aside from how he greeted me, I’ve heard this as well from a couple of different sources. Apparently everyone is Derek’s buddy. With this in mind, I found a fantasy had elbowed its way into my universe…

Derek Jeter At The Pearly Gates

There had been much excitement when the word spread around Heaven that Derek Jeter would be arriving the next day. Angels, spirits, and souls of all types left their clouds at the break of dawn to ensure they would be there in time to catch a glimpse of the Face of Baseball and give him a warm, heavenly welcome. At the appointed hour, amid a chorus of trumpets and harps, Derek arrived at the Pearly Gates and was greeted with great joy by none other than Saint Peter himself. After the speeches were over and a choir of children sang “Take Me Out To The Ball Game”, Saint Peter pulled Derek over to the side and said, “Come with me, Derek, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.” At once the clouds parted, thunder roared, and Derek found that he was standing alone with his host in some kind of divine baseball field. A bright figure appeared from the dugout and floated toward them. “Derek,” whispered Saint Peter, “I’d like you to meet... God.”

God: “Derek Jeter! What a pleasure to meet you at last!”

Derek: “Hiya buddy, how ya doin'?”

God and Derek exchanged pleasantries for a couple of minutes until an angel suddenly appeared to escort Derek to his next engagement and drove him off in a golf cart.

“Wow,” Saint Peter said to God as they disappeared from sight, “Derek Jeter!”

“Look,” said God, beaming - “I got his autograph!”



And so did I - on my trip sheet…

Back to work, I must admit I was on Cloud Nine. My Derek Jeter experience had elevated my emotional tone up to a steady flow of enthusiasm which carried over to the rest of the passengers in my cab for the remainder of the shift. Each new arrival soon learned that, “Hey, guess who I had in my cab just a little while ago? Derek Jeter!” What amazed me, however - and this is such a New York City phenomenon - was that of the eight more fares who rode with me until I quit at four in the morning, half of them had never heard of him!

A pleasant thirtyish woman in Brooklyn, going from Grand Street in Williamsburg to Dean Street in Crown Heights, was happy that I was happy, but she was from Germany - no baseball. A fellow coming from a gay club in Hell’s Kitchen en route to Astoria thought it was interesting, but he was from Indonesia - no baseball. A kid who was actually wearing a Yankee cap took me from 73rd and 5th Avenue down to the Lower East Side and barely grunted in reaction to my Jeter announcement, but he was from the Twilight Zone - no baseball. And then, to top it off, I had a young lady from Japan, where the entire country is addicted to baseball, admit to me that she didn’t know who Jeter was, although she did know who Matsui and Ichiro are, Japanese stars who have both played on the Yankees.

“I am sorry,” she said, “I’m a street performer and I’m drunk!”

Well, that’s New York City for you. A city so huge and so diverse - bursting at the seams with all kinds of people from every corner of the world - that such a thing could be possible. If a superstar of baseball had played for twenty years on a team in any other city in the country it would be inconceivable that virtually anyone living in that city would not know him well. But in New York this can be so.

So I had run the gamut of the world of baseball, from the adoring mother and daughter who were so disappointed because they didn’t get to see Jeter play, to the object of their affection himself. Imagine if they’d stowed away in the rear compartment of the taxi - merely six hours later they could have met him in person! I wish I knew who they were so I could tell them that! But it was my very last passenger who made me realize that I had also run a gamut of another kind.

I was driving up Amsterdam Avenue just a few minutes before four o’clock, en route to a gas station at Broadway and 130th Street, when I spotted a figure in the shadows about a block ahead at 113th Street who apparently was trying to hail me. As I got closer I could see that he was crouched over a walker, appeared to be in pain or at least in some discomfort, and that the entrance to the emergency room of St. Luke’s Hospital was just down the street. I pulled over and stopped.

He was a gaunt man, quite small, I think Hispanic, and I judged him to be about 40 years old. He thanked me for stopping - there aren’t many taxis around at this hour - and asked if I could help him get into the cab. He was quite frail, barely able to lift his leg high enough to make it into the rear compartment, and was, in fact, coming from St. Luke’s. Taking care that he didn’t slip and fall, I held his arm and guided him in, then placed his walker in the back. As we drove off he told me about his condition, a spinal injury which had left him crippled. I sensed no self-pity or blame, it was just the way it was and he was carrying on. His destination was a mere seven blocks up the road to a project complex at La Salle Street. When we got there he paid me the $5.50 fare in cash, no tip, and asked for a receipt, so he could be reimbursed. He put the receipt in his pocket and we began the reverse process of extricating him from the taxi. That took a minute and then he thanked me for my help and began moving toward his building in his walker, an inch at a time.

I was done for the night and drove a few blocks over to Broadway and the gas station. After filling up, I had some time to reflect on the events of the evening, particularly this last ride. That frail man had sat in the same seat where Derek Jeter had been sitting only a few hours earlier. Both were about the same age. Aside from his fame and charisma, Jeter is a physical specimen, taller and more impressive in person than I had realized. If you had no idea who he was and saw him walking down the street, you might well have thought he could be a professional athlete. My last passenger, by contrast, was at the bottom of that scale.

New York, the City of the Human Condition.

We carry on.

An Almost Non-Human Sound

Something occurred a couple of Sundays ago - at nine-thirty in the evening - of short duration - but one of those things you realize almost immediately you will never forget.

It was a sound.

I had picked up two guys and a girl, thirty-somethings, at 72nd Street and 5th Avenue, and we headed across Central Park toward their destination of 84th and Amsterdam on the Upper West Side. The ride was mundane - they spoke among themselves - about food, I think - until we were cruising across West 83rd, a one-way street, halfway between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues.

Then there was something there in the middle of that block, an obstruction that brought us to a temporary halt. A police car just ahead of us, with its lights flashing but no siren, was driving slowly around a rental truck that was just sitting there, as if it had chosen the middle of the street to be its parking space. Not knowing if I should follow the cops around the truck, I stopped and we paused for a few moments.

Suddenly there was a howl - actually three or four staccato screams, each about three seconds in length - coming from the area just in front of the rental truck, but out of my sight.

Right away I knew this sound was different than any I’d encountered before - it just didn’t fit into any of the categories of types of sounds on my experiential track. First of all, the loudness of it. It had to have been made by a large male human being for its low pitched wavelength to have been created, but it sounded almost non-human, more like an animal.

Then, the abruptness of it. There had been relative silence on the street just moments before it began - and then, bam! - out of nowhere, this howling.

Also there was an involuntary quality to these screams. Almost always when people make loud noises you know they have some control of the sound that is emanating from their bodies. But this noise was out of the control of the person making it, as if it were being squeezed out of his body, like toothpaste from a tube.

“That is the sound of something not good,” I said to my passengers, who had ceased conversation and were also trying to figure out what could be causing it. Then the girl in the back made a statement that answered the question. You know how when the truth is indicated all the nuances fall into place and you know, yeah, that’s it, that’s what it is. Whether the recognition is of something that is good or bad, there is a release of mental energy when the confusion is resolved, a feeling of relief when the correct item is indicated.

“Someone is being tasered,” she said.

Sure enough, as we slowly drove around the rental truck, we could see that three or four cops had pinned a large man face down on the sidewalk and were putting cuffs on him. I stopped the cab momentarily to comprehend what I was seeing and thought of taking out my camera, but then decided against it, thinking - who knows? - the cops may be offended and decide to write me a ticket for blocking traffic, or whatever.

I moved along, wondering if the police had been justified in using such force. Of course I had no way of knowing, as I hadn’t observed what had come before. My passengers, not appearing to be affected by the incident, ended their momentary pause and picked up the conversation where they’d left off, demonstrating some hefty nonchalance.

New York, as I wrote in my book, is a place where unexpected realities can very suddenly appear before you and then just as suddenly disappear. If we’d driven down West 83rd three minutes earlier or later, we’d probably not have known that anything unusual was about to happen, or had just occurred.

It’s a city that is so capable of these sudden mood swings.

Meanwhile, At The Hess Station...

You've never seen a gas station like the Hess Station at 45th Street and 10th Avenue in Manhattan. With twenty-four pumps, it is the biggest in New York City. And the very fact that it even exists on the island of Manhattan gives it the distinction of being part of a vanishing breed. Like record stores and men who smoke pipes, gas stations in Manhattan are on the verge of extinction.

Well, perhaps I should qualify that by saying "south of 96th Street in Manhattan". If you're not familiar with the demographics of the city, let me explain. When you think of "New York City" - the business and cultural capital of the world (some say) and the kind of people who make it so - you're thinking of Manhattan below 96th Street. Above that you have the sections known as Harlem, Spanish Harlem, Washington Heights, and Inwood. These are neighborhoods which could just as well be in any of the other four boroughs (Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, the Bronx) of New York City. They have their own characteristics, good and bad, but they don't have the same flair, energy, or pizazz as Manhattan south of 96th Street.

What's been happening over the last dozen years or so is that real estate developers have been offering the owners of gas stations so many millions of dollars for the purchase of their tiny plots of land that they'd be fools to turn them down. Up goes the thirty-five story luxury high rise with a pool and a spa on the twenty-ninth floor and into memory goes the Gaseteria. In fact, south of 96th Street - a place where 13,287 yellow cabs must fill up their tanks twice a day and hundreds of thousands of other cars and trucks clog the streets - I can count only eleven gas stations still in existence. At the same time, I can count eleven others that have disappeared in the last five years. It's quite common for a motorist to pull up next to me at a red light, roll down his window, and beg me to give him the answer to this desperate question: "Hey, buddy, can you tell me where there's a gas station around here???"

So you can imagine the kind of business those few gas stations which are still around are doing, and none are busier than the Hess Station at 45th and 10th. Five o'clock is when the shift changes for most cabs and this station is in an area where there are several taxi garages, including my own, so you've got an invasion of yellow taxis all zeroing in on the Hess Station at around this time. Picture this scene: every pump taken by a cab or an occasional private car, two or three cabs waiting in line behind the cabs that are already at a pump, more cabs waiting behind them out on the street, a few cars trying to circle the station in order to find a hoped-for empty spot, drivers waiting on line to pay for their gas or to get their change, night shift drivers walking around looking for their cabs, horns honking, people yelling, tempers flaring.

Chaos.

It's so bad that they actually have speed bumps surrounding the station - when have you ever seen a gas station with speed bumps? - and they need a couple of employees out there directing traffic to try to keep order.

"Yo, you're behind 7N86!"

"What??"

"Get behind 7N86!"

"That motherfucker cut in front of me!"

"I don't care, you're behind him now!"

"Hey, fuck you, man!"

"I don't wanna hear your shit, man, just get behind him!"

And on like that. I am quite used to it, of course, and barely pay attention to the craziness surrounding me as I walk around the place looking for the the cab I myself will be taking out on the streets for the next twelve hours. A couple of weeks ago, however, as I was performing this daily ritual, something odd suddenly caught my eye: a pair of legs sticking out from under the opened front door of an unmoving taxi.



I walked around to see what was going on and found a cab driver lying flat on the pavement, face up, eyes open, and not in any apparent pain. He was just lying there. And what was equally strange was that no one was attending to him. You'd think that when someone is lying flat on his back in the middle of a gas station with cars in motion all around him somebody would be trying to assist him. But, no.



I walked over to another cab driver who looked like he knew what was going on.

"What's with this guy?" I asked.

"He's full of shit," he replied.

"Why, what happened?"

"Trying to say the guy hit him. But he just fell down on his own. I saw it."

"Which guy?"

"Him."

I looked over to the person he was indicating, an employee of the Hess Station who was in an animated conversation with another employee who I knew from prior acquaintance to be the supervisor of the place. He seemed to be explaining to her what had happened and she seemed to be believing what he was saying as she, too, wasn't showing any signs of believing that the guy might actually be injured and in need of assistance. Looking back at the guy lying there, I noticed that he was now talking to someone on his cell phone.



The whole thing was comical. I mean, here was this super-busy gas station with cars moving all around all over the place and there's this guy lying flat on his back in the middle of the whole thing talking on his cell phone! And no one is paying any attention to him. It was like one of those What's Wrong With This Picture? things. A farce.

Seeing it as a fraud-in-progress, I, too, felt no impulse to do anything to help the guy and went off looking for my own taxi d'noir, 2K53, with a smile on my face. A couple of minutes later, not finding my cab, I checked back in on the scene. By this time the cops had arrived and, being cops, were all serious and trying to understand what was going on. A female officer was trying to get the cab driver to his feet.



However, he was apparently a helpless slab of meat who couldn't move his legs and she couldn't hold up the weight of his body, so she lowered him back down to the pavement. Another cop was shouting out to no one in particular, "Did anyone see what happened?" Nobody came forward. "No one saw anything," the cop barked out, again at no one in particular, with a touch of disgust in his voice.



I came forward. "A cab driver told me he saw what happened," I offered. "He said the guy was faking it. I don't see him around, though."

"That's hearsay!" the cop growled at me. Then he turned his back and walked away.

Well, excuse me. He was right, of course, but what about that "courtesy" thing? I shrugged it off and resumed my search for 2K53 and, just as the ambulance, lights ablaze and siren blaring, was arriving, I spotted it coming down 44th Street. The day driver told me that, fortunately, he'd already filled the tank at another gas station, so all I had to do was get in and drive away, which I did. This was lucky because, with all this madness at the Hess Station, it was going to take half an hour to get in and out of the place. I drove 2K53 up to 46th and 10th, did ten minutes of clean-up, and set off for my night's adventures.



The next day I was back at the Hess Station at shift change time and was curious, of course, to know what had happened, especially if the cops had arrested the station's employee. So when I spotted him standing around I asked him exactly how the whole thing had gone down. He told me his version of the story, which I found completely believable.

He had yelled at the cab driver, he said, to move his cab behind some other vehicle in the station. The cabbie, probably tired and irritable after a long day in New York City traffic, took offense to the way he was being spoken to and stepped out of his cab to scream back at him. He then "got in the face" of the Hess Station guy and, in retaliation to the cabbie's too-closeness, the Hess Station guy lightly pushed him back. In response to his being lightly touched on the chest, the cabbie collapsed in a heap on the pavement, thus setting off the much ado.

"So were you arrested?" I asked.

He had not been. The paramedics could find nothing wrong with the driver, he said, so the cops saw no reason to make an arrest. And that was it. The driver miraculously regained his ability to walk and drive a cab and he drove away. The EMTs (Emergency Medical Technicians) drove away in their ambulance. And the cops drove away in their cruisers.

Someday I'm going to write a screenplay.

It will be a comedy.

It's going to be called Welcome To New York City.

And this will be the first scene in the movie.

********

Then again, maybe I'll just call it Click Here For Pictures From A Taxi.

The Oath

There are certain characteristics that make someone a "New Yorker". One of them, for example, is that a New Yorker must be a connoisseur of bagels. If a person doesn't know bagels and have a strong allegiance to a particular bagelry, well, he or she is not a "real" New Yorker. Sorry, but that's the law. You gotta know your bagels.

Another one is the way someone goes about hailing a cab. A cab driver can separate the amateurs from the professionals at a glance. The novice may wave his hand at a taxi which has its roof light off (meaning the meter is on and there's already a passenger in the cab). You would never see a real New Yorker do that. Or he may hail while standing on the sidewalk, a faux pas for a New Yorker, who will always step out a few feet into the street (so he can be seen).

A few Fridays ago around midnight I was cruising along on LaGuardia Place in Greenwich Village in search of my next customer when I came to a red light at West 4th Street. Three cars were in front of me there, putting me a short distance from the intersection. After a few seconds of red-light waiting, I noticed a welcome sight down at the corner: two people were standing on the sidewalk, looking at me and waving their arms in the air - my next passengers. I knew they were tourists because, as noted, they were standing on the sidewalk, but who cares? A customer is a customer and, besides, I love tourists.

Now, aside from the sidewalk blunder, they were also making another mistake that is characteristic of the uninitiated - instead of walking to me, they were waiting at the corner for the light to change and for me to approach them. It was quite busy on the streets at this time, with not too many available cabs around, so standing there and waiting was a risky thing to do.

And they paid the price.

Suddenly, coming from behind, was a twenty-something guy without inhibition. Raising his arm into a hail, he walked right past the couple on the corner, approached my cab, and got in. He then called out to his friends, another guy and a girl, who followed. It didn't seem to me that they were aware of the others' intention to obtain my services but, even if they had been, it's not my role to intervene. I've found through experience that it's best to stay neutral in these affairs. And, really, a cab isn't truly "taken" until someone is literally sitting on the back seat.

So in they got and off we went, passing the poor inept couple on the corner of West 4th, who looked at us with bewildered expressions on their faces as we zipped by. I found the episode somewhat amusing and commented on it to my new passengers.

"Well," I said, "that's the difference right there between a New Yorker and a tourist," and I went on to give the young man a compliment on his expertise when it comes to getting taxis.

"How long have you lived here? Ten years?" I asked.

"Actually, I don't live here," he said, "I'm from Canada."

I was shocked.

"Are you kidding me?"

"No, I'm from Toronto."

"But you come to New York often, right?"

"No, this is my first time. Well, I was at the airport a couple of years ago, but that doesn't count." And then he added that "ayy?" that Canadians are known for saying at the end of their sentences.

"Wow," I said, "I don't think you know how good you are. You did that like a veteran New Yorker - you're a natural!"

Well, he and his friends loved that. Visitors to New York often feel a bit intimidated by the speed of particle flow here until they get used to it, so a compliment from an entrenched New Yorker like a taxi driver is a valued communication, indeed. The affinity level in the cab shot way up and they told me they were all college buddies and were here for the weekend to attend the wedding of another college buddy and tonight was a party night at the apartment of another college buddy who now lives in New York and that is where they were going, ayy?

Well, I thought this group was swell, and they seemed to think I was swell, too. It suddenly occurred to me that there was a way I could acknowledge their swellness, particularly the swellness of the fellow who'd hailed me, whose name I now knew was Hermie.

"Hermie," I said as we came to a stop at 4th Street and 2nd Avenue, "I'm going to make you an honorary New Yorker. Raise your right hand and repeat after me." Realizing he was in the presence of Authority, Hermie lifted his arm up in the air, as I did mine.

"I, Hermie..."

"I, Hermie..."

"Do hereby declare my love for, and loyalty to, the city of New York..."

"Do hereby declare my love for, and loyalty to, the city of New York..."

"I promise never to wait for a WALK/DON'T WALK sign to change..."

"I promise never to wait for a WALK/DON'T WALK sign to change..."

"I will always obey the first rule of getting a cab, which is I SAW IT FIRST IT'S MINE..."

"I will always obey the first rule of getting a cab, which is I SAW IT FIRST IT'S MINE..."

"I swear before my God that I will always turn off the damned television in the back of the taxi as soon as I sit down..."

"I swear before my God that I will always turn off the damned television in the back of the taxi as soon as I sit down..."

"I will eat a bagel every day..."

"I will eat a bagel every day..."

"with a schmear..."

"What's a schmear?" Hermie asked, not wanting to commit himself to something he didn't fully understand.

"It's cream cheese," I replied.

"With a schmear," said Hermie, continuing his vows.

"Unless it turns out you're lactose intolerant..." I added.

"Unless it turns out I'm lactose intolerant..."

"Or you really don't like cream cheese that much..."

"Or I really don't like cream cheese that much..."

"In which case, fa-gedda-bowt-it..."

"In which case, forget about it..."

"Fa-gedda-bowt-it..."

"Fa-gedda-bowt-it..."

"Very good. Now, Hermie, there's just one more thing - I'm going to spell out a word and I want you to pronounce it."

"Okay."

"C-O-F-F-E-E."

"Coffee."

"CAW-fee..."

"CAW-fee..."

"Again. CAW-fee..."

"CAW-fee!"

"Hermie, by the power invested in me by, uh, the Taxi and Limousine Commission, I hereby pronounce you to be an honorary New Yorker. Congratulations!"

A cheer went up in the cab that I believe was noticed by the passerby on the street. We continued on our way and by the time we arrived at their destination of 13th Street and 1st Avenue, the camaraderie had become so high among us that they actually invited me to go up to their party with them, a great honor. I had to decline, having a living to make, and they were fine with that, but then, as they were piling out, I realized I had one more thing to say.

"Hey, Hermie..."

He paused as he was halfway between the cab and the street and gave me his full attention.

"Yes?"

"The ayys have gotta go, okay?

"Yes, sir!"

And with that, Hermie and his friends were on their way.

I heaved a sigh.

It's always a pleasure to welcome a new one to the ranks.

********

And a pleasure, as well, to welcome you to click here for Pictures From A Taxi.

One Thug Too Many

One way of looking at New York City is to see it as an endless battle for turf. Everyone has, or wants, their own little piece of the island. And once that is won, it must be defended.

 

When this comes down to the level of a taxi driver it means his turf is either the area of the street that he has control over as he cruises down the avenue in search of his next passenger, or it is the place he holds in a line of cabs in front of a club. And it is from this position in space that he may have to deal with the doorman of that club who has also staked out his own little plot of real estate - the area in front of his club - as his castle.

The doormen who work at hotels and luxury high-rise apartment buildings have never been trouble for me, but I have had many squabbles with the doormen at clubs. For one thing, they are not full-time employees and don't look at their job as being their careers. Usually they're big, menacing-looking muscles who operate on the thug wave-length.

Now, I don't care if they want to be thugs with people on the sidewalk who may want to enter their sacred temple. It's when they assume that they have some kind of authority over my space - the street itself - that we have a problem. I mean, if anyone owns the street, it's me.

So this is what happened a couple of weeks ago...

It was a particularly dead night which drove me to the desperate measure of waiting in front of this Manhattan strip club in the first place. If there'd been any business on the streets, I'd have been out there racing with my fellow cabbies. But when one goes half an hour, then forty-five minutes, and then a full hour without a fare, one begins to question the wisdom of spinning one's wheels and emptying one's gas tank.

So I pulled up in front of this place at 3 a.m. Even so, I wouldn't have decided to wait there had there been any other cabs in front of me on a line. But there weren't any cabs already there, so I just pulled up and double-parked outside the entrance.

Immediately the doorman caught my eye. This guy:

I kind of liked the way he was dressed for the part and I also thought he had the demeanor of the quintessential thuggy doorman, so I decided to take his picture for my photography blog (http://picturesfromataxi.blogspot.com/). But I instinctively knew he wouldn't like it if he saw me pointing my camera toward him, so I decided to be sneaky about it. I aimed the camera at him through the opened driver's-side window and took the shot while I faced forward.

This turned out to be a mistake. He noticed what I was doing.

Now, I take pictures of lots of people. They usually don't know that their picture is being taken but even when they do I normally get a slightly confused or surprised look in response, not hostility. But this guy took it as an invasion of his territorial rights. He immediately gave me his most intimidating death-gaze and snarled at me.

"Get out of here!" he yelled out at me from his command post.

I could understand his resentment of my sneaky method of stealing his image. I suppose I could have asked him if he would mind if I took a shot of him, but I'd thought what I did was the more expedient way of going about it. I just didn't think I'd get caught. Nevertheless, I didn't see this as being any big deal. He could have taken it as a compliment that I'd want to take his picture in the first place. And now he was telling me to move off of my turf.

Like hell.

I didn't move.

"Beat it!" he repeated.

I looked right at him. "What, do you own the street?" I shot back.

In a situation like this, the doorman actually does have the upper hand because he can convince the people coming out of his club that I am some kind of pariah taxi driver and that they'd better not get in my cab. And the people coming out his club will usually do as he says. That may not be fair, but that's what I would expect to happen. Still, there's a principle involved here. And that is that a doorman has no authority over where a taxi driver decides to plant his cab. He works for a private company that is situated on a public commodity known as a street. If a doorman wants a taxi driver to move, he can make it a polite request which the taxi driver may or may not grant him. It's the street!

So, even though I knew I was playing a losing game, I held my ground.

I expected the doorman to come over to me and try to be even more intimidating. But instead, it turned out he had his own, even scarier-looking, thug to do his dirty work for him. This guy, whom I hadn't noticed before:

Thug Number Two walked up to the side of the cab and made this proclamation: "Get outta here!"

Although reason might have dictated that I take his advice, I still didn't feel the inner motivation necessary for me to actually go away. I stood my ground.

"What's the problem?" I asked in a civil tone.

"No pictures!" he grunted.

"I take pictures of everybody, friend," I said, trying to get him to see that I was actually some kind of street artist and not a heavy from a rival gang who was staking out the place.

"You ain't my friend," said he, "get lost!"

"I'll leave when I feel like it," I replied.

He looked at me with I think a little surprise that his attempt at intimidation wasn't working, perhaps fearing that he was losing his touch. He walked back to the club while I damn well continued to hold my position in space, even though I knew I'd never get a passenger from this place. Thug Number Two then opened the door of the club and stuck his head inside for a moment.

Out came Thug Number Three.

He was a burly white guy dressed in a suit (sorry, no picture). And I knew instantly that this guy was trouble because I'd had a minor encounter with him about a year ago. It wasn't that he was any tougher in a physical sense than the other two. It was that I knew he was an off-duty cop who works at the club as a bouncer.

So I quickly weighed my options. I could stand my ground and hold to the principle that this land is my land and I have as much right to it as you do.

Or I could pick up the pieces of my smashed camera after it hits the pavement and realize that calling the police for assistance would not be a viable option.

I decided to heed the advice of the first two gentlemen I'd encountered and seek to earn my living in a different location.

It was just one thug too many.