Well Worth The Eighteen Bucks

There are certain rides which you suspect will be trouble, but then it turns out there is none. For example, the passenger looks drunk, acts drunk, is drunk, and you’ve got a feeling that any second now this son of a bitch is going to puke in the back seat. But he does not. And that is good. 

But then there are others for which your suspicion is justified - you could see it coming, and indeed it arrives. But at least you can say, “I saw it coming” and give yourself credit for possessing a certain amount of wisdom, even if your wisdom wasn’t of sufficient quantity to have been able to avoid the damned thing in the first place.

Such was the case with a ride I had a couple of months ago, on a frigid Wednesday evening in February. I had taken a fare from Manhattan to Williamsburg, in Brooklyn, at 6:20 - not something a cabbie wants to do at that hour because it likely means going back to “the city” (Manhattan) without a passenger and that is money lost. And although the mantra of the veteran New York City cab driver is supposedly “I don’t go to Brooklyn”, I took the guy without even a hint of complaint - a sign that I may be softening up in my old age.

It was the next ride that was the trouble. Before I could turn around and head back to the Williamsburg Bridge I was hailed at McCarren Park by three teenage boys, dressed in outfits typical of the so-called “inner city”, each about 15, maybe 16 years old. Now here’s a little truism a cabbie learns, usually the hard way, about teenagers and taxicabs in New York City - there are only two situations in which kids between the ages of 13 and 17 ever take taxis without an adult accompanying them. 1) They are “rich kids” from the Park Avenue or 5th Avenue parts of town. 2) It is a Friday or Saturday night and the teenagers are a boy and a girl who are out on a date. The reason: money. Cabs are too expensive for teenagers unless you’re a rich kid or it’s a very special occasion.

Now, I know this, but as mentioned maybe I’m getting soft in my old age, or maybe it’s just that it’s been so long since I’ve had any teenagers in my cab who didn’t fit into one of those two categories that I’ve let my guard down. Whatever the reason, I stopped and let them in, all three in the back seat. Immediately there was this sinking feeling a cabbie gets when he knows he’d made a mistake. I had gone against my instinct, thinking I was doing the right thing by stopping for whomever wanted my services, as per the rules, but now I had a problem on my hands. As soon as they were in my immediate space, danger signals went off on my taxi driver radar. These were not your normal taxi passenger particles, so to speak. They weren’t passing through the filter.

What I do in a situation like this, as I’ve described elsewhere in this blog, I call my “Three Strikes And You're Out System”. Strike One: from your outward characteristics you look to me like potential trouble of one kind or another. I don’t feel comfortable with you in my cab. Strike Two: I also don’t feel comfortable with where in the city you want me to go and the time of day (like late at night) you want me to go there. Well, these three fellows by appearance, age, and demeanor brought me to Strike Two immediately, and when I asked them where they were going the one directly behind the partition next to the right-side door barked out:

“Ridgewood, yo.”

Ouch.

This was further bad news because not only did they want to take me for a long ride in the opposite direction from Manhattan, but Ridgewood is a low-income, not-gentrified part of the city which I don’t really know very well due to the fact that I get so few fares out there. This ride was going to be something like fifteen to twenty dollars on the meter. Three inner-city teenagers paying that much money for a cab ride when they could have taken the subway? Noooo… this particle was definitely not making it through the filter. Still, the procedure of my system is that when you have a Strike Two, what you do is communicate, or try to. Often what looks like something ominous turns out to be not that way at all upon further observation. So I went at it.

“So what street do you want in Ridgewood?” I asked.

“Huh?” the kid on the right-rear grunted.

“Where are you going? What street?”

There was a brief conversation among them. And then, “We don’t know yet,” replied the same kid, who seemed to be a spokesman for the group. “Get on Metropolitan.”

This was a further bad indicator. They’re taking an expensive ride and they’re not sure where they’re going? Two possibilities enter the mind of the taxi driver: maybe they aren’t concerned about spending money on a ride to a vague destination because they have no intention to pay for it. Or, worse, maybe they want to get to a general area and then find a street where it would be a good place to hold you up. I knew I had to determine which possibility it was before we got to Ridgewood - my life could be at stake here. If I decided what they had in mind was just to beat the fare, I would take them. If I was right, all I would lose, really, would be some time. But if I wasn’t sure, I would have to abruptly end the ride in a busy area with lots of people around (hopefully right behind a police car, if I could find one) and through overt or covert means, get them out of the cab. (That’s Strike Three.) So I had a plan. But first I had to continue with my attempt at communication.

The kid in the middle, who I could easily see in the rear-view mirror, was wearing a Yankee cap. I thought this was a good way to start a conversation, so I looked at him in the mirror and asked him if he was a Yankee fan. He seemed surprised that he was being asked a question. After thinking about it for a few seconds he replied, rather flatly, “Yeah.”

“How do you think they’re looking for the new season? Think they’ll make the playoffs?”

The kid pondered this concept - Yankees… playoffs… and finally responded. “Maybe,” was all he said. He wasn’t saying much, but he said something. I took this as a hopeful sign and continued.

“Hey, you know who I had in my cab last summer? Derek Jeter!”

Now for any Yankee fan, or even any baseball fan, this statement should result in a “Wow!” of one sort or another. Derek Jeter, the recently retired superstar of the Yankees, has been the most admired sports figure in New York for the last twenty years. But all it got out of the kid was an even-voiced, “That’s cool.” And nothing more. This was not good.

I was beginning to think I was going to have to get rid of these guys for my own safety when there was an oddly positive development in the ride. They started goofing off with each other. One of them accused another of farting. Then the one who’d been accused yelled up to me, “Hey cab driver, did you fart?” which brought some laughter in the back seat. It was juvenile and disrespectful, but it gave me something with which to calculate their intentions.

In my understanding of human behavior I could not see three teenagers joking around with each other if what was in the back of their minds was to pull out a weapon and rob me. If that had been their intention, they would have been serious, silent, and mean-spirited. I could see that these kids were basically just wiseass teenagers. Still, something was up and I was pretty sure at this point that what was up was that they were going to try to beat the fare. That suspicion wasn’t enough to kick them out of the cab, however, so we continued on.

When we’d gone a couple of miles down Metropolitan Avenue some disagreement arose among them as to where they wanted to go. One kid said turn left, the other said no, turn right, and then there was a whispered conference among them - a development I didn’t like one bit. What was it they didn’t want me to hear? It was a little after seven in the evening and although it was dark there were still plenty of cars and people on the streets, so I still didn’t think they intended to hold me up. But now I wasn’t so sure. I decided that if they directed me to turn into an alley or a dead-end street I would quickly close the partition window on them, lock it, and order them out of the cab. The Plexiglas partition is bullet-proof (it had better be!) and as long as I had an open road in front of me I could take off the moment they stepped out of the cab and be safe, hopefully. To hell with the money.

If, however, they were simply going to try to leave without paying, as I expected, well, I had another plan…

We took a few lefts and rights and wound up on a one-way, residential street. Halfway down the block the kid in the rear-right says, “Okay, stop here.” As I brought the cab slowly to a halt, I noted that the street in front of me was devoid of other vehicles, a good thing. Stopping the cab, I left it in “Drive” with my foot on the brake.

“You’re getting out here?” I asked the group, noticing that there was $18.30 on the meter.

But there was no answer, as such. Instead there was a sudden, loud, rebel yell from both sides of the compartment as the rear doors flew open simultaneously. With grins of joyous complicity on their faces, the two kids who had been sitting next to their own doors jumped out of the cab and began to run away the moment their feet touched ground. Seeing this, I put my own plan into action. Instead of just sitting there and watching them run, I stepped on the gas, hard, while at the same time reaching back, slamming the partition window shut, and locking it. The sudden forward thrust of the cab caused the two rear doors to close on their own. But I wasn’t driving down the street alone. The kid in the Yankee hat who had been sitting between his friends hadn’t been able to get out in time. In an instantaneous reversal of fortune, he was suddenly a prisoner in a moving vehicle.

“Like I didn’t see that coming,” I called back to him while bringing the speed up to about 25 miles per hour. The look of shock on the kid’s face was priceless. I wish I could have taken a picture of it.

“So,” I said in sarcastic cheerfulness as we continued down the street, “let’s find a cop.”

There was panic and confusion in the kid’s eyes. Perhaps he saw his future melting away due to being arrested. Perhaps he could see how he would lose the respect of certain people in his life whom he admired. Or perhaps he could just see himself being picked up at the precinct by his momma, who would give him more than a piece of her mind when she got him home. Whatever it was, he kept it to himself. He didn’t say a word to me.

For my part, I knew I had to keep the taxi moving while looking for a cop. If I brought it to a stop, the kid would certainly bolt. I continued driving down the street for another block with still no other cars in front of me, but then slowed down a bit to make a left turn at an approaching intersection. As I went into the turn, the speed of the cab going down to about fifteen miles per hour, the kid suddenly pushed open the right-rear door and jumped out, rolling over a couple of times onto the pavement just like in a scene from an action movie. Looking back at him through the mirror, I could see him rising to his feet, apparently uninjured. There was an accumulation of snow on the street which may have cushioned his fall.

I kept driving, satisfied that I had won the game. Actually, just the look on the kid’s face was worth the eighteen bucks. In these fare-beating scenarios, it’s not really about the money, anyway. It’s about pride, not letting someone make a jackass out of you. Also it’s about teaching the person a lesson, if possible. Hopefully this kid had a realization along the lines of there being consequences to stupid behavior. Of course in this particular instance, he may have had a realization of a different kind...

...like that he may have a future as a stuntman!

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.

The Agony And The Idiocy

Agony: Great pain, suffering, or anguish, of mind or body (Macmillan Dictionary for Students). 

In the lexicon of the world-weary, "agony" turns out to be a big word, indeed. As years go by it becomes increasingly understood that efforts to reach even the most minor of goals will inevitably ripen into fiasco and be attended to along the way with spoonfuls, nay, bucketfuls of agony. Yet still we soldier on, what's left of our optimism buoyed up by the scratch-off ticket that puts an unexpected five bucks in our pockets. Life ain't so bad after all. Until the next thing comes along. 

Like this... 

Four in the morning is cut-off time at the bars in New York City which creates, potentially, yet another source of revenue for the cab driver. The late-night drinkers - uh, "drunks" - emerge from their lairs, hands in the air, waving at anything yellow that might get them home. As troublesome as they may be, drunks are nevertheless a welcome sight for the cabbie. The shift ends at five, so if you can get another ride or two in at the end, it feels like free money. 

That's what I was thinking as I was driving through Chelsea at that hour a few Thursdays ago in search of that last good ride. There's a popular gay bar called "G" on 19th between 7th and 8th, so I thought I'd give the place a look before heading over toward my usual cruising routes. Sure enough, two guys, twentyish, emerged from the place and hailed me. (Driving a cab in New York is like being a fisherman. You have to know where they're biting at any time. It's a skill.) Their destination was the Upper East Side, so our route was going to be a straight run up 8th Avenue with a crossover through Central Park on the 65th Street transverse. We were on our way. 

It was a non-conversational ride, at least between me and them, which was fine with me as I'd been driving for eleven hours straight and feeling it. A joie de vivre at this hour I am not. They just sat there in the back, talking to each other a bit and not moving around too much, and I was riding the wave up 8th. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Now, when I say "riding the wave" I am referring to the synchronization of the traffic lights on the one-way avenues of Manhattan. If you drive at a speed of about twenty-seven miles per hour, theoretically you will never hit a red light if there aren't many other cars or obstructions on the avenue. And, if you're at the "front" of the wave, the red light in front of you will turn green just as you approach it. Riding the wave requires a high level of driving ability, especially when you're trying to do it safely. And that means never - never! - running a red light. 

Just before entering each intersection, the masterful driver must first ascertain that the other guy's light on the intersecting cross street is already red or at least yellow. Then he must adjust the speed of his own vehicle so it will enter the intersection at the nanosecond his light turns green. But before actually doing that he must first turn his vision for just a split second toward the direction of traffic on the intersecting street to make sure no other vehicle is about to run his own red light and crash into him. Only then does he actually enter the intersection. 

This is all done on an automatic basis, without thinking. Master cabbies use this technique when in competition with other drivers for business. It's basically a horse race to hold "position" on the avenue. Should there be a passenger somewhere up ahead, you want to be the first to get to him. Since I already had passengers in my cab, however, I was not riding the very front of the wave. I was close to the front, just out of habit, about three seconds off the pace of the lights, but I was not in competitive mode. Why drive like a racing car driver when you're not in a race? Three seconds is a ton of time in this situation. 

Then, just as we were approaching 48th Street, it happened. 

You can ride the wave for ten years, using the skillfully safe technique as I've described it, and never once find yourself in a situation in which you actually had needed to be so cautious when coming toward an intersection. And then - pow! - it suddenly pays off in the form of NOT having what would have been a ghastly accident. 

Out of nowhere, coming from my left on 48th Street, was a car racing through at about forty miles per hour. Driven by a drunk or a psycho (choose one), this thing was not even close to going through a green light. His signal had been red for about four seconds, yet there he was in highway mode, a two-ton rocket with no intention of checking what was coming toward him on 8th Avenue, no intention of slowing down, and no intention of stopping. It was a death charge, the thing you most fear encountering as a driver, of the suicidal or homicidal variety (choose one). 

It was that quick, automatic glance to my left that saved me. 

"Jesus!" I screamed, as I simultaneously slammed on the brakes and brought the cab to a very abrupt stop. 

The fuckhead behind the wheel of the oncoming car, whoever it was - I didn't have time to notice age or gender - just kept going without braking, missing me by about twenty-four inches, and miraculously making it across 8th Avenue without crashing into any of the other oncoming vehicles who all - very, very fortunately - were also about three seconds behind the changing of the light. 

"Jesus!", I screamed again, "unbelievable!" 

I watched the car continue speeding down 48th Street for a moment until it was out of sight, half expecting to next see a police car in pursuit, but there was nothing. Then, as I began to recover from the shock of the close call, I cautiously stepped on the gas again and started moving forward on 8th Avenue. 

Combined emotions of anger and relief rippled throughout my psyche. I was pissed. It felt like I'd been assaulted, actually, and I began wishing for some kind of retribution against the driver. I didn't like sharing the road or even the world, come to think of it, with maniacs like this. I imagined what the person would have said if he'd crashed into someone, killing or maiming them. "My light was green!" he would have said. 

It was disgusting. 

I decided to put my rage aside and get back to work. Onward to the Upper East Side. 

Now let me tell you something. All of the above - this near-death experience - this wasn't "agony". No. In the world of the taxi driver, this was merely a short-lived annoyance, something, outrageous as it was, that would be forgotten about in five minutes because, after all, there had been no collision. The Agony was about to begin. 

A voice came up from the back seat. "Stop over here," the voice said. 

Puzzled, I nevertheless complied, pulling the cab over to the curb on the left side of 8th Avenue. 

"What's the matter?" I asked. "Are you okay?" 

I received no answer. Instead, the back door opened and my passengers got out. Then they started to walk away without paying me. "What's the matter?" I repeated. "Where are you going?" 

"We're taking another cab," one of them said as he stopped and looked behind us on the avenue to see what was coming. 

I was startled. 

"What?" 

No response. 

"Why?" 

Again, no response, but I already knew why. These guys had no idea why I'd braked so hard. All they knew was that they'd been jolted. So I tried to explain. 

"Didn't you see what happened? Some lunatic ran the red light! If I hadn't braked so hard we would have crashed into him!" 

"I hit my head," one of them said. 

"You did? Are you okay? Do you want me to take you to a hospital?" 

No response. Again they started to walk away. 

"Wait a minute," I said, opening my door and stepping out onto the pavement. "Hey, look, I'm sorry you hit your head. But if I hadn't braked like that we'd have been in a big accident." 

"We're taking another cab," the guy who said he hit his head said, the implications being that a) he thought I was full of shit, and b) I was a lousy driver. I felt like I was being slapped in the face. Their reactions were all wrong. The right response would have been to express some understanding of what I was telling them. It would have been to make some kind of comment about how badly the guy had been been hurt if, in fact, he'd been hurt at all. Instead they were trying to walk away indignantly as if they'd been assaulted by me. It was all wrong and I wasn't buying it.

"Are you kidding?" I called out, the anger now showing in my voice, "didn't you hear what I said? We would have crashed into that guy if I hadn't braked so hard! You should be thanking me!" 

Once again they ignored what I was saying and then turned and started walking away from me across 8th Avenue.

"Where are you going?" I yelled as I followed them into the middle of the street. "There's seven dollars on the meter. You can't just walk away without paying me!" 

"Don't you touch me," the guy who said he hit his head said. 

Allow me to step away from the action for a moment to introduce another term which has become a favorite of mine... 

Theater of the absurd: twentieth century dramatic movement based on a belief in the irrationality of man and the absurdity of life. Theater of the absurd uses incongruous or meaningless dialogue and unconventional plot structure and characterization to express a feeling of alienation and futility. (Macmillan Dictionary for Students)

Yes, like an actor interrupting his Hamlet soliloquy to suddenly start strutting around on the stage clucking like a chicken, the scene on the street had taken a sharp turn, at least for me, into the realm of the absurd. You drive a cab on the Wild West streets of New York City for thirty years, perfecting your driving technique to the point of being virtually accident-proof, and then, even though you'd been on the shift for eleven hours, your reaction time is still so fast that you are able to rescue yourself and your passengers from what certainly would have been a gruesome, perhaps even fatal, collision. And the reward for your competence? You are treated as if you were the scum on the inside of a toilet bowl. Plus you are being ripped off for the fare. It was theater of the absurd. And I was livid. 

"I'm not gonna touch you," I screamed, "I just want to get paid for what's on the meter!" 

They kept walking. 

"Okay, let's get a cop," I said, not really knowing what to say. 

The guy who said he'd hit his head stopped and turned. "If you get a cop, I guess I'll have to tell him what happened," he said, the implication being that I would be accused of some kind of criminal behavior. 

At this I balked. I had to suddenly consider whether it would be worth my while to pursue justice over this transgression on my dignity. As I was trying to decide, they hailed an empty taxi coming up the avenue. As the cab stopped and they were about to step into it, something within me prompted me to add one final touch to the absurdity of the scene, just to put a cherry on it. A little Idiocy, s'il vous plait... 

"I saved your lives!" I screamed. 

No response. 

"I saved your lives!" I screamed again. 

The door of the cab closed and it started moving up 8th Avenue. 

"I saved your lives!" I screamed a third time, adding "You fucking idiots!" to the sentiment, even though by now they were out of earshot. 

I returned to my cab with an internal volcano ready to explode. It was bad, and I knew this incident was going to be hanging around in my universe for quite a while. How pathetic had I become, standing on an avenue at four in the morning, trying to get drunk morons to understand that I'd just saved their lives? What I needed was a therapist, and she appeared five minutes later in the form of my next passenger, a considerate and caring woman who was kind enough to listen to my tale of woe as I drove her up to Harlem. God bless that lady -- now I no longer feel a need to carry a machete around with me in the cab. 

Nevertheless, when I got back to the garage half an hour later to end the shift, I was still reeling. All I wanted to do was take out a cigarette, stand by myself in a dark corner somewhere, and sneer. 

And I don't smoke.

********

But I do click, and encourage you to do so, as well. Like right here for Pictures From A Taxi.

Three Nights

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

 

Sunday, 3:30 a.m.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday, 2 a.m.

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

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

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

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

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

So off we went.

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

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

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

I got out of my car.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I drove away.

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

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

Which made the incident all the more memorable.

Tuesday, 4:30 a.m.

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

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

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

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

They were kind of stunned.

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

They were doubly stunned.

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

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

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

"Small world," said Michael Moore.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

********

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

The Fourth Worst Thing That Can Happen To A Cab Driver

I have long held the opinion that the three worst things that could happen to a cab driver are

1) Death

2) Paralysis

3) Some subhuman pukes in your cab.

In that order.

But I never knew what the fourth worst thing might be.

Until now.

Here's what happened...

A few nights ago at around 10 p.m. I was cruising for a fare on University Place in Greenwich Village. It's a narrow, one-way street that runs for only seven blocks from Washington Square up to 14th Street. I like University Place because it has several bars and restaurants on it as well as one of the great rarities in Manhattan, a bowling alley. These are all places where a cabbie is likely to find his next passenger. It's also a late-night area due to the high population there of New York University students who may be hitting the midnight oil or, more likely, hitting the midnight gin and tonic in a bar.

As I passed 13th Street, moving slowly in order to be able to stop in case I was hailed, a figure came rushing out at me from my left (driver's) side. He was a white-skinned, wild-eyed guy in his twenties whose facial expression and frantic body motion immediately struck me as WRONG. In taxi-driving, like anything that you do repetitively over a long period of time, you develop an instinct for the particles that stand out from the usual. And I could see in an instant that this guy didn't fit. People simply don't hail you like that unless there is something wrong.

Sometimes you're stuck with a person like this. You're waiting at a red light and he gets in. You know immediately that he's trouble but there he is in your cab and you've got to deal with him.

But sometimes you're not stuck with him.

You just keep driving and pass him by.

Of course you hope that he thinks that you didn't see him and that's why you didn't stop. You never want to hurt anyone's feelings. But any veteran cabbie knows that his feelings are quite secondary to your own gut instinct. The guy is trouble, you know it, and you keep your foot on the accelerator.

But it was different in this case. He came running right up next to me on the side of the cab. We made eye contact. I slowed down momentarily and glanced forward to see if the light at the next intersection, 14th Street, was red or green. It was green. This meant if I kept driving I could make the light, turn right, and be gone from this guy and whatever storms were brewing in his universe forever.

I kept driving.

There was no "Sorry, I didn't see you" about it. It was a blatant "I see you, I don't like your face, and I reject you. Goodbye." It was ugly.

I saw him still waving frantically at me in the rear view mirror, but REJECTED had been stamped on his application form and that was that. The decision of the judges is final. I made the turn and he was gone from sight and mind.

On 14th Street the distance between University Place and the next intersection, Broadway, is quite short. Because of this and its key location at the south end of Union Square, there is normally a ton of traffic at that particular spot. And it was no different at this time. It took me close to a minute to reach Broadway and then make another right to head back downtown in search of my next fare.

It was a fare I didn't have to do much searching to find. My next passenger jumped in as I stopped at the red light at 13th and Broadway.

Unfortunately, it was the same guy.

In all my years of taxi driving, this was a first. Never before had I had to confront a rejected passenger and answer for my sin. Never before had I had to speak to such a person. But there he sat in the back seat, almost surreal, looking at me like the Ghost of Misdeeds Past.

I was in shock. I immediately wondered how he'd been able to get over to 13th and Broadway so quickly on foot, and then realized that if he'd been running he could have done it in just that amount of time. I then hoped maybe he wouldn't recognize me as the driver who had just passed him by.

No such luck.

"Why didn't you stop for me, man?"

I considered the situation. There was no way I could bullshit my way out of it. So I just told him the truth.

"I didn't stop for you because I didn't like the way you came running up to me waving your arms so frantically," I said. "When people do that it usually means there's some kind of trouble going on and I don't want to be a part of it."

Interestingly, he could accept that. Truth has a way of doing that, even if it's an unwanted truth. He just accepted my explanation without feeling a need to get into an argument about it.

"Okay," he said, "Listen, I've gotta get down to 7th Street and Avenue A fast. In a big rush here, man!"

It was as if the whole rejection incident had not taken place. I felt relieved.

But as I started to drive down Broadway, I realized this was a good thing and it was a bad thing, too. Good because what could have been a major confrontation and even disciplinary action against me by the passenger had evaporated into nothing. But bad because the truth which had caused that potential trouble to disappear nevertheless meant that this passenger was, in fact, going to be trouble himself.

Now, I am supremely confident about my own instincts as a taxi driver. I had rejected this guy on a gut level that is never wrong, from my point of view. I knew that anyone who comes running up to a cab like that and who looks the way he looked was just surely going to mean some kind of trouble for me. And now I was waiting to see what the trouble would be.

It didn't take long. The ride we were taking was a short one. So short, in fact, that he could have walked it in five minutes, which was an outpoint in itself. This was not the kind of person who spends money on a taxi like that. Although he didn't tell me why he was in such a rush, his demeanor and his hurried speech told me it was drugs. My evaluation of the guy was that he was a junkie and this was a drug "emergency" of one kind or another.

We got to Avenue A and 7th Street in about a minute and a half. I pulled over to the curb so as to not block the traffic. And then he hit me with it.

"I've gotta meet someone in that building across the street. She's got the money for the ride. I'll be right back, man."

It was literally the oldest trick in the Book of Passengers' Sneaky Tricks.

Normally what I would do in this situation would be to try to stop the passenger from exiting the cab without leaving something of value behind. Or I'd just take off with him still in the taxi and look for a cop. You don't take a ride in a cab and then announce at the end of the trip that you have to disappear into a building to get money. That's a taxi no-no and it takes just one rip-off at the beginning of a cabbie's career to learn that lesson.

But this case was different. For one thing, it was a really short ride with little time lost and only a few dollars on the meter. But, more than that, in the wider karmic view of things I kind of felt I owed it to him.

So I let him go without a dispute. I waited there for a couple of minutes if only to validate what I already knew - that there was no way this guy was coming back - and then I drove off.

But I did go away with two things of value. One was that it showed me once again that my instincts are rock solid. I knew instantly when seeing this guy first coming toward me that he was bad news and that I was right to have not stopped for him.

And the other was discovering what the fourth worst thing is.

It's the dead returning to life and coming to get you.

The horror of it.

The horror!

********

Of course there's no horror in clicking here for Pictures From A Taxi. It's like strumming a banjo in a meadow on a summer day.