How Do I Get To Carnegie Hall?

I stopped for a couple of passengers the other day on the Upper West Side who announced with some enthusiasm that their destination was Carnegie Hall.  I could see they were in a good mood, and this made me think they might be candidates for the oldest joke in the world.

So I fed them the line:

"How do I get to Carnegie Hall?"

They were right on it.

"Practice!" they called out in unison.

We remained at the curb for a few moments while I gave this some serious consideration.

Finally, as we pulled out into traffic, I said...

"Nah... I think I'll just take Broadway down to 57th Street and make a left."

The Hotel Room

I have wondered from time to time if it's just because I'm getting older or if it's because the mores of our society have changed or if it's simply that I don't drive on Friday or Saturday nights anymore that have caused a particularly outrageous activity to vanish from the back seat of my taxi. No, not slopping up the upholstery with cheese nachos.

Sex.

It's been something like four or five years since it last went down. And then it annoyed me so much I threw them out of the cab in the middle of Times Square. Maybe that's what did it. But it finally happened again a couple of nights ago after such a long intermission - a throwback, it was, to the good old days.

Enter the stars of our show at exactly 1:52 a.m. at 2nd Avenue and 84th Street. She, an attractive brunette and he a not unattractive guy with a normal haircut and a bit of a beard, both twenty-somethings. There was nothing over the top about their appearance, nothing that would have made you think that defects in their character were showing up in the way they carried themselves or by the way they looked. In fact, they struck me as a couple of nice kids as they climbed in and told me their destination, 117th Street and 8th Avenue in Harlem. The girl, in particular, greeted me with a warm hello and a smile which gave me a sense of inclusion in their world, something that is appreciated by a cab driver in the middle of the night. It can be a lonely profession.

But that sense of inclusion quickly evaporated when I made a right on 83rd and headed crosstown. Their togetherness was too together for me to feel anything but excluded as she cuddled up on his chest and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. This would be another purely functional ride after all, the driver a mute extension of the taxicab itself, the passengers in their own space and bubble. So be it.

We stopped at a red light at Park Avenue. Having the chance to take my eyes off the road and glance around at the environment, I sensed that something was wrong here. Looking in the mirror, the girl had disappeared. Could she be taking a quick snooze on the guy's lap? Not unless she talks in her sleep, as her little female giggles were loud enough to carry over into the front of the cab. I feared the worst but carried on, turning right on Madison in the direction of the 97th Street transverse. Before we had progressed a block on the avenue the giggles had morphed into murmurs and there were some upper body movements of the guy which gave a further indication that what was going on in the back was an activity of the oral variety that is actually illegal in a public place.

No, not brushing your teeth.

Now, what is a cab driver supposed to do in this situation? Stick his head through the partition's window to catch the perpetrators red-handed (all right, perhaps "handed" is not the correct word here)? And if you do that, then what do you do? It's just too awkward to be confrontable. Besides, what if I poked my head through the partition and found that nothing untoward was actually going on, after all? Wouldn't that make me out to be the jackass?

So to hell with it. I would endure it all the way to Harlem if I had to. I made the left on 97th.

But then, as we began our trek across the Central Park transverse, they crossed the line. Looking in the mirror, they had assumed the "Taxicab Position" - the male sitting normally, facing forward, the female straddling him, facing the rear window. It means their activity had gone from "presumed innocent" to "you've got to be kidding" in the mind of the taxi driver. It was over the top, right in your face, and for the sake of one's dignity it begs for some kind of response.

I have two forms of retaliation to the appearance of the Taxicab Position and I immediately put the first one into motion. It is to attempt, by means of hard braking and sharp turning, to knock the female off her joystick. It's kind of like a party game like "Pin the Tail on the Donkey" - "Knock the Girl Off the Penis". So when I came to the next red light at Central Park West I slowed, then hit the brake with a noticeable thump. No good, she remained attached and continued to sway gently in place. When the light turned green I made the right on CPW as sharply as I could without putting the cab into a spin, but again it was to no avail. This girl could have a career in the rodeo.

By the time we came to the next red at 106th Street the party had ended, at least for the time being. She had dismounted somewhere around 101st and the two of them sat tight together, smiling and cooing at each other the rest of the way up to their destination at 117th. Still, it was not over as far as I was concerned. You simply cannot do this in the space of another human and not expect a settlement of accounts. This is my taxicab. This is my workplace. To fail to respond would be a humiliation in itself, an admission to myself that I was, in fact, just a mute extension of the taxicab. Something needed to be said, so the second form of retaliation was begun.

As I brought the cab to a stop at 117th and awaited payment of the $14.50 fare, I began a little end-of-ride conversation. "You know, the taxi rates just went up," I said in the general direction of the back seat. It was a true statement. There was a fare increase on September 4th.

"They did?" the girl responded.

"Yeah, there's a $10 surcharge now for the hotel room."

The guy laughed but his partner in crime did not get the joke. "I hope you're kidding," she said as she handed me a $20 bill.

I took the bill and held it in the air. "Yes... I am..." I replied, in a not unfriendly way.

"We're going to a hotel room!" she exclaimed, happy-faced, as if it were quite a coincidence that I happened to mention that.

"You've just been in one," I zapped back. Touche.

"Can I have three dollars back?" she asked, her smile still in place.

"Three dollars back," I repeated, with just the slightest hint of sarcasm. I slowly counted out the bills from my roll and offered them through the partition to whomever would take them. She moved forward to accept the money but as she did so her boyfriend interceded.

"Tell him to keep it," he told her, sotto voce style.

She paused a moment as the suggestion was processed. "Oh, you can keep the change!" she said with just the slightest hint of airhead.

"Gee, thanks," I replied in pretended surprise. I didn't need their three bucks. But this gesture in the fragile territory of Manners, Lack Of, at least did do something to compensate for their transgression.

They stepped out of the cab and closed the door. I looked over at them for a final mental snapshot and found that the girl was waving me goodbye, still smiling.

"Thanks for the hotel room!" she called back.

Islands In The Stream

There are three things that can happen between drivers and passengers during the course of a ride in a taxicab: 1) Nothing. The passenger looks out the window, talks on the cell phone, or (rarely) watches the canned programming on the cab's TV monitor. The driver drives. 2) The driver becomes a fly on the wall and either voluntarily or involuntarily eavesdrops on the voices coming toward him from the back seat, whether it be from multiple passengers talking to each other or from a single passenger on the phone. 3) A conversation takes place. 

In a huge metropolis like New York, where the flow of particles is so continuous, it's quite natural to think of the motion of the city as having a similarity to the current of a river. The river runs, ever onward, and the taxi driver is a ferryman of sorts, his cab a temporary haven on an endless journey to who knows where. People who may or may not ever meet again engage in conversation, as if to acknowledge that it's better to float down the river in the company of others than to brave the waters by oneself. 

If a taxi driver has an affinity for this unique situation he is in, it's this third possibility, the things that can happen through communication, that can make the job so interesting. Some of these conversations, like particularly intriguing islands in the stream, may startle, disturb, reassure, delight, or educate the intrepid explorer. I had three in the course of a single shift a few weeks ago. 

5:45 pm, Penn Station to North Moore in Tribeca 

It was the "survival of the fittest" time of the evening when the quickest and most alert are most likely to get the next available taxi. As I was assisting an elderly gentleman out of my cab at the Long Island Railroad entrance to Penn Station, an attractive young miss appeared on the cab's opposite side and waited with her hand on the door (as if to say, "It's mine!") until the old fellow's delicate extraction was completed. Getting in with a smile, she told me her destination and we pulled into the heavy traffic on 7th Avenue. 

Now, there are certain nuances that tell a driver that the newly arrived passenger is a candidate for a conversation. There's the smile, the return of the driver's "hello", along with, perhaps, an "how are you?"; there's the friendly tone of the voice; there's the position of the seating -- the passenger doesn't slump out of sight behind the partition but, rather, sits right in the middle of the seat, perhaps even leans forward a bit; and often there's eye contact in the mirror. The attractive young miss had all of these, helped, I felt, by some admiration on her part at seeing a taxi driver performing an act of kindness for the fragile passenger who had preceded her. 

Aware of all this, I started in with some common chit-chat - the traffic, the weather, the difficulty of getting a cab at this time of day in Midtown - and this rather magical process we humans are capable of went into gear. Back and forth, back and forth, and then - wham! - suddenly the person on the other end of the conversation is telling you something that's no longer in the realm of the chit-chat mundane - something personal, a bit surprising, perhaps.

Kind of out of nowhere, she tells me she's a boxer. A boxer! This friendly, rather petite-ish, altogether feminine-looking female gets in a ring and tries to punch the beejeebabs out of other women. Not professionally, but at the next level down, in organized matches in gyms, she says. Career-wise, she's in the related field of sports rehabilitation. One of her clients, she said, is the famous boxer Pacquiao. 

It's always kind of fascinating when the way a person is does not match one's own stereotype of what a person does and I will admit that I find the sight of women going at each other quite entertaining (what the world needs is more mud wrestling). So this particular conversation was really holding my interest. And then it did something that communication can do when people listen carefully to each other, acknowledge what is said, and create a space that is comfortable and safe: it led to a further, more insightful revelation about the other person, something that opens a window into their inner world. 

What was revealed was a situation that was eating away at her, something that was consuming her attention the whole day long, a problem that would not resolve. She told me what it was and, to her credit, it wasn't actually her own problem. It was a tangled mess that was endangering the future - perhaps even the life - of someone who was dear to her, her brother. 

Growing up in an environment where one's fists are at least as valuable as one's social graces, he, like his sister, had also become a boxer and a couple of months earlier, at the age of twenty, had turned professional. Shortly after that he had a "bad break-up" with his girlfriend who, to get revenge, did something quite evil - she enlisted the services of some thug she knew to beat the crap out of him. How do you beat the crap out of a professional boxer? You get a dozen of your thug friends to help you. In a modern version of tracking somebody down, the jilted girlfriend gave the thug his Twitter address. He and his gang read his tweet messages to locate him when he was alone, shooting hoops in a schoolyard. Then they ambushed him and battered him so badly that he had broken teeth, broken ribs, a concussion, and needed thirty stitches to close the wounds to his face and head. 

"Did he go to the police?" I asked. 

"No, he's got some goddamned Sicilian code of silence," she lamented. 

Now I understood why she felt a need to talk about this thing. It wasn't over and it wasn't likely to end well, either. Her brother is thick-headed and would handle it "in his own way", which would mean more violence. After that there would be further retaliation and he might be killed or spend the next twenty years of his life in jail. She had the wisdom to understand this, but she had no solution. So she was living each day with a helpless feeling of dread. It was like trying to hold onto someone who was dangling off the ledge of a mountain. 

If I'd thought of it at the time, I would have advised her to find someone to intervene in the conflict, someone whom all parties involved knew and respected, if such a person exists. Or I would have advised her to bring her brother and the ex-girlfriend together in some kind of counseling session to confess what they'd done to each other and to apologize for their actions. That might have handled it. But, as is often the case when someone says something startling, you don't think of the right thing to say until later. In my business people enter and exit rather quickly and I'm often left in the middle of the story. And that is one of the downsides of the taxicab conversation.

1:45 a.m., 47th and 6th to Astoria, Queens

He was a gaunt, middle-aged man -- long, black overcoat, no hat -- who hailed me with his right hand while taking one final drag on a cigarette with his left. Before even entering the taxi, he gave me the impression that he was a "serious" smoker. He was probably coming from a job where he couldn't smoke and since you're not allowed to smoke in a cab anymore in this NO SMOKING city, the time between the workplace and the taxi becomes the time to have that thing you've been craving for all night. 

My impression was confirmed when, just a minute into the ride, he asked me if he could light up a new one. Now, this is a situation I actually enjoy. The taxi driver in New York City is usually taken somewhat for granted and is not accorded the kind of respect that certain professionals enjoy. I mean, you'd never say to a pilot as you entered his aircraft, "I'm late, step on it," right? But a passenger who would ask his driver to break the the rules so he can stick that little white cylinder in his mouth is on the other end of the respect spectrum. This guy is an addict, someone who is living in the moment, and to him the taxi driver is the Gatekeeper Of Bliss, The Man With The Plan. Hey, how ya doin', dude? I mean, sir. If, after observing how the person seems to be, I think he or she has a sense of humor, I have been known to say something like this: 

"Well, I'll consider it, but only under two circumstances." 

"Sure, no problem." 

"I haven't told you what the circumstances are yet." 

"Oh, okay." 

"First, you've got to keep the cigarette inside the cab. Don't hold it out the window." (This is because the danger here is that the driver can be fined if a cop happens to see the passenger smoking in the back seat. I've never heard of this ticket actually being written but, who knows, it might be "Give Tickets To Cabbies Who Allow Passengers To Smoke Week" at the Police Department.) 

"Oh, yeah, man, no problem, no problem." 

"Good. And the second thing is... you've got to beg me." 

"Beg you?" 

"Yeah. You see, this is the only time I can ever get anyone to beg me for anything. It's good for my self-esteem. So if you wanna smoke, you gotta beg."

Now, as I said, I wouldn't say this to someone if they seemed too solid mentally. You've got to size them up before saying it. But so far I haven't missed and they jump right into it with a smile. "Oh, please, please, Mister Taxi Driver, can I smoke a cigarette? Please? Pretty please?" 

"Yes, you may." 

And it's off to Puffland. 

Looking at my current passenger in the mirror, I decided right away, nope, no begging joke with this guy, he looks like he hasn't laughed in two years. So I just told him about the no-holding-the-cigarette-out-the-window rule and not to light up until we got onto the 59th Street Bridge, about a minute away. He thanked me. 

Well, although he may or may not have appreciated my sense of humor, there was something in the way he was that made me curious about him. I wasn't sure what it was. He just seemed to be someone it might be interesting to talk to. So I decided to delve, as is my tendency. 

"You must be a serious smoker," I said, as we were approaching the bridge. Being that smoking was the subject at hand, it seemed like an easy way to get a conversation going. 

"Why?" 

"Well, I've noticed that when people ask me if they can smoke in the cab, it's because they want a cigarette really, really badly." 

"I just wanted to finish the one I started." 

"Yeah, you see, that's what I mean. You're a heavy smoker?" 

"Just three or four a day." 

"Packs?" 

"Cigarettes." 

This surprised me. I would have bet he went through a pack a day, at least. 

"Since I quit." 

Ah, so there it was. I was right. The thing about him that I was trying to put my finger on, I realized, was that it was impinging on me subconsciously that heavy smokers have a certain kind of demeanor. Something about the way they look, their body language, their voice, that has cigarette smoking as a component part of it. That's what was making me curious about him. 

"Oh, so you had been a heavy smoker?" 

"Yes," he replied, rather half-vacantly. Sometimes when people say something you have the feeling they're only half-speaking to you, the other half being diverted to another, invisible, entity. 

"What did you do, a pack a day?" 

"Two or three." 

Heavy smoker, indeed. 

"Wow... well, and now you're down to just a few cigarettes a day?" 

"Yes," he said flatly. There was no sign of pride in his voice at making progress toward an objective. You would have expected a bit of positive emotion here, but this guy was flat as a board. 

"Good for you." 

"Since the cancer," he said, the focus of his eyes extending no further than the partition which separates driver from passenger. 

I had stepped on a landmine and I knew it. 

What the hell do you say to a stranger who's just told you he has cancer? I could say nothing, pretend that I hadn't heard it. But I thought that would be cold-hearted, even cruel. I could acknowledge it -- just say, "I'm sorry" -- and leave it at that. But quite possibly he'd said it because he just felt a need to talk about it with another human being, another island in the stream. God knows the despair and loneliness this man might be enduring, and although listening to him would not be able to do anything to cure his disease, it might help him change the way he dealt with it. And that could be a good thing. I waited until we reached the Queens side of the bridge (so we might be better able to hear each other -- bridges and tunnels are tough on the acoustics inside a taxicab), and then attempted to resume the conversation. 

"What kind of cancer do you have?"  

There was silence. Not just any silence, a dreadful silence. Had I gone too far? Had I trivialized the seriousness of his situation by reducing it to taxicab chit-chat? Or had he just blurted it out and then regretted having said it? I looked at him in the mirror. He had that same solidity, what appeared to me now as a half-dead look, and gave no sign of having heard my question.

What should I do? Ask him again? Probably not, I thought. I mean, what could be more of an imposition on someone than to pry into his perhaps-terminal illness? But he'd brought it up. Wasn't it possible that he simply didn't hear me? What was I going to do, ignore him? I gritted my teeth and raised the volume of my question a quarter of a notch.

"What kind of cancer do you have?" I repeated. 

I watched him in the mirror, almost praying that he'd say something. But he was gone. He sat there silently, his gaze fixated on the parade of darkened buildings passing by on Northern Boulevard. Not only had my attempt at conversation been a failure, my attempt at offering him some comfort had nose-dived into an abyss. The remaining two minutes of the ride, not surprisingly, made my Top Ten List of Most Awkward Silences of All Time. He paid with a credit card, giving me a $1.90 tip on a $13.10 fare. Other than my "thank you", no other words between us were exchanged, and he disappeared into a shadow on Steinway Street. 

He never did light that cigarette. 

A fare like that can haunt you, and some cabbies may conclude that it's better not to attempt to communicate with their passengers at all. I have always resisted this. That's not to say that you have to communicate with everyone. You've got to respect a person's right not to communicate, too. It's just that the interplay with passengers is the essence of this job and to let the occasional disaster shut you down is to lose a lot. So I soldiered on. 

3:45 a.m., 79th and Columbus to Bensonhurst, Brooklyn 

Now here was a ride that from a driver's point of view was just about perfect. For one thing, it was the final hour of the shift and what you want at this point in the night is a good, long, money ride with just enough time to make it back to the garage by 5 a.m., the shift's end. And this ride was that. And for another thing, the passenger, an upbeat, intelligent, well-mannered thirty-something fellow, was as easy to talk to as you as your favorite drinking buddy, if you have such a thing. 

Now, this wasn't a drama ride or a pathos ride like the ones I've been telling you about. This was simply an educational ride, quite common in a taxicab, by which you learn something about life or the world that you didn't know before. Drive a cab for a few years and these conversations accumulate into an impressive reference file, making a cabbie a walking encyclopedia with an opinion about everything. 

I don't know how we got into it, but he started telling me about his wife and her job. He described her as an Armenian by birth ("How did you meet her?" "In a bar."), lovely to look at, highly organized, a go-getter, and she was now working for what he described as a "Russian oligarch". 

"And what is a 'Russian oligarch'?" 

He told me about what's been going on in Russia since the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991. Industries which had been owned and controlled by the state became privatized. This opened the door for big-time entrepreneurship and the accumulation of great wealth and power by a relatively few aggressive individuals in a short period of time. It was kind of like the "robber barons" in the United States a hundred and fifty years ago. And that's what a Russian oligarch is. 

My passenger's wife worked for one of these people. He'd made a fortune as an arms dealer and then legitimized his business by moving into the metal refining industry in a big way. Due to his nefarious background, he can't enter the United States because the State Department won't issue him a visa. But that doesn't stop him from doing business all over the world. His wealth is so great that he owns a private yacht, complete with a crew of five, that he has never set foot on. It's used to entertain clients. The wife's job is to manage the finances of the yacht. She does this primarily from their apartment in Brooklyn, but she does have to travel occasionally to Europe, where the yacht is located, to personally oversee matters. And that's where she was on this particular night, somewhere in France. 

As I said, there was no drama or pathos here. It was just a typical example of a taxi ride that includes a conversation between driver and passenger. As I entered the Belt Parkway and headed back to Manhattan with my off-duty light illuminated above me, I had gained not only an $11.50 tip on a $43.50 fare, but a bit more understanding of the world in which we live. 

Who would ever imagine that, walking down a street in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, you could walk by an apartment building and behind one of the windows of that building would be a woman sitting behind a computer who was managing a yacht anchored off the coast of France which was owned by a modern-day Jay Gatsby with a Russian accent? 

As is usually the case, the stopover at an island in the stream had left me better off for having been there, and happy to have made the visitation. 

********

Looking for a nice little island in the stream of your own? Click here. Plenty of 'em at Pictures From A Taxi.

Spider Man

The guy got in at three a.m. wearing a Wo Hop t-shirt. This was interesting because who would have thought that Wo Hop, my favorite all-night Chinese joint on Mott Street, would ever be the kind of place to have a logo on an article of clothing? And what kind of person would boastfully display it on his chest, as if to say, "You want dumplings? My Wo Hop dumplings will scrub the floor with your stinkin' Golden Monkey dumplings. You got that, lucky boy?" 

So it had to be properly acknowledged. "A Wo Hop t-shirt! Wow, you don't see many of those!" I exclaimed even before he could tell me he wanted to go to Astoria.  "Yeah, man, Wo Hop rules," he replied with a happy-face smile and a certain half-here, half-there demeanor that told me immediately that he was a jolly drunk who was ready to expound. This would be a fun ride.

"I love that place," I continued. "For one thing, its location. You drive down Mott and there's that dog-leg to the left and late at night the street is as slippery as ice from a garbage truck spillover and it looks kind of creepy like a scene from a Bogart movie at four in the morning, and it's so dark and deserted, but look, wow, Wo Hop is open."

The guy was right on it. "Yeah," he joined in, "you do down those stairs and there'll be, like, five Asian guys sitting there looking at you like what the hell are you doin' here?"

"The Chinese mafia." 

"No doubt! No doubt, and they keep lookin' at you like you're a cop and before you can sit down the tea kettle arrives and in like thirty seconds you've got your wonton and a minute later there are the egg rolls and the duck sauce." 

"And the mustard sauce." 

"Yeah, and the mustard, man, and then a minute after that the dumplings show up and you're in piggy heaven, man!" 

"You like 'em fried or steamed?" 

"What?" 

"The dumplings - fried or steamed?" 

 "Oh, yeah, fried, definitely, mucho on the soy." 

"Mmm, so good!" 

Pavlov-like, I could feel my saliva glands kicking in. Damn, those dumplings are good and, as I steered the cab onto the Upper Level of the 59th Street Bridge, I started thinking maybe I should shoot down to Chinatown after I dropped the guy off. There are times when it's best to just give in to the dumpling urge. Mucho on the soy. 

"Hey," I said to my passenger as a thought came to me, "have you ever ordered anything particularly freaky at Wo Hop? Don't they have some really weird stuff on the menu?" 

"You mean like octopus or something?" 

"Yeah." 

 He thought about it for a moment and smiled. "Oh, yeah, snails." 

 

"Snails?" 

"Yeah, snails in black bean sauce." 

 I laughed. "Oh my God," I said, "you ate a snail?" 

"Shit, yeah, I ate a bunch of them," he replied, still smiling. 

"Ewww, I don't think I could eat that," I said. "Isn't a snail an insect?" 

"No, no, a snail's like a mollusk or something. It's got a shell, like a clam. You eat clams, don't you?" 

"Uh, yeah." 

The guy had a point. 

"How was it?" 

"Oh, it was delicious, man. You stir it up with the rice. Really good, actually." 

I had to admit that, since it wasn't an insect, I could see myself trying it someday. I draw a hard line in the sand when it comes to eating insects, though. I wouldn't get very far on The Fear Factor. 

"What was the weirdest thing you ever ate?" I inquired. It was a logical question to ask at this point in the conversation. A goofy smile came over his face. 

"I ate a tarantula once," he said. 

I was stunned for a moment as my mind's computer tried to process this information. Did he just say "tarantula"? Yes, he did. Isn't "tarantula" a huge, hairy spider? Yes, it is. There isn't some chocolate bar or energy drink called "Tarantula", is there? No, there is not. So what he's saying is that he ate - that is, he put into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed - a huge, hairy spider? Uh, yes, that's what he's saying. I looked at him again in the mirror. The goofy smile was still there. 

"You ate a tarantula!!!???" I all but screamed. "Are you serious?" 

"Uh huh," he confirmed, with a just perceptible trace of pride in his voice.

"Oh my God! How did that happen?" "I was in Thailand and these guys I was with, we went into this restaurant and it became like a dare thing. So one guy says, 'I'll eat it if you will', then another guy says, 'I'll eat it if you will', and it was like I wanted to show them that I was as crazy as they were." 

"So you ate it." 

"Yeah." 

"Did they cook it?" 

"Yeah, they fried it in some sauce." 

"Isn't a tarantula poisonous? What about the fangs?" 

"Yeah, they took that shit out before they cooked it." 

"You hope!" 

"Right!" he said with a dumbass-me laugh. "So how did it taste? Don't tell me it tasted like chicken."

"Actually, it did taste like chicken." 

"That's funny," I replied, Groucho Marx style, "cause I once ate a chicken that tasted just like a tarantula." 

The joke went whizzing by his head and on into outer space without being noticed. After couple more minutes of tarantula talk, we arrived at his apartment house on 30th Avenue. He paid me the $12.30 fare and threw in a $2.70 tip - not bad for an insect-eater - and stepped out of the cab.

"I once ate a centipede, too," he called back as he started to walk off toward his building. 

"Was that in Thailand as well?" 

"No, that was in Mexico." 

So the guy had the distinction of having eaten disgusting, multi-legged creatures on two different continents. 

He disappeared into his place and was gone and I turned the cab back toward Midtown, the urge to go to Chinatown having somehow suddenly left me. The thought came to me back on the 59th Street Bridge that had this guy told me all this and had not been just a passenger in my cab but instead was, say, a friend or a coworker, I would always think of him, before I would think of anything else he might have done in his life, as the guy who had eaten a tarantula. Let's say he had once done something great, like spending two years of his life in the Peace Corps. I would think of him as the Peace Corps volunteer who had once eaten a tarantula. Or if he had once rushed into a burning building to save someone's life, he would be the guy who had rushed into a burning building who had once eaten a tarantula. 

Sometimes it's just better not to know.

 

********

But then again sometimes it is better to know. Like knowing that when you click here you'll suddenly find yourself at Pictures From A Taxi. And no one will try to talk you into eating a bug.

Watts Street

I recently had a young Frenchman in my cab who wanted to go to a street in Tribeca that always asks a question: Watts Street. His English was okay, but not great, which allowed me to get away with a conversation that went something like this:

Me: Hello, where would you like to go?

Young Frenchman: Hello, I am going to zee Watts Street in Tribeca.

Me: What street?

YF: Yes.

Me: Yes, what?

YF: Watts Street.

Me: I don't know, you tell me.

YF: Watts eez zee name of zee street in Tribeca.

Me: There are many streets in Tribeca. They all have different names. Just tell me the one you want to go to.

YF: Watts Street!

Me: Monsieur, je ne sais pas! How should I know the name of the street? You're supposed to tell me that!

YF: (slowly, and with a hint of exasperation) Sir, there eez a street and zee name of zee street eez Watts! Double you ay tee tee ess!

Me: Ohh, do you mean "Watts Street"?

YF: Yes! Do you know eet?

Me: Sure, it intersects with Where Avenue. I believe there's a Y on that block.

YF: Please take me there.

Me: Take Where to the Y on Watts?

YF: I don't know zee Y.

Me: Ah, mon ami, neither do I, neither do I. We may know Where and we may know Watts, but we never really know Y, do we?

YF: No, I have never known zee Y.

Me: Why even think about it? Let's go.

YF: Okay.

********

I believe I was sent here to take rides like this. I believe it's my calling. Along with clicking here for Pictures From A Taxi, of course.

An April Fool's Day Story

Here's a story from the vault - April 1, 2003, 8:30 pm. The war in Iraq had just begun.

A young guy and his girlfriend, both about 19 years old, jumped in at 79th Street and York Avenue and told me to drive them to DeKalb and Vanderbuilt in Brooklyn. This was bad news in itself as any cabbie in New York hates to leave Manhattan when it's busy on the streets. It means he most likely has to drive back without a passenger and that is money lost.

But to make matters worse, these two kids saw the upcoming journey as not merely a way to get from point A to point B, but as an opportunity for a heavy make-out session. My attempts at chit-chat fell on deaf ears and within 30 seconds they were kissing passionately and doing God knows what with their hands.

As I entered the FDR Drive and headed south, I realized I was in no mood for this. A money-losing, half-hour ride to Brooklyn with two juveniles who have no regard for how their behavior affects other people, jumping all over each other the whole way to Brooklyn. And by pretending that I wasn't right there, three feet in front of them, reducing me to a non-human object that drives a taxicab.

Ugh.

This wasn't going to be merely a bad ride to Brooklyn. This was going to be an assault on my dignity and an endurance test of my tolerance. I gritted my teeth and started the process of suffering through it. But then, as I passed the 53rd Street exit of the parkway, I had a thought.

It was April Fool's Day... hmmm...

"Hey, have you guys heard the news?" I called back to them with a tone in my voice that demanded attention. Through the mirror I could see their heads, which had been joined together at the lips, come apart and their eyes stare blankly at the back of my head.

"President Bush has signed an executive order reinstituting the draft."

They both moved forward simultaneously and a slight space opened up between their shoulders. The guy wasn't sure he'd heard that right and asked me to repeat it.

"There's gonna be a draft, just like in the Viet Nam war. All men over the age of 18 are going to have to go into the army."

"What? Oh, my god!"

"Are you over 18?"

"Yes!"

"Oh, man, I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this."

"But I'm in college. They don't take students into the army... do they?"

"What I heard on the radio was that there wouldn't be any exceptions. Unless you were like physically disabled or something, you know?"

"Oh my fucking god!"

Other than asking for some directions as we approached DeKalb Street 25 minutes later, I don't remember saying another word to them until the cab stopped in front of their building. I didn't have to say anything because the rest of the ride consisted of a lively conversation between the two of them about the pros and cons of the Iraq war, the armed forces in general, whether or not he should maybe go into the navy, why shouldn't the volunteer army be good enough to handle the conflict, what are we paying our taxes for, anyway, is Bush really deciding anything or is it just Cheney, why shouldn't females be drafted, too, and whether his father, who knows a lot of people, could possibly get him out of this mess.

Needless to say, this dilemma proved to be the antidote for youthful lust. And aside from the deep satisfaction I took in successfully diverting their attention, I drove across the Manhattan Bridge into Brooklyn without any introspection as to why it should be my fate to be reduced to role of servitude to a couple of disrespectful teenagers.

They stepped out of my cab after paying the fare and giving me a below-average tip and took a few steps in the direction of their place. I called out to them from my opened window.

"Hey, you know that thing I told you about the draft?" I said.

They stopped walking and turned to look back at me. "Yeah?" the guy replied.

"April Fool!" I shouted back with big smile on my face.

They looked at each other with expressions on their faces as if to say they couldn't believe they had swallowed the gag hook, line, and sinker. Then they broke out laughing.

And I drove off on DeKalb Street back toward the Manhattan Bridge in what might be called a state of ecstasy, thinking they really ought to make April Fool's Day an official national holiday.



Click here for Pictures From A Taxi. No joke!