Miracle On 10th Avenue

We live lives of small unanswered injustices.

You come home from the supermarket and notice that you were overcharged a dollar and a half for the tomatoes. It’s not right, you know, but you also know it’s not worth the trouble of going back to the store to get your money back. So you forget about it.

Or you are looking over the monthly bank statement and see you have been charged an “administrative fee” of ten dollars because your balance dipped below the minimum of $1,500 for one lousy day during the month. “Bastards” you mutter to yourself and consider changing banks. But then you think of the hassle that would be and you forget about it.

Or you are driving down a tight one-way street in your city and you pause to allow a car attempting to pull out from the curb to get in front of you. You didn’t have to stop, but it seemed the neighborly thing to do. Then the car proceeds at a snail’s pace - at half the speed you’d been driving - and he makes the light at the end of the block while you do not. While serving your thirty-second sentence at the red light, you envision the perpetrator’s car engulfed in flames as you pass by on the avenue. But there is no burning car, the fantasy dissolves, and you forget about it.

And so it goes. It gets to the point that we just accept as a fact of life that this is the way it is. “Shit happens” has been adopted unwittingly as our collective philosophy. We wait patiently for the next glob of it to hit us in the nose and barely flinch when it does.


At a little before ten o’clock in the evening of January 12th of this year, a Sunday, I picked up a passenger at the corner of 36th Street and 10th Avenue whose destination was 56th, a straight run up the avenue. My fare was a middle-aged fellow of no special description, and other than the hellos and his telling me where he wanted to go, we didn’t seem to have much to say to each other. So I just drove up 10th Avenue at my normal speed, thirty miles per hour, without much regard to him or to the environment.

But then, as I approached 49th Street, it happened: a sudden outrageous menace appeared from out of nowhere in the middle of the avenue, arms waving, eyes crazed, and marching unevenly toward me. It was a twenty-something guy, maybe six feet tall, 180 pounds, and obviously completely out of his mind.

As a veteran driver, I knew immediately what the situation was here. This guy had been watching football games in a bar the entire day, was utterly intoxicated, and now he wanted to go home, or somewhere, and wasn’t able to get a cab. He couldn’t imagine why cabs weren’t stopping for him - what’s wrong with all these fuckin’ cabs? - so he was taking the offensive. Instead of waving at the yellow metal boxes from the side of the road and hoping one of them would pick him up, he was going right out there onto 10th Avenue to grab one with his bare hands.

Instinctively I hit the brakes and slowed to about ten miles per hour, the idea being to navigate around the guy without running him over. But as I moved gently to the left and approached him, I could see that he had me in his cross-hairs and was zeroing in for an attack. His right arm flew wildly around and came crashing into my side-view mirror, bending it backward.

Startled, I pulled more to the left, passed him, and then paused for a moment in the middle of the road, almost at a standstill.

“Damn!” I screamed out.

“Jesus!” my passenger chimed in, “what an idiot!”

I looked at my mirror. It was bent back on its hinges, not broken, so no real harm had been done. I looked at the jerk who was now just a bit behind me. He was still on his feet, still in marauder mode, and looking for the next cab coming up the avenue.

I decided it was just another incident from the theater of the absurd and was about to step on the pedal and continue on up the avenue when an amazing thing happened. No, not “an amazing thing” - a miracle! Something on the left side, over near the curb, caught my eye.

A cop!

Yes, a cop was stepping out of his patrol car onto the street, his face contorted with anger. He’d seen what had just happened and was moving out into the avenue toward the guy.

I was ecstatic. “Look at that! A cop is going after the guy! Oh my God, this never happens!" I squealed to my passenger, who turned out to be an out-of-town fellow and perhaps did not fully appreciate the wonderfulness of the moment.

“This never happens!” I squealed again for emphasis, and smiled triumphantly. I began accelerating and looked back again at the arm-waving lunatic, only to see that my dream-come-true had gotten even better: he was trying to run away from the cop! And a second cop, looking as enraged as the first one, had emerged from the cruiser and was joining in the chase.

“Oh my God,” I laughed ecstatically, “do you see this? He’s trying to run away from the cops! Oh, this is fantastic!” I felt no embarrassmet at expressing myself with such delight at the the sight of a human being being pursued by two angry men armed with pistols. It was just too perfect.

My passenger looked at me with an expression on his face that seemed to say, “Oh, so this is the New York City I’ve heard so much about.”

But “Wow!” was all he said, through a smile of his own.

I stepped on the gas. Of course, there was no hope for the guy. He had no chance of outrunning the cops and would very likely be spending the night in jail and eventually doing some community service (hopefully cleaning taxis).

After dropping off my passenger, who by then had seemed almost as elated as I had been at having witnessed such an event, I decided to circle back to 49th Street to see what was now going on. And not to my surprise there were about a half-dozen police cars in the intersection, lights all ablaze.

It was the cherry on the cake I’d been hoping to see. No doubt the Side-View Mirror Marauder was now in the custody of a small regiment of quite unfriendly officers of the law.

I drove on in search of my next passenger, but while doing so I had a few minutes to reflect. Now, I am not particularly a Believer, but I must say the only logical explanation here can be that this was from God. Yes, God, that fellow up in the sky with the sardonic sense of humor who has been ignoring all these minor and sometimes major transgressions against me for all these years without any thought of meting out even a semblance, I mean just a little token would be nice, of a some justice. It was as if Big Guy was throwing me a bone, at last.

Hey, thanks God.


********


Please click here to Help Find Harry.

Public Lewd Versus Private Lewd

Quite often during the course of a ride a taxi driver gets to learn - either by being a fly on the wall or through direct conversation - something about a passenger’s interesting story that is still in progress. But then the ride ends, the passenger departs, and the driver is left wondering how the hell it will all turn out.

But of course he never gets to know this.

Well, almost never.

Recently I had a fare with a passenger who had a wild story that she was right smack dab in the middle of. And I did find out how it all turned out…

It started on a Tuesday evening around 8 p.m. when a nice-looking, twenty-something female hailed me in the East Village and said she wanted to go to Garden City. Now, two things were good here: first, I know where that is. It’s a town on Long Island quite near to where I grew up, about a forty-minute ride from Manhattan. And secondly, since it’s an OT (“out-of-town”) job, it’s lucrative.

Cha-ching!

I did some math and came up with $100 as a fair price - mostly fair to me as it’s more than an hour and twenty minutes of my time is worth. She agreed and we were on our way.

“So where in Garden City are we going?” I inquired.

“It’s a lawyer’s office. They’re waiting for me.”

Wow - intriguing! Anyone would have been curious to know what this was all about, but it would have been inappropriate for me to ask. After all, it was none of my business. I was merely providing a service here. If she wanted to tell me about it, she would. If not, not. So we drove on in silence through the Midtown Tunnel and out onto the Long Island Expressway while she stared out the window and I looked the highway.

But it was sitting there in the air between us.

Five more minutes of silence and it was really bothering me. This was so unusual. Could she be a lawyer herself and was going all the way out there to sign some document or something? I suppose, but, looking at her in the mirror, she didn’t have that sort of cocky professional demeanor that lawyers often have, even the female ones. She seemed worried about something, which might be expected if one were in some kind of trouble and the urgency of the situation required a hundred dollar cab ride and lawyers waiting for you in Garden City.

And there was that other thing, too - there was the distinct possibility that I could drive her all the way out there, drop her off, and then realize that not only would I never find out how it had turned out, I would never even know what it had been about. And I knew it was something, and that it just had to be a good one. It just had to be!

So I decided to put aside my professionalism and delve. I told her I was a writer, that I had a blog, even a book, and I knew it was none of my business but I just couldn’t help but be curious to know what was going on, if she didn’t mind. Now she could have just said, sorry, it’s a personal matter that she couldn’t talk about, or some such, but instead she was quite forthright, perhaps even glad to get it off her chest, and told me the story.

It concerned lewd behavior.

Definition: lewd adj. obscene; bawdy; indecent.
(Macmillan Dictionary for Students)


She was a kid from Vermont, whom we shall call Gloria. Her journey to New York City had begun a couple of years earlier when she took a job at a tech start-up company in Vermont and got to know the owner of the company, whom we shall call Jeff. Jeff was a nice young man who owned a particularly cool dog, whom we shall call Arthur. Gloria took an avid interest in Arthur, often dog-sitting for him, and so, in addition to their relationship in the workplace, they had become friendly outside of that environment.

Eventually Gloria left Jeff and Arthur for greener pastures in the Big Apple, taking a new job in a similar tech start-up. Within a year, however, Jeff, seeking greener pastures himself, moved his company to New York City and the two of them began seeing each other again. One night at about 1 a.m. they were seeing each other in Jeff’s car, parked in the busy-at-night Meat Packing District. And as often happens when nice young men and women find themselves alone in a car, they were soon in each other’s arms.

And legs.

Or at least that’s what the cops who saw them thought. In actuality what they had seen was Gloria straddling Jeff in a passionate embrace while kissing. Due to their position, however, it looked like outright public fornication, even though both were fully clothed.

There was a time in New York City when such behavior, even when it really had been outright public fornication, would have been handled with a blast of a siren and some flashing red lights. And then some chuckles as the miscreants scrambled to put their clothes back on. But that was then and this was now, an era when even minor sins must be handled with the full weight of the law, lest the pillars of civilization come tumbling down.

They were ordered out of the car, placed under arrest, handcuffed, charged with “public lewdness”, and driven to the precinct on West 20th Street, about half a mile from the scene of the crime.

Gloria was already shocked and humiliated, but her ordeal had just begun. At the precinct, after being separated from Jeff, she was handcuffed to a pole for two hours. Then she was transferred in a van to another precinct on West 54th Street and placed in a cell by herself. This cell had no running water other than a toilet which, if she used it, would make her fully visible to anyone who walked by. She was spoken to rudely by the police personnel. She was not allowed to call anyone. And for breakfast she was fed an orange soda and a Happy Meal (a taste of station house irony, there). Finally she was arraigned and released the next afternoon at 2 p.m. So making out in Jeff’s car had resulted in thirteen hours of incarceration and a sample of what it’s like to lose one’s freedom and be at the mercy of the police department.

That had been five weeks ago. And now she was in a taxicab heading to Garden City. The reason for the trip, I learned, was that a hearing before a judge was to take place the next day and at the last minute Gloria decided it might be a good idea to hire a private attorney rather than take her chances with a free public defender. It had suddenly dawned on her that a conviction of Public Lewdness might not look great on her resume. Or on the internet. And that getting a dismissal was worth the expense. So she called a friend who recommended her own family’s attorney, but she would have to go out to Garden City immediately to pay $1,500 for the service in advance.

So that’s what it was all about.

We found the attorney’s place, an office building on the periphery of the Roosevelt Field Mall, without too much trouble. I was about to head back to the city when Gloria realized she might have a problem getting back to the city herself, so she asked me to wait. Half an hour later she emerged and off we went to Williamsburg in Brooklyn, where she lived. The charge for the taxi ride came to $162, including the waiting time and the tip.

As she departed I told her I was dying to know how this story ended and gave her my card with my email address, asking her to drop me a line. She promised that she would, but I doubted I would ever hear from her. People who take your card rarely get back to you, even if they were sincere at the time. So I was delighted when her email arrived in my inbox a few weeks later.

What had happened? She and Jeff, who used a free public defender, were “put through the system” by their lawyers. Behind closed doors a deal was made by which they agreed to plead guilty to the charge of Public Lewdness and perform six hours of community service, picking up leaves and things in Tompkins Square Park on a Saturday at eight in the morning. They were given what’s called an “A.C.O.D.” (Adjournment in Contemplation of Dismissal), which means that after six months of “good behavior” the whole thing would be taken off their records, as if it never happened.

So it turned out to be a case of “all’s well that ends well”. No stocks or pillories in the town square. No rotten tomatoes being thrown at one by the outraged citizenry. No scarlet letters.

“Was it worth the expense of driving all the way out there and hiring your own attorney?” I asked.

“A complete waste of money,” Gloria replied. “But at least I get to feel that I’ve contributed to the economy.”

Indeed she did - my economy. That $162 certainly helped make my night.

But my night turned out to be not over regarding the subject of Lewd Behavior. As if being watched over by the gods of Lewd themselves on a break from a Bacchanalian ritual, I was shown that when it comes to this kind of activity there are right ways and there are wrong ways to go about it.

At three in the morning I was hailed by a young lady in tight clothing coming from the Penthouse Club at 45th Street and 11th Avenue who was heading out to Astoria in Queens. She was pleasant and conversational and I soon found out what I already knew: that she was a - what’s the right word? Dancer? Entertainer? Performer? Oh, all right, she was a stripper, okay? Which of course means that she’d just spent the entire evening strutting around naked, or almost naked, and sitting on men’s laps whom she didn’t even know in exchange for money.

Uh, I believe that would be defined as “lewd” according to Mr. Macmillan.

What I didn’t know, but found out from her, was that she didn’t live in Astoria. She was on her way to the apartment of one of the laps she’d been sitting on in the Penthouse Club where, I assumed, some further lewd behavior was about to take place.

So what have we learned? Sit on your lover’s lap in a car, you go to jail and pay a lawyer fifteen hundred bucks to get you off. Sit on a stranger’s lap in the Penthouse Club and he pays you fifteen hundred bucks to come over to his place to get him off.

It’s all about location.

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.

Means Of Exchange

Recently I had one of those iffy passengers who fell right in the middle of the Trouble/No Trouble Line of Demarcation. He might be okay, he might not be okay - I couldn't tell.

He was a twenty-something, medium height, medium weight, wearing a t-shirt and jeans, with a Detroit Tigers baseball cap topping off the package. So he looked all right as I approached him, his hand in the air, on 2nd Avenue up in the Upper East Side. But a moment after I brought the cab to a complete stop I noticed the first sign of trouble. It was a nuance thing, just a little tiny thing only a veteran cabbie would spot: it took him just slightly too long to open the rear door. Normally you stop and there is a one to two second elapse of time before you hear the click of the door handle being lifted. It took this fellow three to four seconds to accomplish that task. If he'd been with other people it wouldn't have appeared on the radar screen as he could have been saying goodnight to his friends, but this guy was alone. Figuring in the additional factors that it was two-thirty in the morning and he was in an area where there is a multitude of bars all still open even though it was a Tuesday, and it translates to the driver as only one thing:

he's drunk.

Now, some of us realize this and drive off immediately. But I'm not as quick as I used to be and, besides, it's dead slow on Tuesday at 2:30 a.m. and if I don't take this guy it could be - who knows? - half an hour before I get another passenger in my cab. And karma being what it is, that next passenger will probably be a drunk, too. So I stayed put and awaited fate. The question now became, how serious would it be with this guy? How drunk was he?

The first thing you have to do is put him through a little coherency test. Is he capable of communication? Can he tell you where he wants to go? Obviously if he can't do this the ride never begins. So you don't start driving or turn on the meter until he clears that hurdle. This guy, although he was taking too long to respond, was not so drunk that he couldn't tell me that 7th Street between Avenues C and D was his destination. So I started moving forward.

"Do you want to take the Drive?" I asked. We would either jump on the FDR Drive, a highway, or head down to Alphabet City on 2nd Avenue. The Drive would be faster.

No answer.

"Take the Drive?" I repeated.

I looked at him in the mirror. Oh, shit, he was slumping over. Immediately the possibility of three bad things presented themselves to me mentally:

a) he may vomit;

b) he may be so out of it that he doesn't realize that he has gotten into a cab and has no way of paying for the ride;

c) he may descend into complete unconsciousness and be unable to be awakened.

And now I was stuck with him. He'd given me an address, he'd closed the door behind him, and we were moving. I could think of nothing to do but hope for the best and take him where he'd said to go.

"I'm taking the Drive," I called out, knowing I was speaking to an inanimate object. I made a left on 79th and within a minute we were on the FDR's 73rd Street entrance ramp at the edge of the East River. The tension was mounting up within me. The biggest fear of the three bad things is a) above. Puke spilling out onto the back seat of the cab is a horror of Stephen King proportions to a taxi driver. But there are ways of trying to handle the vomit candidate and the best of them is to keep him talking. Unfortunately that wasn't possible with this guy. All I could do was get him to his place as quickly as possible in order to reduce his window of opportunity. So I picked up my speed and whispered a little prayer to the Patron Saint of Please Don't Throw Up In My Cab.

I took the long way to the Houston Street exit, knowing he wouldn't object, since it was the fastest way to get him there. In less than five minutes we were off the Drive and cruising up Avenue D toward 7th Street. I made the left there and steeled myself for what was to come - how bad would it be?

"So where should I stop?" I kind of yelled toward the general vicinity of the rear compartment.

Not surprisingly, once again there was no response.

I pulled the cab over to the curb, stopped, and turned around in my seat, fearing I would see the guy covered in vomit. But, hooray, there was none - just a human body lying flat on the seat in marinated slumber. My task now was merely to wake him up, a far better situation than having to clean up the former contents of his esophagus.

"Hey, buddy, we're here, wake up!" I announced.

He stirred slightly. There was hope.

I raised the volume. "Buddy, we're here - WAKE UP!"

He opened his eyes. Good man.

"We're on 7th between C and D," I said in a normal voice. "So where is your building?"

Arousing from his dreams, he looked around at his surroundings. I could see from the expression on his face that he understood that he was in a taxicab and that I was a taxi driver. So of the three possibilities listed above, he'd made it past a) and c). All he had to do now was tell me where exactly he lived and pay me the $16.30 on the meter.

"Where's you building?" I repeated.

He looked a me a bit oddly, not as if he didn't understand the words I was saying but as if he didn't understand why I would want to know. There's a certain stage of drunkenness in which the gears are turning but they don't mesh together and result in forward motion, like a car with a transmission problem.

"Your building - where is it?" I asked again, thinking if I rephrased the question I might get an answer.

"Go downa da cawna," he said, still half-asleep. This was progress. I drove down to Avenue C, made a right at the corner, and pulled into an empty space at the curb. Okay, I'd done my job, now it was time to get paid and be on my way. Time is money in my business. Or at least hopefully it is.

"It's $16.30 on the meter," I said flatly.

Silence.

I looked at him again in the mirror and saw that his head was slumped over on his shoulder and his eyes were closed. The motion of the cab on our little half-block journey to C had rocked him back to sleep. He would have looked cute if he'd been a six-year-old boy.

"It's $16.30," I called to the back in a near yell.

He stirred.

"16.30," I repeated, calmly.

He now understood that it was his job to find either $16.30 or a credit card on his person and he began to move his hands around into various pockets in his clothing in order to accomplish this task. I sensed trouble but gave him the benefit of the doubt in my mind as I awaited payment. Like many drunks he probably had the money but didn't remember where he'd put it.

I waited.

A minute went by.

Turning again to the back seat, I saw that he'd suffered a setback in his mission - he was slumped over again with eyes closed. I would have to take control of the situation. God, how I hated this, you have no idea.

"Buddy, wake up."

He stirred.

"C'mon, it's $16.30 on the meter. You gotta pay me so I can get back to work."

"...yeah...okay..."

Once again, his hands began searching. What was good here was that at least he wasn't trying to be evasive. I had no sense that he was going to try to beat the fare. From this we could progress. I still thought it was a better than even chance that I'd be paid.

So I waited.

Thirty seconds went by, but I could here the sounds of his hands patting himself down. Still hopeful.

Sixty seconds.

Nothing. Time's up.

"What's happening?" I asked in a not-friendly way.

"All I got is two dollars."

"How about a credit card? You have a credit card?"

"Uh... no..."

Damn.

"You mean you got in my cab with two dollars in your pocket and no credit card?"

"uh... well..."

And with that he resumed his search of pockets and any other crevices he could get his hands into. I was pissed but not outraged. Again, I appreciated that he wasn't trying to bullshit me. He wasn't trying to tell me to "wait here while I go get the money" and then of course you never see him again. He wasn't trying to pay with just the two dollars. To the contrary, he was earnestly, albeit drunkenly, trying to find the money which was somehow mysteriously eluding him.

Still, I wanted to get paid. So I decided to do something that has proven to be remarkably effective in similar situations in the past. And that is, to get a cop. It is amazing how often a passenger is suddenly able to find his money when a cop shows up.

Now, New York must be the most policed city in the world. In most areas of Manhattan you can't stand in the same spot for more than two minutes before a police car drives by, even at two in the morning. This can be intimidating if you're a driver and you're worried about being pulled over for some stupid infraction. But it's great if you actually need a cop.

Sure enough, after about a minute and a half of watching in my side view mirror with one eye and and keeping my attention on my passenger in the rear view mirror with the other, I spotted a cruiser coming up slowly behind me on Avenue C. I opened my door, stepped out of the cab, and waved at the cops.

They stopped beside me. As always, there were two in the car. The officer sitting on the right rolled down his window. With that blank, neutral gaze that cops have when they're entering a scene, he asked me with only the expression on his face what was up. I told him the situation: passenger, probably drunk - $16.30 on the meter - two dollars - no credit card. In unison, they stepped out of the patrol car, walked slowly to the rear of the cab, and opened the passenger's door.

"Good evening, sir, the driver says you don't have enough money to pay the fare," one of them said, flatly.

My passenger, replying in a new found coherency, indicated that he was trying to find his money, it must be here somewhere. The cop said okay, find it. After another minute of futile hand motions, Mister Sobering Up Quickly admitted to the cop that all he had was two bucks. And no credit card. The officer suggested that perhaps he could call someone who could come over and pay the fare. And added that if he could not produce the required sixteen dollars and thirty cents that he would be placed under arrest for theft of services.

That will get your attention.

Like a surreal reversal of the hit TV show Cash Cab, my passenger had a shout-out with which to call a friend and beg for help. I could almost hear the sounds of quiz show music in the background as he nervously dialed a number and waited for a connection to come through. And then, good news, his friend was on the line. He told him the situation, adding that he was about to get "fucking arrested" for not being able to pay for a taxi ride. But his face turned from hope to despair as he learned that his would-be saviour was nowhere in the vicinity at the moment and could not help him out.

Perhaps he could call someone else, the cop suggested.

He could not, my passenger replied, since he didn't know anyone else who lived anywhere around here.

The jig was up. Like a condemned man about to walk the plank, he told the officer he was out of options and resigned himself to his fate. The cop who had been standing beside the first cop came over to me and started to take my information for his police report. Meanwhile the first cop was informing my passenger in a formal manner that he was about to be placed under arrest. He had him step out of the cab and place his hands behind his back as a prelude to being handcuffed.

It was an awful scene and I was not pleased with it as I did not perceive my passenger to be an evil person. In fact, I had come to kind of like the guy. I saw him as a basically well-intentioned individual who may or may not have a drinking problem. And I admired him for not trying to insult my own or the cops' intelligence.

Being hauled off in cuffs was way too much of a penalty here. But, on the other hand, I still wanted to get paid. I knew that if he was arrested I would eventually get a phone call from the precinct informing me that I could come down and pick up my $16.30. No one was going to sit in jail for very long before somehow coming up with that relatively paltry sum. I mentally searched for a solution to the problem and after a few moments I found it.

It was sitting on his head.

I turned around in my seat and called over to the about-to-be jailbird. With the first cop's permission he leaned back into the rear compartment to hear what I had to say.

"I'll make you a deal," I proposed. "In exchange for the ride, I'll take your Tiger's cap. Give me the hat and we'll call it even."

You have never seen the word "elation" better expressed than by the look that appeared on my passenger's face. His baseball cap was immediately placed into my possession and both his hands reached forward to embrace my own as he thanked me, thanked me, thanked me from the bottom of his heart.

"The offending party and myself have reached an agreement in this matter," I declared in mock seriousness to the officer standing beside me who'd been filling out his report, "and I consider the situation to be resolved." A slight smile appeared on his face, the only expression of emotion that was made by either of them. He closed his book and walked over to where the first cop was standing, who was already sending my passenger on his way.

And so, that was that. My passenger was released from custody, headed back toward Avenue D on 7th Street, and disappeared into the shadows, hatless. I thanked the cops and they, too, quickly vanished. I was left sitting there on the corner of C and 7th for another minute, filling out the details on my trip sheet and reflecting on what had just gone down. The truth is, it would have been enough of an exchange for me to just have been thanked so profusely like that. But now I had a new hat, to boot.

All I could think was one thing.

Go Tigers!

********

That, and one other thing: click here for Pictures From A Taxi.

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 Heat Is On

There are certain people who, when you see them coming toward you, you're thinking, "Oh, please, don't get in my cab. Just keep on walking, don't stop, keep going. whatever you do, don't open the door, don't do that!" And then, as they do open the door, it's "Oh, shit." Because you already know they're going to be trouble and now your job description has been changed from "taxi driver" to "trouble-person-handler".

I had a character like that a couple of weeks ago on a Friday night at around midnight at 31st and 8th, just south of Penn Station. He lumbered toward me as I was waiting at a red light doing the semi-coherent shuffle - one foot forward, one foot to the left, one foot forward, one foot to the right - and came to a landing on my right rear door, which he proceeded to open a bit too slowly. He plopped himself down on the back seat and I was stuck with him.

He was in his early thirties, I would say, and seemed to be a mix of ethnicities. Maybe a little Hispanic, maybe a little Italian, a little bit of this, a little bit of that, it was hard to tell. He wore the black leather jacket of someone who might have signed up for membership in the rough side of town, like he could belong to a gang, but you couldn't be sure. His black hair was shaved in some areas and was long in others, very I've-gotta-be-me, probably the product of some East Village hair styling Picasso.

Most people, when they enter a taxi, they tell the driver where they want to go, but this guy just sat there as the rear of the taxi filled up with smoke from the cigarette he held in his hand. With some passengers a lit cigarette, currently forbidden by the nanny state, would be the subject of some negotiation as to whether or not it could stay or go. With this guy I knew instinctively that a hard line was the right approach.

"No cigarettes in the cab, sir," I said, not leaving room for discussion.

He tossed it out the window without protest. That was easier than I thought it would be.

"Where are you heading?"

Four seconds, five seconds... no reply.

"Where are you going?"

And then, in a voice barely audible, "one sisteen."

"Sorry, what?"

Slightly louder, "one sisteen."

"116th Street? 116th and what?"

Three seconds, four seconds... "Amsherram."

"Sorry, what? 116th and what?"

"Amsherram."

"Amsterdam?"

Three seconds... "Yeah." And then this: "I got plenny-a money, man," and he pulled out a wad of bills and held it up so I could see for myself in the mirror. I pulled out into the traffic on 8th Avenue and headed uptown.

Now, there are three things you worry about with passengers like this. First, he may be so stoned out that he's unaware of whether or not he has enough, or even any, cash in one of his pockets and then, when you get him to his destination, the new game is, "Let's Find Your Money". But the guy obviously had enough money, so that was not an issue, and that was good. Second, does the passenger really know where he wants to go? You get him there and then he announces that this isn't where he wants to be and he accuses you of "taking him for a ride". And third, is he a vomit candidate?

I looked him over carefully in the mirror and decided that, although it wasn't out of the realm of possibility, he was not likely to throw up. Pukers are almost always drunks. They usually display their condition by slumping over to one side, often winding up horizontally on the seat, and the alarm goes off for the driver when he realizes he can no longer see them in the mirror. This guy didn't do that. He remained upright and, although his head would droop forward, I didn't think he'd been drinking. I did think he was stoned and in a daze from whatever drug he'd been taking, but he didn't strike me as someone who was about to part with his dinner. So that was also good.

Whether or not he really knew where he wanted to go remained to be seen. Now that I had a destination, I put my attention on navigation and made a left on 33rd and shot over to 10th Avenue, which changes its name to Amsterdam when you cross 59th Street. So we were on our way. For the next forty blocks or so the ride was uneventful. He seemed semi-okay. He was on his cell phone and was mumbling with someone who must have been able to understand what he was saying, although from what I could hear, it sounded unintelligible. When we reached 79th Street, he mumbled something in my direction.

"A hunriddafor," was what I heard, or something like it.

"Sorry, what?"

Three seconds, four seconds, and then, softly, "A hun'red." Three more seconds, and then, "An' four."

"A hundred and fourth street?"

He grunted agreement.

We continued up Amsterdam and arrived at our new destination in about three minutes. I pulled up on the right side of the avenue and stopped.

"Argunmuggawishkeygumma," he garbled, or some such sound that was completely undecipherable. I looked at him wearily in the mirror, having gotten to the point where I was just sick of dealing with the guy. Realizing I couldn't understand a word he was saying, he tried sign language and pointed to the right to indicate that he wanted me to make a right turn and continue driving toward Columbus Avenue. I complied. We drove slowly across 104th and finally, just before the end of the block, he made another sound that meant that I should stop the cab. I did so.

The fare was $12.70. He reached for his wad of cash and handed me two bills. One was a ten and the other... whoa, the other was a hundred dollar bill.

For a taxi driver, this is a moment of truth. Here is a passenger who is ripe for the taking. Semi-coherent, drugged-up, a dumb-looking thug with a fistful of money - it would be easy to take advantage of him. I held the two bills up so he could see them through the partition.

"Sir," I said, "you gave me a ten and a hundred."

He made some sounds and a gesture that meant that I should return the bills to him, which I did. He then handed me a twenty.

"Out of twenty," I said, and started to count out the difference from my own money. Before I could give it to him, however, he opened the door and told me to keep the change in words I could actually understand. This was a great tip and I said "thank you" at above normal decibel level to be sure he could hear me. He then closed the door and disappeared into the darkness of Columbus Avenue.

I turned the corner and my honesty was rewarded by an immediate fare of three kids from Spain who were en route to Times Square. You don't really expect to get another fare until you are back in Midtown, a ten minute hike, so it was like money found. The Spanish kids were tourists who were all agog at finally being in the Promised Land of New York City, a dream come true for them. We had a lively run downtown and when I dropped them off at 47th and 7th I was feeling a bit exuberant myself, except for one thing.

There was something about that last ride that was keeping my attention on it.

As I started driving around Times Square looking for my next fare, I reviewed everything that had happened with that guy. For one thing, the amount of smoke coming from his mouth just after he go in the cab was abnormally huge. When people enter a taxi with a cigarette burning (a rarity today) the entire back area never fills up with smoke within five seconds. People know you're not supposed to smoke in a cab, but this guy made it obvious. And when I'd told him to put it out, he suddenly didn't seem particularly semi-coherent as he complied immediately without protest. That was an outpoint. It didn't fit.

Then, although he couldn't coherently tell me where he wanted to go, he didn't have any trouble showing me all the money he was carrying. The only time a passenger shows you his money without being asked to do so is when he is an inner-city guy who is going to the ghetto and wants to assure you that he's not going to rip you off. People who are so stoned that they can't pronounce the name of the street they want to go to don't have the mental acuity to offer you assurance by showing you their cash. It was another outpoint.

Finally, at the end of the ride he had held up the two bills separately in his hand, so it would be easy to see what they were. Usually when a bill is mistakenly rendered by a passenger, the mistake is hidden by the other bills that surround it. In this case it was glaringly obvious that he was overpaying. It was also an oddity.

I drove around for awhile running the incident over in my mind. And then it hit me.

That guy had been a cop!

The Taxi and Limousine Commission or the Police Department will occasionally send out decoys to test the integrity of taxi drivers. Many years ago I had a middle-aged, conservatively dressed African-American man hail me in Midtown and direct me to drive up to Harlem. I went a block in the right direction and he then identified himself as a TLC inspector. I had passed the test and was actually given a receipt to prove it. So these things are done, particularly after something has hit the fan in the industry. And, indeed, something had hit the fan a few days prior to this ride.

The news had been widely reported that out of approximately 44,000 taxi drivers in New York City, about 30,000 of them had been ripping off passengers by hitting a button on the meter that automatically adds an out-of-town charge to the fare. This was according to the GPS tracking mechanisms that are now installed in every cab in the city. It was an astoundingly large number of drivers and the TLC chairman and other city officials were duly upset at the revelation.

So the heat is on. This was further borne out by stories I began to hear from other taxi drivers of tickets being handed out for offenses that are normally overlooked, such as failure to signal a lane change or discharging a passenger more than twelve inches from the curb. Also there were stories of other set-ups, such as decoy cops hailing New York cabs on the Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel in Hoboken to see if the driver will pick them up (a no-no since New York cabs can only pick up passengers within the city limits).

It was later reported that this initial report of widespread overcharging had been grossly exaggerated, by the way. Most of the instances of the out of town button being wrongly hit on the meter have turned out to be mistakes, and the number of cabbies who had done it repeatedly was closer to 3,000 not 30,000. Still, that is unacceptable as there is no excuse to ever rip off a customer and this sort of thing gives honest drivers a bad name.

So we'll see if the heat gets turned off.

********

Rumor has it that another way of getting the heat off is to click here for Pictures From A Taxi. Just a rumor, of course.

How To Beat A Ticket

Back in December I was given four moving-violation tickets for a single incident by a particularly mean-spirited cop. (To read about it, click here.) These tickets could have meant six points on my license and $400 in fines if found guilty on all charges, so beating them was a big deal to me, especially since in New York City taxi drivers are subjected to special rules, one of them being that if you get six points on your license your hack license is automatically suspended for one month.

That rule, by the way, applies whether you get the points while driving a taxi or while driving your own car. Which means that a New York taxi driver could be driving a rented car in Wyoming, get a ticket at a speed trap or whatever, and lose his job in New York City. Seems clearly unconstitutional to me, but it's a rule that has stood since it was put in place by Mayor Crueliani, I mean Giuliani, in the late '90s.

But I digress.

I had to put my many years of experience in trying to beat tickets to work here because so much was at stake. I'm happy to say I was successful (or this post wouldn't be titled "How To Beat A Ticket"!) and, in reflection, I realized I might be able to pass a few tips on to you. So here goes.

1. The process of beating the ticket begins at the very moment the cop puts it in your hand. You have already (politely) tried to talk your way out of it, but that has failed. There is an impetus within you to say something sarcastic as the cop turns and walks away. Don't. Just shut up. The reason is that cops make notes of all pertinent data when writing tickets, and you want the cop to forget you. You don't want the cop going back to his squad car and noting, "make sure you nail this asshole". You're going to meet him again in a courtroom and you want the cop to have no special recollection of you.

2. Examine the ticket itself for errors. I have been surprised several times to find mistakes made in the transference of information from the driver's license and vehicle registration to the ticket. I once had a ticket dismissed by a judge who told me I "didn't have to say a word" - the ticket contained an error and that was all it took. Of the four tickets I had been given this time, two of them contained two mistakes and the other two contained one mistake. This doesn't guarantee a dismissal - apparently that depends on the mood of the judge - but it may be all you'll need. And it certainly helps present the argument that the cop's ability to observe what he says happened (as opposed to what you say) is questionable. This can be quite important because these cases usually really come down to your word against the cop's and the judge, if he's sympathetic to you, will be searching for any reason he can find to see it your way.

3. Delay, delay, delay. The most successful tactic for beating a ticket in New York City is to delay the hearing date which you receive in the mail after pleading "not guilty". The reason for this is that the hearing date you are first given will be a day that has been set aside for the cop's convenience as a "court day". The second or third date may not be a time that's as convenient for the cop and he may not show up at all or, as happened in my case, he may show up in his street clothes without his notes, and thus need to ask the judge for a delay himself because he is unprepared. Fortunately for me the judge did not grant his request and dismissed the tickets on the spot.

4. Do your homework. Don't show up empty-handed. Always prepare and bring with you a diagram that shows the streets, vehicles, and any other relevant information. Take photographs, if that would help prove your case. If a video could be useful, make one, and post it on YouTube so it can be referred to with the court's computer. (Just be sure it's less than 10 minutes in length - that's the time limit on YouTube.) If you have any witnesses prepare a statement of the facts of the case and get them to not only sign it, but to notarize it. A person who stands before a judge with an organized stack of stuff in his hand adds credibility and a bit of intrigue (what's he got there?) to himself. A person who is empty-handed looks like just another liar.

5. Try to get the judge to like you. Now here is something I'll bet you never thought of: traffic court judges hear the same insipid excuses from defendants day after day, week after week, year after year. They become bored and cynical and difficult to convince. Try to give them something that's a bit original. Here's an example. Many years ago I was waiting for a fare at 3 a.m. in front of a bar that was frequented by transsexuals. The meanest cop I have ever met came along and wrote myself and the two other taxi drivers in line in front of me tickets for double-parking. It was an outrageously mean ticket and when I asked the cop why he was doing this, after first threatening to "collar" me, he snarled back that it was because "we don't like this place". When I went to court I told the judge that I had just pulled up at the bar behind two other cabs and "a person who I thought was a woman" dropped money down on the front seat and exited the cab, leaving me there counting the money when the cop came along. So I wasn't technically "double-parked", I was momentarily "standing". My story, although a complete lie, entertained the judge and he decided to give me "the benefit of the doubt" and dismissed the ticket.

6. As you're waiting in the courtroom for your case to be called, say these words to yourself: "I can do this. I'm going to win."

Hope this helps!

********

And if it doesn't, maybe this will: 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.

Good Cop

Well, I wrote a "bad cop" story - "Two Kinds Of Tickets". In the interest of fairness, and as required by the Taxi Driver's Code of Honor which doesn't exist, I am compelled to file the following report.

It's a "good cop" story.

It happened a few days ago and it had to do with something I knew would happen sooner or later (and turned out to be later).

Yellow cabs in New York City have been required to accept credit cards for just over a year now. Since it began I've been wondering what would happen when:

a) the only credit card the passenger has is declined. Or all the credit cards the passenger has are declined, and

b) the passenger has no cash and no apparent way of getting cash.

This situation is a bit different than what the same situation would have been in the days prior to credit cards. In those days, the passenger presumably knew that he didn't have any money in his pockets. I mean, who would get into a taxicab without knowing he had money to pay for the ride? You get the guy to his apartment building and then, after a minute of putting his hands through his pockets...

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry, I don't have any money on me!"

And then...

"I'll go upstairs and get some money. I'll be right back!"

And then...

Nothing. And you can't believe you've been suckered again. Plus you've wasted ten or fifteen minutes of money time. "He (or she) seemed so sincere..."

But this declined credit card situation is a little different. It's much easier to believe that the person genuinely didn't know his card would be declined and there's a presumption of innocence. Right?

Well, wrong. It turns out that, if you're a veteran cabbie and you've been ripped off whatever the requisite number of times is, the assumption is that this is just another, more modern, way of beating a fare. It's a presumption of guilt, actually.

Here's what happened...

A few days ago I picked up a fare at 3:45 a.m. in Midtown at 6th Avenue and 56th Street, a good part of town. It's an area where you might find office workers who've been doing an all-nighter heading wearily home or you might find someone who's been in an upscale bar all night heading wearily home. My passenger was an attractive 30-something female, professional in appearance and sophisticated in demeanor, whose destination was 84th Street in the Upper West Side. There was nothing "street" about her, nothing that would seem to be a tip-off that she would even consider the possibility of not paying a cab driver his fare.

So when, after several swipes, her credit card was declined by the taxi's satellite-connected system, I wasn't concerned. She would just use a different card, which is actually not that unusual.

But she didn't have another card.

Still, I was not concerned. She would just reach into her bag and pull out enough cash to pay the $7.80 fare, probably giving me a ten and telling me to keep the change. Or, if not a ten, then certainly nine, since eight would be a 20 cent tip (also known as an "insult") and this person would never give a 20 cent tip.

But then came an alarming confession. "I don't have enough cash," she said.

Now this was not good and quite immediately I was concerned. In prior years when the passenger had no cash but did have a credit or debit card, an option at this point would have been to go to an ATM. But since her card didn't work in the taxi's system, there didn't seem to be any point in trying the declined card in a bank. Nevertheless, there was still another way. I suggested that she go upstairs to get money from her apartment but leave something of value in the taxi as collateral.

And this is where she lost me.

She told me that there was no money in her apartment and she then handed me two dollars and offered to give me her business card so that I could call her the next day to arrange to be paid the remaining $5.80 of the fare.

Now I was offended.

Her gesture reeked to me of deceit and manipulation. I'm afraid I've been around the block too many times (literally) to see this as anything but an attempt to take me for more of an idiot than I actually am. Plus telling me there's no money in her apartment - not even ten dollars - sorry, even in the unlikely chance that this is true, couldn't you find something in your apartment to pay the fare with? How about a tea kettle? (That actually happened once.)

The funny thing in a situation like this is that getting paid is no longer the real issue. If someone gets in the cab and tells you up front that he doesn't have enough money to cover the cost of the ride, well, all right, you can decide right there to either take him or leave him. No harm done and you respect his honesty. And, most importantly, I haven't been made a fool of.

It's when someone thinks he can pull a fast one on you - make you a sucker - that the game becomes "You Can't Do That To Me!"

And that's what this game had become. What I do in a situation like this is to become a not very nice guy. If the person appears as a threat to me, I will suddenly slam the plexiglas partition window shut, lock it, and announce that we're now going to drive to a police precinct. If the person does not appear to be a threat, as in this case, the window stays open but we still take off for the police station. Sometimes the passenger will try to bolt from the cab at this point, so the trick is to drive to the cops without ever stopping, not even for a red light.

And that is what I was about to do.

Except something happened that only happens in the movies. It's like when a screenwriter is creating a scene and knows that in order to keep the audience involved in the story he has to "cut to the chase" or in some way bend the rules of reality. Because what happened next was almost unbelievable.

At the very moment I needed a cop, a police cruiser - without being signalled to in any way - suddenly pulled up next to my cab and the officer closest to me asked me if everything was okay.

My god!

Apparently the cops had been watching the block and had noticed that the time it was taking for the passenger to depart the cab had been unusually long. And that was enough to ask if I was okay. When I told them that my passenger's credit card had been declined and she had no money to pay the fare, this sequence was set into motion:

- one of the officers informed my passenger, in so many words, that she was damn well going to have to pay the fare

- she decided to give an ATM a try anyway and told me her bank was two blocks away, on 86th Street

- I told her I was turning the meter on again and did so

- we drove to her bank with the police car following right behind us

- she got out of the cab and went into the bank's lobby where the ATM machines are located (pictured below)

- one of the officers actually got out of his cruiser and followed her into the lobby! (he's standing out of sight behind the white pillar in this shot)

- with the cop standing ten feet behind her, she tried to withdraw funds

- she could not

- she returned to the cab and we drove back to her apartment building

- the cops followed us there

- she told me she was going to go upstairs to see if indeed there was any money in her apartment and that she was leaving her wallet on the back seat until she returned

- I said okay

- she left the cab and disappeared into the building

- the meter kept running

- she returned in two minutes with a twenty dollar bill, saying that luckily her boyfriend was there which she hadn't known before and that he had given her the money

- I didn't believe her but let her save face by pleasantly saying okay

- the original fare of $7.80 was added to the second fare of $4.60, bringing the total to $12.40. She took $3 back from the twenty, thus leaving me with a $4.60 tip "for your trouble".

- I said thank you and thought that was the right thing to do and a decent thing to say

- she left the cab and went back into her building

- I got out of my cab and walked back to the cops and thanked them, telling them I had been paid in full

- they said I was welcome and one of them added that "you've got a hard job, too"

As I drove off looking for one last fare for the night, the whole incident seemed to me to be what a fantasy of a cab driver might be after he'd been ripped off by a passenger and had received no justice at all. I mean, we expect no justice. So what happened here was surreal.

And it also answered the question of what to do when a passenger has neither a valid credit card nor any cash.

You just sit there for a moment and from out of nowhere a cop will come along to help you.

A good cop.

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And while you're celebrating your good fortune, click here for Pictures From A Taxi.

Two Kinds Of Tickets

Something happened to me a few weeks ago that hardly ever happens to me: I got a ticket. Not a parking ticket, a moving violation ticket. The kind that adds points to your license. And this reminded me of a truism I discovered quite a few years ago when it comes to tickets. And that is that there are two kinds of tickets: 1) the ticket where you are mad at yourself for having made such a dumb move, and 2) the ticket where you are mad at the cop for having been so mean that he would have written the ticket at all.

An example of the first kind of ticket would be, say, you make a left turn at an intersection where there is a sign that clearly says, "No Left Turns". You see the sign but you make the turn anyway. A cop sees you do this, pulls you over, and writes you a ticket. You are mad at yourself. You knew you were doing something illegal but you did it anyway and you got caught. "Stupid dumb ass me," you say to yourself.

 An example of the second kind of ticket would be this: you are approaching an intersection where there is a stop sign. When you get to the intersection you check to see that no other vehicles or pedestrians are present and bring your car almost to a stop but not completely to a full stop. As you proceed your speed is less than three miles per hour. A cop pulls you over for failing to stop at a stop sign and writes you a ticket.

 You are mad at the cop. What you did might have been technically illegal but you were in good control and knew that your actions in that situation were completely safe. You don't introvert and call yourself a goddamned freaking moron for not having come to a full stop. You curse the cop instead (in your mind, of course).

 Well, guess what kind of ticket I received? Here's a hint - I wasn't mad at myself. 

 Okay, this is what happened... On a Monday night at 4 AM - the time of the night when the "city that never sleeps" is taking catnap - I was cruising down 2nd Avenue in Manhattan with a couple of cars in front of me but no cars behind me. I was in the middle of the avenue. Suddenly a person appeared on the sidewalk to my left waving at me in the classic "I want a taxi" fashion. As a veteran cabbie who has been in this situation once or twice during every shift for the last 31 years, I did two things: a) I instantly checked my side view mirror to make sure no vehicles were behind me, and b) I turned sharply, cutting across two lanes, and got to the passenger. 

I knew, before I made the turn, that it was a safe move. No one had to swerve out of the way to avoid hitting me. No one had to step on their brake. In actuality, it was an expert maneuver made by a professional driver in order to do his job. But the cop didn't see it that way.

 

The passenger, a twenty-something female, entered the cab and told me her destination. During the time it takes to open and close the rear door, our light turned red. Then, just after it changed to green and I began to move forward to begin the ride, a police car pulled up beside me and a not pleasant officer informed me that he wanted to see several pieces of identification. The passenger departed to seek another means of getting to point B. 

As I handed over my driver's license and the taxi's identification card to the officer, I knew immediately that I was in trouble. Because just as there are two kinds of tickets, there are two kinds of cops you may encounter in this situation: 1) The "let's talk about it" cop, and 2) The "there's nothing to talk about, so don't talk to me" cop. With a "let's talk about it" cop you at least have a chance of talking your way out of it. Even by allowing conversation, the cop is saying, in effect, that he is willing to allow the possibility that he will let you off with a warning. I must say that in the past I have been quite successful in this situation. 

 But not this time. This cop was a "there's nothing to talk about" cop. In fact, he might have even been a "if you dare to try to talk your way out of it I will find something else to write you a ticket for" cop. So, actually, there are 3 kinds of cops in this situation. And apparently this cop was of that third variety because, even though I didn't say a word to him and handed him the papers he wanted to see, he thought multiple tickets for a single offense, if in fact there was an offense at all, was the way to go. 

Did I say that I got "a" ticket? Uh, correction... make that four tickets. 1) Unsafe lane change. 2) Failure to signal. 3) Not stopping within 12 inches of the curb when pulling over for a passenger. (Believe it or not, this absurd rule is actually on the books in New York City.) 4) Stopping in a crosswalk. This was from a cop whose powers of observation were so good that he could see all of this from a full block behind me, but whose powers of observation were not so good that he couldn't avoid making several errors in trying to copy over the information from my driver's license onto the tickets he was writing. 

When I got back to my garage and told the dispatchers and a couple of the drivers what had happened, I was informed (belatedly) that "the heat is on" in the city. And, in fact, I noticed in the following couple of weeks that an inordinate amount of taxis were being pulled over, and presumably ticketed, by the cops. 

This situation - the possibility of being selected as fodder for ticket blitzes - is one of the crosses that New York City taxi drivers bear and I suspect is one of the main reasons that many competent people decide to get out of the taxi driving business. It's just too much to take, considering everything else we have to put up with. And it reminds me of what I consider to be a fascinating observation about an aspect of life in New York City that I have made and I don't think anyone else has noticed. 

I would like to invite every New Yorker who may read this blog to consider this. Here is the observation: we have over 13,000 yellow medallion cabs and many more thousands of car service vehicles roaming the streets of the city. Some of these drivers are amazingly competent and some of them are not. But competent or not, one thing even a casual observer would notice is that taxis are pulled over by police cars all the time. I see it every night. 

 However, we also have in New York, thousands of buses crowding the streets. We have hundreds, if not thousands, of garbage trucks roaming around, apparently, with impunity. And we also have quite a few newspaper delivery trucks making their rounds. During my years as a cabbie I have seen countless instances of buses gridlocking intersections, running red lights, and cutting off other vehicles (although I do think, generally speaking, that bus drivers are highly competent). I have seen garbage trucks commit every imaginable traffic offense frequently. And I see newspaper delivery trucks running red lights and speeding every night. But here's what I have not seen. And I think this is so amazing that I will put it in boldface: 

  I have never seen, not even once in 31 years, a bus, a garbage truck, nor a newspaper delivery truck pulled over by a cop. Not once!

And if you're a New Yorker, I'll bet you haven't either. Isn't that amazing? I have always assumed that the reason for this is that the fix is in with the city due to agreements made with their unions. The taxi drivers, of course, have no union. Anyway, I pleaded "not guilty" to the tickets and now have a court appearance scheduled for April. The story of which I will post in this blog. So stay tuned.

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And while you're staying tuned, why not click here for Pictures From A Taxi? It's free and you won't get pulled over by a cop. I mean, unless maybe if you're also driving while you're clicking. That would be bad.

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Epilogue (here's what happened at my hearing):

On the appointed day I showed up in Traffic Court in lower Manhattan.  I did not hire an attorney, but I did not arrive empty-handed either.  I came prepared.  I had written up my defense meticulously to explain the circumstances of the incident and made notes to use as references so I could coherently present my case to the hearing officer.  Included in them were that errors had been made on the tickets by the police officers.  This was to imply that their abilities of observation could be lacking.  I've noticed in prior appearances in these traffic courts that the defendants often appear without evidence or even a plan of action after they plead "not guilty".  That's not the way to win. 

When my case was called and I and the cop who wrote the tickets approached the bench, the hearing officer actually asked me if I was prepared.  I replied with a sense of fatalism, "Hopefully".

Without saying another word, he made a mental review of the tickets.  Hearing officers can size up the nature of the tickets very quickly, being that this is their job and they see tickets all day long.  I believe they can also size up the defendants and the police officers very quickly, as they see them all day long, too.

So without even starting the proceedings the hearing officer said to the cop, not unkindly, words to the effect that he was not going to go forward with this one, and the charges were dismissed.  Although I was prepared to defend my case and I expected to win, it turned out I hadn't needed to say a word.  I think the hearing officer could see that I was a veteran cabbie, that I was civil in demeanor, and perhaps he knew that these tickets had been part of a recent and unwarranted campaign of summonsing taxi drivers. 

So there were no fines, no points.  Case dismissed.