The Unusual Reasons For Taking A Taxi Hall Of Fame

You know what we need now? Another Hall of Fame. I had a fare recently which brought me to this realization. It's only right that excellence should receive acknowledgement, after all.

Now the great majority of taxi rides are pretty mundane. A to B is what they're all about and the reasons for them are things like getting to train stations, going home from work, arriving at the theater, meeting up at a restaurant, and so on. But every once in a while one of them steps out from the crowd, turns, faces the wannabees, and pirouettes like a duck in Swan Lake. These are the Unusual Reasons For Taking A Taxi. They might include:

1. The quintessential "Follow that taxi!" seen so often in movies.

2. The reverse of that, which is "Lose that taxi!" (or another vehicle) that's following the passenger.

3. Having some kind of sex in the back seat.

4. The No Destination Ride. Just drive.

5. The Shake the Paparazzi Ride, in which the passenger, a celebrity, wants to go just far enough to be out of sight of the frenzied photographers.

6. The "I'd Rather Die in Your Taxi" Ride in which the passenger, who has just had a heart attack, chooses to go to his hotel room rather than to a hospital.

7. The Getaway Ride. Unbeknownst to the driver, the passenger, who has just committed a crime, is using the taxi as his means of escape.

8. The Commandeered Taxi Ride. A cop suddenly jumps in and orders the driver to take him to a crime scene. No, not a doughnut shop! Who said that?

9. The "I Just Want To Be Able To Say I've Seen It" Ride in which a tourist who has only a few hours before he must catch his flight, takes a cab across the Brooklyn Bridge for the sole reason of catching a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty.

I've had all these rides over the years. And then a few nights ago, this happened...

Two twenty-something party girls in tight dresses kind of hailed me on 8th Avenue at 26th Street at 4:30 in the morning. I say "kind of" because it was one of those tentative arm raisings that people sometimes do when they think they want a cab but they're not quite sure. I stopped anyway. It's the time of night when I'm looking for that one last ride. The shift ends at five.

They didn't open the back door and get in. Instead they both came over to the window and one of them quite desperately asked me this question:

"Can you take us to a bathroom?"

They had been in a nearby club until closing time, 4 a.m., and then they'd found themselves out on the sidewalk in a little section of Chelsea that had nothing going on at that particular hour in the early morning. Everything was closed, not an all-night diner or even a deli anywhere in sight. And now whatever they'd been drinking was heading for the exit. It had become an emergency. If they'd been guys there would have been no problem. They could have just found a dark corner somewhere and fired away. But ladies do not squat in public places. Absolutely not! Help!

Of course the first thing I had to do was make fun of their situation in a good-natured way. After I got that out of my system, I told them not to worry, they'd come to the right place. Yessir, a veteran cabbie knows where all the bathrooms are. They jumped in and we started cruising uptown on 8th Avenue. Only seven blocks later, at 33rd Street, I pulled over at the north side of Penn Station. Pointing to the entrance, I told them to go down the escalator, walk a few steps to the left, and that's where the Ladies Room is located. I know the station well.

I might as well have told them they'd won a year's supply of Grey Goose. They were ecstatic. The $3.90 fare, which consisted only of the first drop and one click of the meter, had taken merely twenty seconds to complete. I felt a little guilty to be charging that much for such a quick ride and said, "I don't know if I'm ripping you off or rescuing you" to the damsels in distress.

"You're rescuing us!" they squealed in unison, then handed me six dollars and hurried off toward the escalator.

"Aww, shucks, m'am, I'm just doin' my job," I blurted out Jimmy Stewart style, although they were too far away to hear me. I shoved the bills in my shirt and drove off into the sunset, a hero.

Actually, the sunrise.

It was 4:30 in the morning.

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Welcome, New Inductees

It takes something really special to make it into the Traffic Jam Hall of Fame. In fact, since its inception in 2007, there has been not a single addition to its ranks. So imagine my astonishment when last week not one, but two candidates showed that they had what it takes to achieve traffic jam immortality and were immediately nominated for admission into the sanctum sanctorum of the Hall. Two in one week!

In New York City traffic jams are a way of life. Veteran New Yorkers have been known to laugh in the face of out-of-towners who think they know anything about what a traffic jam really is. You got stuck on the interstate for fifteen minutes on your way to the mall? Whaddaya kiddin' me? It took me an hour and a half to get from 31st and 2nd to 58th and 9th! And that was on a Sunday!

As common as it is, however, to be trapped in the misery of going nowhere forever, it is not the length of time of the jam up that earns even consideration for admittance into the Hall. Roadwork, an accident, bridge or tunnel delays? No, these are routine. It has to be much more than that. Indeed, it has to be something so outrageous, so unexpected, so never-seen-that-before that one considers writing a letter of recommendation to the Committee.

So I'm happy to report that my two nominees were put on the fast track and, after a late-night session, have been granted admission by the Powers That Be. I present them to you now... trumpets and drums, if you please... our newest members of the Traffic Jam Hall of Fame!

57th and 5th

I was waiting in front of the Apple Store on 5th Avene between 58th and 59th Streets at one a.m. on November 12th, hoping to get a computer geek (or anyone else for that matter) as my next passenger. In true New York style, this store is open 24/7 and has turned out to be a spot where a cabbie can find some business all night long. Sure enough, within five minutes four nerdy type fellows jumped in and asked me to take them to Grand Central Station, a three-minute ride.

I pulled out from the curb to the intersection at 58th Street where the light had just turned red and while we were waiting there I was informed by the guy sitting next to me in the front that they had ten minutes to make their train. Plenty of time, I told him, but to add a bit of tension to the ride he explained that if they didn't make this particular train the next one wouldn't be leaving the station until 6 a.m. Still, I told him, there was nothing to worry about. After all, it was one in the morning and, as we could both plainly see, 5th Avenue was empty in front of us. So relax, I said, there's never any traffic at this time of the night.

Right?

There are those who believe you must never say things like that. It's called "tempting fate". There's some kind of Force, you see - call it Fate, God, Zeus, or Google - that overhears everything we say and then, just for sport, starts fucking with us. I should have kept my mouth shut.

The words had barely left my lips when a police car with lights flashing entered the intersection a block down the avenue at 57th Street and just stopped there. This was followed by two more cruisers, lights also ablaze, who did the same. A big cop wearing those knee-high black boots of the Highway Patrol (and the Gestapo) jumped out of one of the vehicles and held his hands over his head, bringing the cars on 57th Street to a halt. A few moments later our own light on 58th turned green and we moved up to 57th where we were greeted by a second cop, also with his hands in the "stop" position.

It looked to me like some V.I.P. motorcade was about to come on through. Perhaps a prime minister from Somewhere Special or a Secretary of State or something. Government big shots who are considered security risks do get this kind of treatment in New York. But at one a.m.? Odd, but possible.

"Probably someone much more important than you or me," I said to my front seat companion with a trace of sarcasm in my voice. I understand the need for security, I guess, but it does interfere with my making a living. You wonder if it's really necessary.

"Do you think it will be long?" he asked, a bit of concern apparent in the tone of his own voice. The sure thing of making the train was appearing to be not such a sure thing anymore.

"Nah, don't worry," I replied. "I'm sure they'll be out of here in no time at all."

Well, "no time at all" becomes magnified when every minute counts. In what was becoming forever, our light at 57th turned red. The cops remained in the intersection and nothing happened. Another thirty seconds ticked by. The light turned green. The cops just stood there, looking down the street. With tension mounting, there was finally activity to our right on 57th Street. Another couple of police cruisers appeared in the intersection and made right turns onto 5th Avenue. And then, at last, we were able to see what the cause of the delay had been.

It was a tree.

Yes, the enormous tree that had been chosen to be the star of the show in Rockefeller Center this Christmas season was making its final leg of a trek from a town in Pennsylvania to its new home in Midtown, New York City. A future of being oohed and ahhed at by millions of tourists lay before it. So why not kick things off with a little traffic jam in the middle of the night on November 12th, just to get things off on the right foot?

Flanked by a couple of those cars with "oversized vehicle" warning signs attached to them, the tree made a right turn onto 5th Avenue and proceeded at five miles per hour toward Rockefeller Center at 50th Street. The cops kept us sitting there at 57th for another minute before finally clearing out of the intersection and joining their caravan a couple of blocks down the road.

What had started as a routine little ride to Grand Central Station had now entered crisis management mode. With only five minutes left to make the train, my passengers, who up to now had seemed relatively unconcerned, had become silent and tense. Visions of five hours of camping out in the station were creeping in on them. I put on my Racing Driver hat.

Zipping down to 54th Street, I made a quick decision to take a detour to Park Avenue in order to avoid further delays by the Great Tree Procession in front of us on 5th. With some extra speed and a cautious running of a red light, I got them to Grand Central with three minutes remaining on the clock. After a quick payment of the fare and a thank you, my passengers bolted out of the cab and headed for the entrance to the station, four nerds doing the hundred-yard dash with what should have been just enough time to catch the train.


Now, in my day I've weathered some of the greatest traffic jams in the history of New York City. I've been filibustered by several presidents of the United States. I've been blockaded by Fidel Castro, held hostage by Ahmadinijad. I've been rendered into collateral damage by a Mafia hit in Midtown. I've been stopped in my tracks by the camels, elephants, and zebras of the Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus. And now I've been humbled into submission by something that's not even a member of the animal kingdom.

But it is a member of the Traffic Jam Hall of Fame.

The Entire East Side

My favorite shift of the week is the Sunday night shift. Even though it's usually quite slow after midnight, the passengers on Sundays tend to be friendlier and certainly more sober than any of the other nights of the week. And with a little luck you might get an airport ride early in the shift, say, between 5 and 7 pm - the time when there are tons of flights coming in - and that means a quick turnaround with a new fare, hopefully back to Manhattan. And that means good money. Cha-ching!

And so I was quite pleased to pick up, as my first fare of the night on Sunday, November 13th, two people who were LaGuardia bound. After putting their luggage in the trunk, we had a brief conference to reach agreement on the best route to take. Should it be the Queens-Midtown Tunnel (a $4.80 toll and all highway on the Queens side), the Triboro Bridge (longer, less chance of traffic, also a $4.80 toll, and all highway after the bridge), or the 59th Street Bridge (free, and closest to us from where we were located on 46th Street and 10th Avenue)? Since they said their flight was to leave at 7:00 and it was then 5:00 (plenty of time), the choice was obvious: the 59th Street Bridge. I made a right on 56th and we were on our way.

My passengers were a young, married couple from Sweden who, they said, were living and working in Dublin. They were both cheerful and the fellow was particularly conversational, telling me that part of the reason for their trip to New York was for a surprise reunion with his sister, who lives in California and was in New York herself for the weekend to celebrate her thirtieth birthday. His wife was pleasant, as well, although not as chatty as her husband. She struck me as the more practical of the two, showing some concern about any potential traffic problems that could lie ahead of us. I set her mind at ease by saying that they had wisely left more than enough time to get to LaGuardia, which is normally a twenty-five minute trip, but added that, of course, you never could know for sure what might happen with the traffic in New York City.

"Don't worry, though," I reassured her, while showing my age, "you'll be at LaGuardia so early you'll be playing Ms. PacMan for an hour just to pass the time."

Remember what I said about tempting fate? You would have thought from the previous night's debacle that I would have learned to keep my mouth shut.

We proceeded at a decent pace on 56th Street until we got to Lexington Avenue, two and a half "avenue blocks" from the bridge (in the New York street grid the distance between the avenues is considerably longer than the distance between the streets) and then we hit a wall. The trained eye (mine) can very quickly ascertain the degree of severity of traffic jams in the city and I knew immediately that something was amiss here. Not only was the traffic backed up all the way to the next avenue, 3rd, but it was solid, meaning it was moving forward at a pace of only three of four car lengths for each change of the light. It took us five minutes to get close enough to 3rd Avenue for me to see that the problem on our street was due to massive gridlock in the intersection - our backup on 56th was being caused by an even bigger backup on 3rd Avenue. And this translated to me instantly that there was huge - huge! - traffic on the bridge itself.

My passengers had remained calm and cheerful. Time was on their side and a five-minute delay on the crowded 56th Street wasn't enough to raise an eyebrow. But in my mind a little alarm clock was ringing. Something was wrong here - you just never see this kind of traffic at this particular place and at this particular time - but I couldn't imagine what it could be. However, I did know the 59th Street Bridge was no longer an option.

"Listen," I announced, "Something's really bad on the bridge. I'm gonna take the Midtown Tunnel. I know it's $4.80 more for the toll, but it's the best thing to do with this kind of traffic. God knows how long we might be sitting in it."

They were fine with it. So when it was finally my turn to zigzag around the cars jamming up the intersection, I went straight on 56th toward 2nd Avenue instead of making the left onto 3rd, which had been my original intention. 56th was relatively clear on that block, and that was a good thing, but when we reached 2nd Avenue I saw that our traffic problems were not only behind us, but ahead of us as well: 2nd Avenue, which should have been free-flowing, was also a solid wall of barely moving vehicles.

So now we were stuck in whatever it was. The entrance to the Midtown Tunnel is at 2nd Avenue and 36th Street, exactly one mile from where we were. To get to the third possible route, the Triboro Bridge, would mean circling back in the direction of the 59th Street Bridge traffic. I decided our best bet was to just stick with 2nd Avenue, even though it was a river of brake lights as far as the eye could see.

We plunged into it.

Well, the conversation quickly changed from how a couple of Swedes wound up in Dublin to, gee, do you think we're going to make our plane? I told them they probably had enough time to walk to LaGuardia and still make the plane but secretly, since I had no idea what was causing this mess, I was wondering the same thing. For the next ten minutes we moved so slowly on 2nd Avenue - not even one block for each change of the light - that the possibility of missing the flight was becoming less and less remote.

More than anything, though, I was dying of curiosity to know what was causing the problem. It had to be something huge. An accident? No, couldn't be, accidents only tie up traffic for just a few blocks. A fire? No, fires cause only small delays and detours, never anything like this. I decided it had to be a disaster - something like a plane crash, a building collapse, or a terrorist attack. Yeah, it had to be on that order of magnitude. I turned the radio on to the news station and within a couple of minutes I had my answer...

...the Upper Level of the 59th Street Bridge was closed in both directions.

Yes, it immediately fit. That would do it. The 59th Street Bridge is the busiest passageway in New York City. It takes, by far, more vehicular traffic than any other bridge or tunnel. Close down half of it and you have an automatic traffic disaster. It explained both slowdowns: the gridlock on 3rd Avenue was from cars trying to get onto the bridge; the inch-by-inch on 2nd Avenue were the cars doing what we were trying to do - get away from the bridge and get to the Midtown Tunnel instead.

So the mystery was solved, except for one thing: why? Why in the world would they do such a thing? It had to be an incident of cataclysmic proportions.

Now I will tell you why it happened, but before I do, let me remind you that it is not merely the size of the traffic nightmare that earns one consideration for entrance into the Hall. It has to be something special, something that makes it a champion. It's like professional athletes. Sure, you have to be damned good to even make it to the pros, but we don't place laurels on the heads of the average players. We bestow immortality only on those who have proven to be the best of the best. And so it is with the Traffic Jam Hall of Fame.

So without further ado, here it is. Here is why the entire East Side of Manhattan was brought to a standstill for the entire afternoon (as I later found out): they were filming a scene from the latest Batman movie!

Yes, a movie company paid, I assume, a large amount of money to get permission from certain city officials who, in the "let them eat cake" style of our current mayor, chose to close down our most traveled bridge for several hours in the middle of the day. How many hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people suffered for this? How many lost an hour out of their day? How many missed the first act of the Broadway show they were trying to get to? How many missed their train? How many missed their plane?

Fortunately my own passengers did make it to LaGuardia before their flight left without them. But not before it took them forty-five minutes to travel one mile on 2nd Avenue in a taxicab which cost them an extra $17 in waiting time and another $4.80 for a toll they shouldn't have had to pay.

As outraged as I am about this latest concession to materialism (our bridges are now for lease), it would be unfair to take it out on the jam itself. Just as certain athletes who were known for being antisocial sons of bitches off the field are nevertheless honored for their achievements on the field, proper acknowledgement must not be denied when it has been earned, regardless of how the damned thing was brought into the world.

And so, in the spirit of fair play, I now open wide the portals to our newest member. Welcome, The Batman Jam, to the Traffic Jam Hall of Fame!

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The Pass/Don't Pass Hall of Fame

You know what you never see anymore? You never see those little messages on the backs of trucks that tell you to pass them only on the left and never on the right. I don't know why they're not around anymore. They must have gone out of style.

What you often used to see as you were approaching a truck would be words to the wise like these:

Left Side - Right Side
Pass - Don't Pass
Go - Stop
Yes - No
Good - Bad

The idea that's trying to be communicated is that it's safer to pass on the left because the truck driver has better visibility on his left than he has on his right (here in America we drive on the right side of the road, don't forget) so be a good fellow and give me a break, okay?

Being a taxi driver I have found myself sitting behind many and many a truck. Years ago I started noticing that for some truckers the simple "Pass" and "Don't Pass" cautions were apparently just too mundane, so they started getting creative with their back-of-the-truck warnings. I began writing down the ones that I liked best and only recently have I dug them out of the vault.

So I present to you now the Pass/Don't Pass Hall of Fame:

Left Side - Right Side
Live - Die
Life - Death
Sweet - Sour
Cool - Fool
Wise - Dies
Fine - Swine
Pass - Ass
Zoom - Boom
Go by - Goodbye
Overtaker - Undertaker
Grateful - Dead
Passing Side - Suicide
Go Ahead - Make My Day
Hagler - Hearns [American boxers]
Happily - Never After
Whoopie Do - Whoopie Don't

And my personal favorite (drum roll please)...

Nirvana - Nerve Of Ya

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License Plates

I am a person who knows quite a bit about license plates - it's one of the little bonuses you get when you've been sitting in traffic jams for 30 years.

In the United States, each state has its own distinctive plate and most of these have a slogan imprinted on them, usually right beneath the numbers. Sometime in the '80s I thought it would be cool to memorize each state's slogan and then, once I'd done that, to challenge passengers to "ask me any state and I'll tell you the slogan" (if it has one). Rarely would I be stumped and it was (and hopefully still is) a little entertainment for my passengers, if they can tear themselves away from these damned televisions all NYC cabs now have in the rear compartment.

Most of these slogans are really advertisements for how great that state is or why you should go there and spend your money. Maine's slogan, for example, is "Vacationland". Louisiana's is "Sportsman's Paradise". But there are a few that go against the grain, and these are my personal favorites:

1. Oklahoma - "Oklahoma Is OK". This slogan is taken from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! and if you know the show and the song itself you would know that what they're really telling you is, hey, Oklahoma is a really swell place, why don't you come on over sometime? But if you weren't familiar with the show you could easily imagine that the people who thought this thing up must have low self-esteem. "Oklahoma? Well, to be honest, it's not really that great... it's, well, you know... okay."

2. Missouri - "The Show-Me State". Here's a slogan that clearly says, "I don't trust you." Which is awfully close to just saying, "Fuck you!" Gotta love a state that's upfront with its hostility. But maybe if they start to feel better about things they might consider changing it to "The Anger Management State".

3. New Hampshire - "Live Free Or Die". Uh, aren't we being just a bit extreme here? Couldn't we work out a compromise? How about "Live Free Or Live Not Quite Completely Free"? Or "Live Free Or Live A Bit Encumbered By Circumstances We're Not Fully In Control Of"? I mean, do we have to die?

Here in the States, if owners of cars pay an extra fee, they can have their plates personalized. These kinds of plates can be messages which have meaning only to a few people, like this one...

...or they can be Messages To The World, which can be quite interesting. Now that I'm armed with a camera, I've taken to snapping shots of these kinds of plates whenever I can pull up to them at a red light. So, for your viewing pleasure, please check these out...

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The Top Ten List Of Exactly Where To Stop The Cab

Since the writers at Letterman are on strike, many Americans are currently suffering from Top Ten List withdrawal syndrome. Hopefully this will help - it's my own top ten list of descriptions I've received from passengers of exactly where they want me to stop the cab...

10. "By the second pile of garbage."

9. "Next to that idiot over there."

8. "Near the thing."

7. "Anywhere where you won't be honked at."

6. "In front of that little oasis between the tenements."

5. "Over on the left on the right."

4. "Okay, right here. No, not right here, over there. Okay, right here."

3. "Right where that man just cleaned up after his dog... I hope he got it all."

2. "Right where the derelict is sleeping... oh, no, he's not sleeping, he's just lying there."

And finally - drum roll, s'il vous plait - the number one description of all time...

1. "A little bit past the dead pigeon, please."



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The Celebrity Comeback Line Hall of Fame

I got into one of those convoluted conversations with a passenger a few days ago that somehow led onto the subject of comeback lines. And it got me thinking... what have been the best comeback lines that I've heard in my cab (or at least the ones I could remember)? So I went to the vault, and these are what I found. Interestingly, except for the one of my own, they all came from people who are to some degree celebrities.

*** Sometime in 1987 I picked up an attractive woman and her male companion in Greenwich Village. One of them was carrying a guitar. The lady said in a chipper voice that they wanted to go to 56th Street and 7th Avenue, at the rear of Carnegie Hall. "So what's at Carnegie Hall tonight?" I asked. "I am!" she replied enthusiastically. She was the singer/songwriter Suzanne Vega.

*** Same story, different character: sometime late in the '80s I picked up an elderly gentleman heading for the 92nd Street Y, a New York institution best known for its ongoing series of lectures by prominent writers and artists. Again, I asked, "What's at the Y tonight?" "I am!" he said. He was Harrison Salisbury, a famous New York Times journalist.

***Another one, also from the '80s: I was cruising down Columbus Avenue, looking for a fare, when a distinguished-looking gentleman hailed me for a short run down to Lincoln Center. He spoke in a refined English accent and, although he was certainly overweight, he was the kind of person you would describe as "portly" - not "fat". "Fat" would be a derogatory term and this gentleman's demeanor kind of prohibited its use. He asked if I wouldn't mind taking him to the underground, drive-through entrance to Lincoln Center (no longer in use) at 64th and Amsterdam. It was an entrance from which a person could take an elevator directly up to the theater and thus not have to walk up long flights of stairs. I told him sure, that would be no problem. And then, as a joke, I said this: "Are you conducting tonight?" And he said, "Yes."
It floored me, of course, as I had absolutely no idea who he was. But he did have some kind of a carrier wave about him that communicated "conductor". He told me his name (which I unfortunately failed to write down and have since forgotten) and that his orchestra's performance would be broadcast live on the radio in a couple of hours. So later that night my passengers had a little culture added to their rides.


***One summer day in 1985 I picked up three guys in Midtown who turned out to be players on the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team. I drove them out to Shea Stadium where they would be playing against the Mets later that night. I am a big baseball fan (the only sport I care about) and so, of course, I was very impressed that these guys would be in my taxi and I was chattering on and on about baseball this and baseball that. One of the passengers, a pitcher named Rick Rhoden (later a member of the Yankees), threw me a fastball that set me up for a curve. "Hey, driver," he said, "are you married?" I was, at that time, so I said, "Yes." "Doesn't your wife talk to you?" he zinged. (What I should have said: "Sorry, I never date my passengers." But who can think that fast?)


***One day in the winter of 1981 I was driving up Central Park West at 75th Street and there, to my amazement, stood one of my favorite singer/songwriters of all time with her hand up in the air waving at me - Carly Simon. It took me a minute to get over my apprehension at having someone of this stature sitting right behind me there in my cab, but she was so friendly (with that famous smile of hers smiling at me in the rear-view mirror) that I soon felt at ease. In fact, I felt enough at ease that I decided to play a little joke on her. As we approached her destination, a restaurant on the Upper East Side, I took on the persona of "the stupid fan" and said this: "Uhh, you know, I know it's none of my business, and I hope you don't mind me asking you this, but, uh, why did you break up with... (she had recently split up with James Taylor and this was a big item in the news)... Paul?" (i.e., Paul Simon). Without missing a beat, she came back instantly with, "He was too short for me."


***Just a few years ago I was cruising in the East Village one night around midnight when a young guy jumped in at St. Mark's Place. He told me he wanted to go to Columbia Heights, a street in the Brooklyn Heights section of Brooklyn and started to give me directions for how to get there. "Oh, I know where it is," I said, interrupting him. "In fact, you know, there's a famous person who lives on that street. I've had him in my cab twice - Norman Mailer." "Yes, I know," the young man said, "he's my father." My passenger was Stephen Mailer, himself a novelist and an actor - and also a terrifically nice guy.


***Here is one of my own built-in comeback lines that I like to use when I'm in a certain mood. Someone gets in my cab and says, "I want to go to Brooklyn." "You want to go to Brooklyn?" I repeat back at him. "Yes," he says. I pause a couple of seconds to make sure the timing is right (timing is everything in comedy), and then, with a quizzical look on my face... "Why?"

Got any comeback line stories of your own? Please send them here, I'd like to read them!


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Traffic Jam Connoisseur

I was traveling south on Broadway a few days ago with a passenger in the cab when I unexpectedly hit bumper-to-bumper traffic at around 83rd Street. Traffic flows and stops flowing in predictable patterns in New York City and this was not a place, nor a time (9 pm), where I would expect to be suddenly at a crawl. I told my passenger it was probably just a double-parked truck and we should be moving along at normal speed within a minute or two.

But two, three, four minutes went by and we'd only moved three blocks. I was about to suggest that we detour over to Columbus Avenue, when the traffic began to pick up just a bit and I could see some flashing lights not too far in the distance. Since these lights were yellow and not red, I thought it was some kind of road work or utility work in progress and figured it made more sense to stick to Broadway rather than make a detour as the source of our delay had been identified and wasn't too far away. My passenger agreed. And then the traffic started moving a little quicker and in another minute I could see what was actually screwing things up.

It was a house!

A pre-assembled house on a flatbed truck and a couple of cars with "oversized load" signs on them were taking up two of Broadway's three moving lanes, causing all other vehicles to squeeze into one lane to pass them. Who in the world would ever have guessed that that was actually the cause of the problem! As I waited my turn to merge into a single file and then was finally released onto an unobstructed Broadway, I was reminded of something that has happened to me after all these years of taxi driving.

I have become a connoisseur of traffic jams. Some people are connoisseurs of fine wines. Some are connoisseurs of cigars. French cuisine, Chinese vases, antique cars, shoes, Barbie dolls, Civil War memorabilia, ladies' undergarments - they all have their connoisseurs. But I, the New York taxi driver, I am a connoisseur of traffic jams.

One of the great topics of conversation in a taxi is, "What the hell is causing the traffic to slow down?" (Or stop completely.) Usually it's the mundane - the expected delay as you approach the 59th Street Bridge; the inescapable backup as you head toward the Theater District around showtime; the agony you feel as you realize the Lincoln Tunnel traffic is backed up on 11th Avenue all the way to 55th Street.

Most traffic jams are quite predictable and can be taken in stride. Or avoided altogether if you're a savvy driver. It's the unpredictable ones that are the province of the connoisseur. There are two types: a) the jams where you never know what caused them. They're just there and no explantion is ever found. b) the jams that, when you do learn what caused them, you say to yourself (like with the house going down Broadway), "Who in fucking hell would ever - ever! - have possibly guessed that this was what was causing me to sit on my unmoving ass for the last half an hour?"

Here's one of my favorites of all time. It happened in 1997.

I had a fare to Forest Hills in Queens at about 7:30 pm. It was a lousy ride because it means a twenty-minute trip back to Manhattan, most likely without a passenger, at a time of day when it's very busy there. So it's a money-loser. But I never refuse a fare so off we went. When we were about five minutes away from my passenger's destination we hit a mother of a traffic jam on Queens Boulevard. It just suddenly came to a dead halt at a time and in a place where the traffic should have been moving along with no problem.

After trudging along for ten minutes I could see a multitude of red lights flashing in the distance and thought it was most likely a serious accident so, after a conference with my passenger, I took a detour and did some zig-zagging in order to get him to his apartment building. It was a great move which saved us both some wasted time.

After dropping him off, I found myself quite near to whatever was happening, but fortunately I was on the opposite side of Queens Boulevard and the traffic was moving along pretty well on that side of the street. I naturally tried to see what was going on but all I could see were police cars with their lights flashing. I was ready to forget about it and just get back to Manhattan as quickly as possible when a minor miracle happened. I got a fare going back to the city, a middle-aged woman en route to Midtown.

After getting over my shock and joy of getting this lucky ride, I of course asked her if she knew what was going on. And, miracle number two, she did! I was certainly expecting to hear a story about a gruesome accident or a disturbing crime - but no. Here's what she told me...

It seems a woman who was an amputee went into a hair salon to get a new haircut. She was so displeased with the result that, as a protest against the morons who had done this to her hair, she decided to take off all her clothes and just sit there. The salon people called the police and when it went out on the police radio that a nude, female amputee was refusing to put her clothes back on, every patrol car within ten miles showed up. The traffic jam was caused by all the police cars which had nowhere else to park, so they just blocked up the boulevard.

Well, of course. That's what was causing the traffic jam. Why didn't I think of that in the first place?




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The Giving Directions Hall of Fame

Two or three times a night a car will pull up to me at a red light and a stressed-out-looking face will appear from behind an opened window and ask me - sometimes almost beg me - for directions. I like to think of myself as a civilized human being so, of course, I always do my best to help. These are usually pretty mundane occurrences, nothing to write about, but there have been a few that have stayed in my memory as being particularly amusing. A "Hall of Fame" of giving directions, if you will.

1) Man in a Chevrolet at 6th Avenue and 12th Street: "Where is 45th Street?"
Me: "Between 44th and 46th Streets."

2) Woman in a Subaru: "Do you know where the Hilton Hotel is?"
Me: "Yes."

3) Young guy in a Jeep: "What's the best way to get to Wall Street?"
Me: "Go to a good business school."

4) Young guy in a Mercedes: "What's the fastest way to get to the FDR Drive?"
Me: "Helicopter."

5) Man in a VW Rabbit on 3rd Avenue at 85th Street: "How do I get to Canada?"
Me: (seeing that he has an opened map on his lap and is not kidding): "Go straight 'til you hit Vermont, then make a left."

6) Girl in a red Toyota: "How do I get to Saks?"
Me (not sure I heard her): "What?"
Girl (louder): "Where's Saks?"
Me (realizing there's a joke here and now pretending not to hear her): "WHAT?"
Girl (shouting): "WHERE'S SAKS?"
Me (still pretending I'm not sure if I heard her): "You want... SAKS???"
Girl: "YES, SAKS, I WANT SAKS!!!"
Me: "My place or yours?"

My great regret is that no one has ever pulled up to me and asked this exact question: "How do I get to Carnegie Hall?" In case there's anyone in the world who doesn't know the answer, I will tell you now. It's practice, practice, practice. (This was the first joke ever written in the history of jokes, believed to have been authored by Milton Berle's grandfather.) So you see the kind of wise-ass I am. A closet comedian desperately in search of a laugh.

But there's nothing less funny to a cab driver than what happened to me a few days ago. I was sitting at a red light at the intersection of Chrystie and Delancey Streets in the Lower East Side when a police car pulled up next to me on my left. There were two cops in the car, as usual, and the officer sitting in the passenger's side of the cruiser ordered me to lower my window. "Oh shit," I thought, "what the hell do they want?" The possibilities for misery immediately raced through my mind. Do I have a headlight out? Is the stupid light above the rear license plate out? Did I make some kind of illegal turn back there at Rivington Street? Did I run a red light? I couldn't think of anything I'd done wrong, but who knows what they think? Jesus, this could cost me hundreds of dollars and put points on my license. And that could mean my hack license could be suspended and it could raise the cost of my car insurance.

I lowered my window and braced myself. The cop had a sour expression on his face. He looked like maybe he hadn't eaten in a long time, and maybe he'd just had to intervene in somebody else's family crisis, and maybe he'd just been dissed by some thug on the street - and now he was going to take it all out on me. His mouth opened. These words came out:

"Do you know where Monroe Street is?"

That is correct. Perhaps for the first time in the history of taxi-driving, a taxi driver was asked for directions by a cop. I proclaim this to be some kind of vague moral victory not only for myself, but for taxi drivers everywhere.

I looked at the cop. He looked at me. My perception of him and his plight changed instantly. I saw him now not as a menace, but as a modern-day version of Officer Toody from the old sitcom, CAR FIFTY-FOUR, WHERE ARE YOU? I had to like the guy, but I couldn't resist rubbing it in a little.

"So you're asking me for directions," I said with a broad smile. "That's a switch."

"We're from uptown!" he said, the implication being that the Lower East Side might as well be Madrid or Budapest.

"Oh, okay," I replied. "Well, make a left on Delancey and a right on Allen Street. Monroe runs into it in about ten blocks."

"Got it."

I was on a roll. I saw an opening for a parting shot before the light changed, and I took it.

"Listen," I said, addressing both of them with mock seriousness, "I want you to know that there's no need for what just happened here to ever be known to anyone but the three of us. Your secret is safe with me."

"Thanks!" the officer sitting closest to me called out as the light turned green and they made the left onto Delancey.

Okay, so I lied.