Educating Joey Essex

I appeared recently on British television in an episode of the popular reality show
Educating Joey Essex.  The idea of the show was that Joey comes to America to learn about the American election.  I was Joey's taxi driver on two days of shooting.  First, picking him up at JFK and then driving him and the pro-Trump bloggers "Diamond and Silk" to the Trump Tower in Manhattan.  Joey had to keep the peace between me and Diamond and Silk as we had a bit of a difference of opinion about the candidates!

Great fun and a terrific crew.

To see an interview of Joey Essex talking about the show, click here.

To see Diamond and Silk on YouTube click here.

Pictures:

The American Way

Below is a post I wrote and published the day after the election of 2012.  It is a reminiscence of an extraordinary experience I had while casting my vote for President and Vice-President of the United States in the election of 1984. I think it's particularly relevant today...


As I entered the voting booth yesterday here in the United States, I was reminded of what was a very special Election Day occurrence I witnessed in 1984.  Although it's a divergence from the usual taxi theme of this blog, I would like to share that story with you.

In 1984, also a presidential election year, the contest was between the Republican incumbents, President Ronald Reagan and Vice-President George Bush (the elder), and the Democrats Senator Walter Mondale for president and Representative Geraldine Ferraro for vice-president, the first female to run for the second-highest office in the land in American history.  I lived in a part of Queens called Forest Hills at that time and, as it happened, that was also the area of New York City where Geraldine Ferraro made her home.  Now, my home was a one-bedroom apartment and hers was an expensive single-family house with a front and back yard, but that didn't matter.  We were neighbors.  

My polling place was located in the gymnasium of an elementary school, P.S. (Public School) 101, several blocks from my home, and I walked there at around 1 p.m. on Election Day.  As I approached the school, I could see that the place was more or less surrounded with media and police vehicles, and I realized why they were there: this was the same polling place where Geraldine Ferraro voted.  I entered the gym and as I was busy signing in (which is how registered voters record that they have shown up and cast a vote), there was some commotion around the entrance, and in came the candidate herself.

Well, the place went abuzz.  She smiled and waved to everyone and was immediately surrounded by television reporters and the like.  Many in the room, including myself, approached her to shake hands and wish her well.  And then something happened that struck me as being unseemly.  A group of Republican supporters on one side of the gym started chanting, "Four More Years", repetitively and in unison, the message being that they wanted her opponents, and not her, to be elected.  That went on for about a minute and then kind of fizzled out on its own.

Ms. Ferraro was quite used to this sort of thing, of course, and it did nothing to alter her smile nor to abate the excitement in the room.  After a while she entered a voting booth, one of those contraptions with a lever that opens and closes a circular curtain for privacy, to cast her vote.  A few booths down, I entered one of my own.  So what we had here, only several feet apart, were the candidate for the second-highest office of the United States of America and a taxi driver both exercising their right -- considered sacred by many -- to vote.

To me, this demonstration before my eyes of how we in America choose our leaders was a truly wonderful and inspiring event.  What I realized during my walk back home was even more wonderful and inspiring, however.  It was that when the chanting of "Four More Years" suddenly interrupted the mood in the gym, nothing happened.  Not only did none of the many police or Secret Service agents in the room move forward to hush them, no one even thought of doing so.  It was a public place and they had the right to express their opinion, period.  The freedom of speech, guaranteed to all by a constitution that has stood since 1789, is so engrained in the psyches of the citizenry that it is completely unquestioned. 

And that is the American way.   

More Donald Trump Stories From My Cab

In looking through my journals recently (I've kept journals of my most interesting fares since I started driving a taxi in 1977) I came across two more Donald Trump stories, both from 2011.  I contend that firsthand data (you witnessed it yourself) and secondhand data (someone you know witnessed it and told you about it) can be valuable in validating or contradicting third-hand data (the media).  So with that in mind, here they are, again without embellishment.

1. January 31, 2011 -- I picked up a sixty-ish Hispanic woman and drove her to JFK, a forty-minute ride, at 4 a.m.  She told me she worked for many years for a very wealthy woman who had just died at the age of 94.  This elderly woman had a home in Palm Springs, California, and an apartment in New York City in Trump Tower.  My passenger said she is now returning to the Palm Springs home where her husband is a gardener.  I asked her if she ever meets Donald Trump in the Trump Tower building and, if she does, has she ever seen him NOT wearing a suit and a tie.  (This was on my mind ever since I'd noticed that in all the years Trump has been showing up in the media I had never seen him without a suit or tie, even when a TV camera would show him sitting in the stands at baseball games.)  She said that she had met him occasionally in the elevator and, no, come to think of it, she had never seen him wearing anything but a suit and a tie.  She said Trump was always polite and interested in her opinion about the service in his building.  She recalled that he asked her once if the doormen were friendly.  She also added that the doormen say that Trump doesn't like to shake hands with people and that she sometimes sees his young son being pushed around in a stroller by a nurse and followed by two bodyguards close behind.  

"That's the price of being too famous," I said to her.

2. June 30, 2011 -- I picked up a young Hispanic man in Queens and drove him to Washington Heights in Manhattan, a thirty-minute ride, at midnight.  He told me he works in maintenance for the Trump Organization and that the next day he will be taking a test for his license to operate boilers (a big deal for him).  I asked him if he had any Donald Trump stories and he recalled one.  He told me he had once been working at the Wollman Skating Rink in Central Park, which is managed by the Trump Organization, and Donald Trump personally fired one of the workers because he wasn't dressed in the proper uniform -- instead of a black shirt and black pants, he was wearing a white shirt and black jeans.  "Asshole," my passenger said.  He added, however, that the perks of his job are great.  (No mention in my journal of what the perks are, unfortunately.)  

He said that he has seen Trump not wearing a suit and tie, "but only when he's going to play golf." 

He also told me that the owners of residences in the Trump building on Central Park South pay $80,000 a month for the maintenance of their apartments and that the man on the top floor, a penthouse, "owns a major bank."  This last bit of information I found particularly interesting because it gave me a gauge, a little measuring stick, by which to better comprehend the difference in wealth between the 1% and the rest of us.  

$80,000 a month for maintenance.  I own a small condo myself.  I pay $103. 

  

Donald Trump Stories From My Cab

No, I’ve never had Donald Trump in my cab.  Now that would be an interesting story, of course, because it would be firsthand data for me, secondhand data for you, as opposed to information received via the media.  However, since the primaries began in February of this extraordinary election year in the U.S., I have had several passengers in my taxi who told me Donald Trump stories of their own.  And that does count for something.  It’s source information, unedited.

Here they are, in chronological order, without embellishment:

1. March 8 -- an older gentleman, in his seventies I would say, got in the cab in Midtown and we drove up to his Park Avenue address at 81st Street.  ("Park Avenue address" is code, btw, for "old money, very wealthy").  He was on his cell phone for most of the ride, but when he'd ended his call I asked for his opinion about the upcoming election.  Without needing any prompting, he told me he'd once had some kind of business deal in progress with Trump (no specifics were given).  He said he'd never met him in person but had spoken with him on the phone.  He said he should change the name of his book from The Art Of The Deal to The Art Of Changing The Deal At The Last Minute.  

The implication here, as I understood it, was that Trump was unscrupulous, not good to his word, sneaky, and that the deal, whatever it was, did not go forward. 

As he left the cab his parting words, referring to Trump, were, "He's a bad man."

2. May 3 -- I had a middle-aged woman en route to the News Corp. Building on 47th and 6th, where Fox News is located.  She told me that her husband works as an "ad director" there, meaning he arranges which commercials will be shown in which time slots.  She said that recently her husband and a colleague were waiting for an elevator to arrive in the building and when the door opened there stood Donald Trump with a couple of security guards beside him. As her husband and his colleague moved forward to join them in the elevator, they were stopped by the security guards.  But Trump intervened, allowing them to come in with them.  As they rode together in the elevator, however, there was no conversation with Trump because her husband, she said, was "in shock".

3. July 10 -- a middle-aged man in my cab told me he is a construction contractor in Florida.  He said that a friend of his had once been in charge of a Trump construction project there and at one point during the operation he pulled all his workers off the job and refused to allow them to continue working until he was paid the money that was owed to him for work already done up to that point.  Apparently Trump had a reputation for not paying his contractors and his friend was wise to this.  The ploy, my passenger said, was successful.  Trump paid him what he was owed and the construction continued.

4. August 7 -- a 30-something woman going from 30 Rock (Rockefeller Center in Midtown) to the Upper West Side.  After chatting with her for a few minutes she told me she is a makeup artist at NBC and used to work on the show "The Apprentice".  Realizing I had a rare opportunity here, I began quizzing her about what it was like to actually do Donald Trump's makeup and, of course, what about his hair?  Here's what I learned (and this is breaking news)... 

a) His hair is real.  At least, it's not a piece.  She couldn't say whether or not he has plugs because she didn't work on his hair and couldn't get in there, but it's definitely not a toupee.  

b) Regarding the orange face: Trump has a skin condition known as rosacea (the enlargement of facial blood vessels, giving his cheeks and nose a flushed appearance).  She said that when she worked for him she used makeup that gave his face the appearance of a natural skin tone.  Now, however, he does his makeup himself and is using a yellow substance which, when applied over the redness of his face, creates an orange tint (yellow + red = orange).

According to my passenger he won't listen to advice that he should change to another cream or ointment.

c) What it was like to be an employee of Donald Trump: she enjoyed working for him, was treated respectfully, and was well paid.  She said if she worked only half a day she would still be given a full day's wages.

d) Trump's children: she liked them, too.  The only thing she found objectionable about any of them was that Donald Junior is a hunter.  Other than that she thought they were fine people.

e) Would she vote for him?  No.

For me, stories number 1 and 3 add credence to reports we’ve been hearing for months that Trump has a long history as an unscrupulous businessman, a shark swimming in the shark-infested waters of real estate development, that you cannot believe what he says, and that he is not to be trusted.  Stories 2 and 4 lead me to believe that on a personal level he can be a nice guy.  Story 4b suggests that reports are true that it is difficult or even impossible for him to accept advice from people who are experts in a field and that he trusts his own instincts above all else. 

Ah, the things you can learn driving a taxicab in New York City!  Should I come upon further stories from a firsthand or even a secondhand source, I will pass them on.

For more of my thoughts about this election please click here for the post, "What The Man From The Atomic Energy Commission Told Me".  

What The Man From The Atomic Energy Commission Told Me

You never know who will show up in the back seat of a taxicab.  It’s like a talk show on wheels, really.  A guest enters, we chat for a while, then he or she exits and the next one gets in.  It’s quite a remarkable human situation, if you think about it, especially in a city like New York where the movers and shakers of the world tend to congregate. 

Back in 1992 I had a passenger in my taxi who made a puzzling statement to me and this statement, considering who he was, has kept me thinking about its meaning ever since.  This story is actually one of the most frequently told stories to passengers in my cab, although I’ve never written about it until now.  And I do so now because with presidential politics being what they are in the United States at this time, I feel a responsibility to share this information. 

My passenger was an American man who I estimated to be in his ‘70s at the time.  I remember thinking that he looked to be in great physical condition for his age and that he mentioned to me that he walked ten miles a day, which impressed me.  I don’t recall how it came up in conversation, but somehow the following datum emerged: he told me he had once been a member of the Atomic Energy Commission. 

Whoa.  You may not be old enough to know what that meant, but if you were around in the ‘50s and ‘60s you most likely do.  The Atomic Energy Commission was the highest level federal agency in the United States which regulated the use and development of atomic energy, including the creation of new types of atomic weapons.  In terms of its importance to the country, it might be compared today to the National Security Agency (the NSA) or the CIA.  Top secret, hush-hush agencies with great, sometimes controversial, responsibilities to the security of the country.  

Realizing that I had a rare opportunity here, I tried to make the most of it in the limited time we would be together.  I know I asked him several questions which he was glad to answer, but there is only one thing I specifically remember asking his opinion about, something I’d already had some attention on for a few years.

And that was this: it had occurred to me some years prior that there seemed to have been a shift in the public consciousness concerning the threat and consequences of atomic war.  It seemed to me that people weren’t nearly as concerned about it as they had been before.  You didn’t see articles in the papers or magazines about it anymore, or hear people talking about it anymore.  Nobody seemed to be worried about it anymore, even though the Cold War was still going on.  I don’t know when this change occurred, but I supposed it was a gradual thing that may have started in the early ‘70s, perhaps when the Viet Nam war ended — I don’t know.

When I was growing up in the late ‘50s and throughout the ‘60s, the seriousness of even the possibility of nuclear war was very much in the public consciousness.  I would say that it and the arrival of television were the two things that shaped the psychology of my generation.  These two developments created a significant “generation gap” between us Baby Boomers and our parents, actually.  They had lived in a world where nuclear bombs and televisions did not exist.  This resulted, I think, in a different view of the world for us and certainly a different view about warfare.  For all the millennia preceding the advent of the atomic bomb, warfare meant men fighting directly against other men with some sort of hand-held weapon or by shooting short-range explosives at each other.  Even in the most horrific wars, it was still understood, if not consciously then subconsciously, that when the war was over, or even if it was never over, the human race would still exist and although it might change for the better or worse, there would still exist what is called “civilization”.

The invention and then the proliferation of nuclear weapons, however, changed that very basic reality.  For the first time in human history, weaponry had been created which could mean the extinction of civilization, if not the extinction of the human race itself and perhaps even all forms of life on the planet.  Man had developed the means of destroying himself as a species.  And this would happen not through masses of armies going up against each other but by certain people pushing certain buttons which would launch the nuclear missiles.  Thus the new reality was that even if everything seemed harmonious and peaceful, this world would always be a very dangerous place.  It could all end tomorrow, complete destruction, just like that, if certain people pushed certain buttons.  That’s a pretty depressing thought, isn’t it?

I grew up knowing, and worrying, about this.  With the Cold War brewing it was always in the back of my mind that this day could be the last day.  This fear was heightened considerably by the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962 when the Soviet Union and the United States came to the brink of nuclear war.  It was horrifying.  

I remember one specific incident which occurred in my 8th grade music class during the crisis.  Our teacher brought out a record of the music from a new Broadway show called Fiorello! about the former mayor of New York City, Fiorello LaGuardia.  We were to listen to the record and there would be a discussion about it when it was over.  She placed the record on the turntable and we waited for the music to begin.  However, this show didn’t begin with music.  It began with the blaring siren of a fire engine.  (Mayor LaGuardia was famous for showing up at fires.)  The entire class, hearing the sound, let out a collective scream.  Not a funny, teenage scream — a real scream of terror.  That’s how on edge we were, and we were only kids.

So I brought this up with my passenger.  I asked him if I was correct in my observation.  Did something change?  Are people in general not concerned about the possibility of a nuclear holocaust like they used to be?  He thought about it for a moment and then told me that I was correct, it was true.  And then he added this comment, and these were his exact words:

“A country that’s worried about a nuclear war is a country that won’t buy a new car.”

I don’t remember if I asked him what he meant by that.  I don’t think I did, actually, maybe because we were at the end of the ride.  But his comment has stayed with me all these years.  If it had come from just anyone, I suppose I would have forgotten about it the next day, but this was coming from the guy from the Atomic Energy Commission, so it carried significant gravitas.    

After giving it much thought, and after hearing the opinions of many passengers in my cab, I came to the conclusion that what he meant was that a country of worried people was bad for the economy, with the implication being that a robust economy was an important ingredient in keeping the peace, not only in America but around the world.  Plus this: what’s the point in having the media and governmental agencies agitating the population about nuclear holocaust when there’s nothing the average person can do about it, anyway?

I decided he was right.  This made sense.  A population which believes the world may end tomorrow might well turn out to be a population of nihilistic, live-for-today stoners.  What it takes for a society to prosper — the steady flow of commerce — could be reduced to a trickle.  No Brillo pads to clean your sink.  No gravy on your mashed potatoes.  No invention of the iPhone.  No Pokemon Go.  If things get bad enough in a country, people will become desperate.  Governments can be overthrown by violence and atomic weapons can get into the hands of some very destructive people.  So the man from the Atomic Energy Commission was right. 

Or was he?

As this presidential election cycle rolls forward in the United States I have given his comment even more thought, and it seems to me something was overlooked.  A country that is not keenly aware of what atomic weapons can do is a country that might elect a rabble-rousing loose cannon to the presidency -- a person who could conceivably blunder our way into a nuclear holocaust.  

So there is something the average person can do about it.  He or she can understand that the risk of atomic warfare is the number one issue in any presidential election, and vote accordingly.  No other issue even comes close.  Not bad trade agreements, not student debt, not illegal immigration, not psychotic lunatics opening fire in shopping malls, not even climate change.  

Please consider this: the president of the United States, when it comes to nuclear war, virtually has the power of God.  By his or her command all we know of civilization could quite suddenly come to an end.  By his or her command billions -- billions -- of people could perish, perhaps even every human being on this planet could perish.  Perhaps even every living thing on the planet could perish.  Is that not the power of God?

So temperament, sanity, intelligence, and empathy mean everything in a presidential election.  It’s the great decision we as Americans must make every fourth year, and it tests our wisdom as a nation.  Candidates who are rude, impulsive, thin-skinned, angry, and impossible to give advice to can be elected to the offices of mayor, governor, and senator all day long, and sometimes are.  

But never to the presidency.

The motto of one of the great American presidents, Theodore Roosevelt, was “Speak softly and carry a big stick”.  There are plenty of big sticks in the United States arsenal.  It’s the “speak softly” part that is so important in a nuclear age. 

If you’re an American, I do hope you will give this your most sober consideration before you vote.

*********

There are links to several Wikipedia pages in this post.  I’m giving three of them again here in case you missed them:

Atomic War

The Cold War

The Cuban Missile Crisis

I suggest that you to go to these sites and read the articles. I know it’s disturbing to read this stuff, it really is, but I feel we cannot afford to be unaware of what is really at stake in this and in every presidential election.  Go to the Cuban Missile Crisis page first and listen to the riveting audio of President Kennedy addressing the nation.  Then imagine the wrong person being the president at that time.

I feel strongly that all Americans need to be conversant with this subject. "The Nuclear Age" should be required study for everyone at the high school level, in my opinion. 

This is the world we live in.  

Let’s not kid ourselves.

The American Way

As I entered the voting booth yesterday here in the United States, I was, as happens every year, reminded of what was for me a very special Election Day experience I had in 1984.  Although it's a divergence from the taxi theme of this blog, I would like to share that story with you.

In 1984, also a presidential election year, the contest was between the Republican incumbents, President Ronald Reagan and Vice-President George Bush (the elder), and the Democrats Senator Walter Mondale for president and Representative Geraldine Ferraro for vice-president, the first female to run for the second-highest office in the land in American history.  I lived in a part of Queens called Forest Hills at that time and, as it happened, that was also the area of New York City where Geraldine Ferraro made her home.  Now, my home was a one-bedroom apartment and hers was an expensive single-family house with a front and back yard, but that didn't matter.  We were neighbors.  

My polling place was located in the gymnasium of an elementary school, P.S. (Public School) 101, several blocks from my home, and I walked there at around 1 p.m. on Election Day.  As I approached the school, I could see that the place was more or less surrounded with media and police vehicles, and I realized why they were there: this was the same polling place where Geraldine Ferraro voted.  I entered the gym and as I was busy signing in (which is how registered voters record that they have shown up and cast a vote), there was some commotion around the entrance, and in came the candidate herself.

Well, the place went abuzz.  She smiled and waved to everyone and was immediately surrounded by television reporters and the like.  Many in the room, including myself, approached her to shake hands and wish her well.  And then something happened that struck me as being unseemly.  A group of Republican supporters on one side of the gym started chanting, "Four More Years", repetitively and in unison, the message being that they wanted her opponents, and not her, to be elected.  That went on for about a minute and then kind of fizzled out on its own.

Ms. Ferraro was quite used to this sort of thing, of course, and it did nothing to alter her smile nor to abate the excitement in the room.  After a while she entered a voting booth, one of those contraptions with a lever that opens and closes a circular curtain for privacy, to cast her vote.  A few booths down, I entered one of my own.  So what we had here, only several feet apart, were the candidate for the second-highest office of the United States of America and a taxi driver both exercising their right, considered sacred by many, to vote.

To me, this demonstration before my eyes of how we in America choose our leaders was a truly wonderful and inspiring event.  What I realized during my walk back home was even more wonderful and inspiring, however.  It was that when the chanting of "Four More Years" suddenly interrupted the mood in the gym, nothing happened.  Not only did none of the many police or Secret Service agents in the room move forward to hush them, no one even thought of doing so.  It was a public place and they had the right to express their opinion, period.  The freedom of speech, guaranteed to all by a constitution that has stood since 1789, is so engrained in the psyches of the citizenry that it is completely unquestioned. 

And that is the American way.   

BBC Breakfast and the Art of the Plug

I got a lesson during the course of a single shift last week that is something any guest on a talk show must learn when he's trying to "sell" something. And that is, when you're being interviewed you've got find a way to get in the plug. It turns out to be something of an art. Here's what happened...

It began with a prearranged meeting at 6 p.m. with a couple of Australian journalists in front of the CBS Broadcast Center on West 57th Street. They had contacted me a few days prior with a request for an interview with a "real New York cabbie" about the election results. It was to be on a radio station known as 3AW in Melbourne with a talk-show host named Neil Mitchell, the most popular talk radio guy in those parts, I was told, with an audience of a million people.

So off I went at the very beginning of my shift to the CBS building and there I met my two Aussie contact fellows, Justin and Sebastian, who climbed into my cab. We chatted for a few minutes and then I was handed a cell phone. On the other end was what might be called a Professional Voice. Do you know how someone sounds who speaks for a living? It's smooth and kind of resonant without the "umms" and "uhhs" that punctuate the sentences of non-professionals. It was Neil Mitchell, and we were on the air in Melbourne.

I was asked a few questions about the election and about taxi driving in New York. I thought I answered them adequately and then, after less than a minute - zip - it was over. I had another five minutes of conversation with Justin and Sebastian and then - zip - they were off to attend to other matters and were gone. I drove down the street, picked up my first fare of the night, and the rest of my shift was underway.

But as I headed toward the East Side with my passenger, something didn't seem quite right. They had told me that I had just communicated to a million people and yet it felt like nothing. There had been no feedback. I mean, when you communicate the idea is that there's someone on the other end to receive it and an effect is created, right? Here there was just a vacuum, and it was unsatisfying. And worse than that, I had intended to mention the name of my blog on the air but the thing went by so quickly that the opportunity had slipped right past me. So I felt a bit frustrated, as well.

However, I took it as a learning experience - practice, really - because I knew there would be an even bigger fish to fry that very night. Just before I'd left my house to drive into Manhattan I had received an email from a contact person from the BBC asking me if I'd be interested in appearing on one of their shows, BBC Breakfast, at 3 a.m. They also were interested in interviewing a real New York cabbie to get a local reaction to the election, and I had called the number they'd given me and accepted the invitation.

Now you have to understand, I am not a movie star nor a head of state. I am merely a New York cab driver. I am not used to receiving one - much less two - invitations to go on the air in the very same night. So my mood was elevated and this helped me to have a better than usual night as a member of my own profession, culminating in a lucrative out-of-town job to Ridgewood, New Jersey, that on any other night would have been the highlight of the evening.

In fact it was during the return ride to the city from Jersey, just as I was crossing the George Washington Bridge, that I received a phone call from Emily, the charming producer of the show, who asked me to bring my cab right up to the site from which the show would be broadcast, the Skylight Diner at the corner of 34th Street and 9th Avenue. The plan was that I would be interviewed while sitting in the taxi. In speaking to Emily, I found out a bit more about BBC Breakfast. It turns out to be Britain's primary early morning show on the "telly". It's on the air every day for three hours and has an audience all over the U.K. of - gasp - FIVE MILLION PEOPLE.



Somehow the concept of five million viewers in the U.K. was much more intimidating than one million listeners in Australia, which I took in stride. I did the math - I get about 50 people a day in my cab. I would have to drive 100,000 shifts to reach five million. And it would take me 274 years to do it if I drove every day of the year.

But it was the next part that really got to me:

IT WAS LIVE.

Suddenly it occurred to me that a live mike equals power. I could say whatever I wanted and it would be heard by all these people, imagine that. I started to think of interesting things to say...

"The Revolution is here. I am your leader."

"REDRUM!"

"Paul is dead."

"All of you children watching, go to Mum's pocketbook right now and send the money to ______ (my address)."

"You have been abducted by aliens but when I say the words 'fidgity-doo' you will remember none of it. Fidgity-doo."

Of course, I said none of these things. What happened was I arrived at the diner at 3 a.m. and was greeted by Emily. It was an interesting sight, actually, to see this 24-hour diner with so much activity going on at that time of night. The streets in that area are quite deserted at 3 in the morning, yet here was this hub of busy-ness with the ability to transmit images and sound to the other side of the planet. I know we take this technology for granted now but, really, that is incredible if you think about it.


Emily briefed me on what was to happen which was that in about half an hour the show's host (or "presenter", as he is called) Bill Turnbull, would come out to the sidewalk, approach me in the cab, and ask me a few questions. That was all the preparation I had. So for the next 30 minutes I hung around the diner watching how the show is done while other guests were interviewed, and then, at the appointed time, I went into my cab. Out came Bill Turnbull - lights, camera, action - and the interview was underway.

He asked me a few questions about the city's reaction to the election, what's on people's minds,

and about being a taxi driver in New York, and was about to wrap up our little chat when I realized the moment of truth was at hand. If I was going to let five million people know the name of my blog I was going to have to act boldly.

So I did it.

Even though he hadn't asked me, I acted as if he had and shamelessly let the plug drop. "The job is so adventurous," said I, "that I started writing an online blog called 'Cabs Are For Kissing'."

And then, bless his heart, Bill Turnbull picked right up on that and repeated the name of the blog for all to hear again.

The result: over 3,000 hits and more than 50 comments and emails from all over Britain. And that is a great, great feeling to know that an individual can create what is essentially a personal magazine from his own home and have that kind of reach around the world. Mind boggling, really.

And so I'd like to thank everyone who took the trouble to find me here. Welcome aboard! Please come by often, and I'll try to keep it interesting for you.

********

And if that's not enough and you want even more New York, just click right here for Pictures From A Taxi.