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.

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.

Down Goes Frazier

Many people in New York assume that the taxicabs are busy all the time. It just ain't so. During any twenty-four hour period, there are hours that are extremely busy, it's true, but there are also hours that are only somewhat busy, and then there are hours that are extremely not-busy. During the night shift (5 p.m. to 5 a.m.) it goes like this from Sunday to Thursday: From 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. it's extremely busy. One passenger gets out and the next one gets in within three minutes. From 8 p.m. to midnight it's somewhat busy. Perhaps ten minutes between passengers.

From midnight to 3 a.m. it's extremely not busy. You could go half an hour or more between passengers.

And then from 3 a.m. to 5 a.m. it's so not busy that it turns out the phrase "the city that never sleeps" was just so much hype. There's a big-time catnap going on and you wish you could get on a foghorn and ride around screaming at people to get out of bed and do something! There's not much business at all, although you could be lucky and get an airport ride after 4:00.

On Fridays and Saturdays it's a different story. It's either extremely busy or somewhat busy throughout the whole shift, although it can get pretty slow on Fridays after 3 a.m.

However, there can be periods of time, like unexpected fluctuations in the weather, when these patterns can inexplicably change. It could be 7 p.m., for example, and half an hour goes by without a fare. Or at 2 a.m. from out of nowhere it's suddenly super-busy for a while. That phenomenon occurred recently on a Wednesday at 10:45 p.m. I had just dropped a passenger off at Madison and 24th and circled around onto 5th Avenue, heading downtown, to look for the next one. Pulling up to a red light at 23rd Street, I noticed something that cabbies love to see: there were perhaps six or seven people on both sides of the intersection, all looking for taxis. There's a certain rush that goes straight through to the core of a taxi driver's psyche when he sees this sight. It's an aesthetic thing, like a Mozart crescendo. How fortunate I am, the cabbie thinks, to be alive and to experience such beauty.

Since I was surrounded in the front, rear, and on both sides by other vehicles, the plan that instantly formed in my mind was to cross 23rd Street when the light turned green, veer over a couple lanes to the right, and pull up at the curb where there were several people who looked like they were in need of my services. I would place the cab kind of in the middle of them, without choosing anyone in particular, and let them work it out among themselves as to who would get possession of the coveted taxi. It's a tried and true method I use so as not to give the impression that I prefer one person over another.

But my plan suddenly became irrelevant as, coming toward me on foot, was a guy who did what many savvy New Yorkers do when demand exceeds supply: he walked directly into the middle of the street in order to gain possession of the cab before the light could turn green. It's a bold move that the more timid still standing on the sidewalk might construe as cheating, but it's certainly a part of the gamesmanship that is common in Manhattan when it comes to grabbing a cab. As he opened the rear door and sat down, I greeted him with a smile and, although I didn't say anything except hello, I was mentally admiring him for being a take-charge guy. He returned my greeting with a smile and an hello of his own and then surprised me by telling me that his destination was just across the street, at the far right corner of 23rd and 5th, the same spot I'd intended to drive to before he'd hopped in. He explained that a friend was waiting there and, I assumed, the friend would jump in the cab and the three of us would then be on our way to somewhere else.

Okay.

The light turned green and I put on my right-turn signal, skillfully maneuvered my way across two lanes of traffic, and came to a stop right where he wanted me to be. He opened his door on the curb side of 5th Avenue, as he should have, and then... the action began. A large man - about six-foot-one, 190 pounds, maybe thirty-five years old - moved forward on the sidewalk toward the cab. My passenger - who was something like five-foot-eight, 150 pounds, thirty years old - stepped out of the cab and, seeing that the other man wanted the cab, politely told him that it was not available because someone else was about to get in. Normally the other person would say, "Oh, okay," and step back. But not this guy. He stepped forward and, although I didn't catch exactly what he said, his body language and tone of voice were clearly saying, "Tough shit, jerk-off, this cab is mine!"

I knew immediately it was big trouble. Competition for possession of taxicabs - an indigenous sport in New York City - can be nasty, but it's extremely rare for it to be so in-your-face, especially between men.

The first guy fired back a sarcastic put-down of the other guy - "Oh, so you're owner of this cab, huh?" - and, realizing if he moved forward on the sidewalk that the other guy would get in, called out to the person who was waiting for him, a thirty-something woman, to come over to the taxi, which she did. This woman then stood in the space of the cab's opened door, thus securing possession of the taxi, at least for the moment, but she did not get in. She was apparently concerned for the safety of her friend who, although smiling, was in a heated jaw to jaw with the other guy.

After this went on for a very long thirty seconds, I decided I had to do something. There was no way I was going to let the other guy take the cab away from the first guy, so I thought if I told him this - politely, of course - I could be the face-saving interventionist who could end the conflict. So I got out of the cab and approached him.

"Listen," I said to the other guy, "he had the cab first. I started the meter already."

No response.

"I'm sure you'll get another cab in a minute. But I can't let you take this one, okay?" 

But I was talking to wall, a wailing wall at that, because he was so focused in on insulting and being insulted by the first guy that I don't think he could even see me. Really, it was like I wasn't there. Defeated as a referee, I walked over to the woman and suggested she get in the cab, but she wouldn't - "I want to make sure he's okay," she said.

"Why doesn't he just get in the taxi?" I asked her, figuring that she should know. If the two of them would just get in, I could drive away and that would be the end of it.

"He's not getting in," she replied. "He's got his bicycle chained to the pole over there," pointing to a sign post. 

Oh.

So there was more to this story than met the eye. The first guy must have been waiting with the woman there at that corner where the other guy was and, perhaps trying to impress her, had hustled across 23rd Street when he saw me - an empty cab! - pull up to the red light on the other side of the street. The other guy, who perhaps had been waiting at the corner longer and perhaps had put down a beer too many, was no doubt pissed off about what he perceived to have been a dirty rotten move and now, seeing that the first guy wasn't even getting into the cab himself, decided he was within his rights to be outraged at the injustice that had been perpetuated against him.

Of course, he wasn't within his rights. Hell, there are no rights when it comes to grabbing a cab, but you couldn't tell him that. He raged on at the first guy who at this point seemed to have had enough of the whole thing and simply turned his back and walked over a few steps to attend to his bicycle. He squatted down on bent knees to get to the lock, ignoring the other guy who, shadow-like, bent over, too, and continued to hurl invectives at the back of his head.

Suddenly the first guy stopped what he was doing and stood up, calmly.

He turned to the other guy.

And then... wham! He decked him with a right cross!

The other - much bigger - guy went down like a sack of potatoes. All right, like a sack of bagels - this is New York.

I was stunned, of course. But oddly enough, although this was real violence happening right in front of my eyes, it all seemed so comical to me. Seeing the other guy suddenly sprawled across the sidewalk, what came to mind immediately were the immortal words of legendary sportscaster Howard Cosell while broadcasting the heavyweight championship fight between George Foreman and Joe Frazier in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1973. Foreman connected with an uppercut to Frazier's jaw in the first round and Cosell's voice boomed:

"Down goes Frazier!"

"Down goes Frazier!"

"Down goes Frazier!"

(Here's the link to the call: https://youtu.be/JZEIMQ42-oU)

Well, the corner of 23rd and 5th wasn't a boxing ring in Kingston, but it was certainly a theater of the absurd - and it wasn't over. The other guy rose to his feet, turned to the first guy, and hurled not a fist, but another derogatory comment at him. The first guy looked at him, smiled, and then... wham!...

Down went Frazier once again!

Suddenly a woman I hadn't noticed before came rushing over to him. She helped him to his feet and began fussing over him. He leaned down so she could see if any damage had been done to his face and made a gesture to her that looked like he was inviting sympathy, as if to say, "Did you see what that awful, awful man did to me?" She touched his cheek like a mother bestowing a healing hand on her poor child's wound.

Meanwhile, the first guy, in a display that should earn him immediate acceptance into the Nonchalance Hall of Fame, turned his back on a much bigger man whom he'd just slugged twice and went back to the task of unlocking his bicycle. This accomplished, he then mounted the bike, waved goodbye to his female friend still standing in the space of the cab's opened door (and now stunned by what she had just seen), and pedaled away in no particular rush.

The other guy, with his own woman still consoling him, slumped off in the opposite direction.

The first guy's lady-friend finally got into the back seat and closed the door. Her destination was 19th between 8th and 9th, a distance so short it could have been walked in six minutes, making the whole incident even more absurd than it already was. I stepped on the gas and began my interrogation.

"Who is that guy?" I asked.

"He's a colleague - we work in the same office," she replied.

"What kind of work is it?" 

"It's online marketing, like doing surveys of customer satisfaction. That kind of stuff."

"Have you ever seen him do anything like that before?"

"No! He's usually like really 'even-Steven', you know? Except maybe when he's in a stressful situation, he might explode. But not physically, you know, just yelling at somebody." 

"Wow, that was really wild," I said.

"Yeah, that was wild," she agreed. I wasn't sure if her tone of voice implied an admiration for the guy, like maybe she was discovering that the caveman type really turned her on, or if she was thinking, wow, the guy is really a psycho. 

She used a credit card to pay for the ride, giving me a 25 per cent tip on a $6.70 fare. Not bad.

As I drove off in search of my next passenger, I had some time to contemplate this incident in relation to the broader scheme of things. You know, taxi drivers are low on the social totem pole - we don't generally get much respect. You've heard me complain about this from time to time. But, hey, when was the last time you ever heard of two patients slugging it out in the waiting room of an orthodontist over who gets to go in next? And when did anyone ever deck somebody because there was only one attorney left in the office and the big guy wanted him all to himself?

Damned right. It never happens.

********

Clicking here for Pictures From A Taxi does happen, however. But, please, no fighting! Just clicking!

If A Tree Falls In A Forest...

It takes about twenty minutes of driving around the city without a passenger for a taxi driver to start getting edgy. It's at about the twenty-minute mark that you realize I am not making any money and things begin to look oh-so-serious. So I was delighted on a Thursday night at 2 a.m. a few weeks ago when I picked up a fare right at the twenty-minute mark - two men in tuxedos, bow ties removed, with an older woman in an evening gown - who wanted to go to Fort Lee, New Jersey.

Bingo!

The out of town ride is like hitting the jackpot. You usually wind up making double the money you normally would have made for the time spent it takes to get there and back. The fare is not done on the meter - it's a "let's make a deal" situation, the price being agreed upon by driver and passenger before the journey begins.

My three passengers climbed into the back seat. It took me five seconds to conclude that they were merrily sloshed. There are mean drunks and there are happy drunks and these were the latter, which of course is better than the former. The older lady, in her mid-60s I would guess, and one of the men took the middle and right-rear positions on the back seat, behind the cab's partition, and the other man sat down on the left side, which meant he was in a better position from which to have a conversation with me through the opened partition window. The other two wound up kind of slumping over each other, laughing and chattering away only between themselves. The charge for the ride was negotiated with the fellow more directly behind me and what we agreed on was $40, to be paid in cash at the end of the ride. It was actually a bit on the low end for the twenty-minute trip to Fort Lee, but it was still good money for thirty minutes of my time (twenty to Fort Lee and ten back to the Upper West Side of Manhattan), so I was happy. I drove straight across 57th Street to the Henry Hudson Parkway, and we were on our way.

Well, the first thing I wanted to know about was, why the tuxes? Obviously, there had to have been an event. The gentleman behind me, who turned out to be an able conversationalist, explained. They had been to a fund-raising event at Cipriani's for a charity that provides medical treatment to children in South America who were born with a cleft palate. Doctors are flown in and perform corrective surgery on indigent people free of charge. It's something he and his family had been involved in for many years. The woman to his right was his aunt and the man beside her was her son, his cousin.

When he told me that, it immediately struck me that his aunt and cousin were more physically engaged with each other than I was used to seeing between a mother and an adult son. Her head was nestled just beneath his shoulder and he was caressing her hair in a manner more commonly seen with lovers. The way they laughed and spoke softly to each other created a kind of bubble around them which would prevent an intrusion from unwelcome visitors, another thing that lovers tend to do. But I dismissed any suspicions of an incestuous relationship and attributed their behavior to having spent a bit too much time with Johnnie Walker and Margarita. Still, it was odd. Fortunately I had this other fellow to talk to.

I commended him on the good work his family was doing and for the remainder of the ride learned something about cleft palates, cleft lips, and how the condition, a birth defect, could be surgically repaired. It was really a wonderful thing the charity was doing, the kind of information that rehabilitates a belief in the goodness and generosity of people in general.

We crossed the George Washington Bridge and were instantly in Fort Lee, where I was directed around several darkened side streets until we arrived at their destination, a parking lot beside a church. Normally passengers pay me by handing money through the partition window, as they should, but instead of doing that, all three of them got out of the cab at the same time. I wasn't concerned. It was crowded back there and it could be difficult to reach into a pocket in a cramped space. I expected the passenger with whom I had been chatting to appear at my driver's side window with my forty bucks, but he did not. Instead, the other man, with whom I had not spoken during the ride, appeared beside me and just stood there without making any attempt to pay me. Ten... fifteen... twenty seconds went by without a word or a dollar coming forth, so finally I said:

"Uh, that's forty dollars, sir."

I thought I would see him reach into a pocket for the cash, but instead I heard this:

"I paid you."

I was stunned.

"You haven't paid me yet, sir," I said.

"I just paid you," he replied firmly, although through a drunken haze.

"Uh, sir, you have not paid me," I returned without raising my voice.

"Hey, I just paid you, you shit!"

It turned out the guy was not a "happy drunk" after all - he was the other kind. I was suddenly confronted with a situation which I had occasionally wondered about, but which had never occurred in all my years. What would happen if a passenger simply insisted that he'd paid you? How could you prove to a cop that he was lying? It would be your word against his, and as long as he didn't fear he'd be physically assaulted by the cab driver, it seemed to me he could get away without paying by just pretending that he'd paid.

But this fellow wasn't pretending. He'd probably stepped up to the side of the cab with the intention of paying, but once he got beside me an image in his boozed-up mind of having already paid the fare had become his reality. As far as he was concerned, there was no question about it: he'd already paid me and the transaction had been concluded. In fact, he may have been just standing there because he was expecting me to give him change!

And then the absurdity took a turn for the worse.

Keeping my cool even though he'd just referred to me as "you shit", I repeated in an even voice that I had not been paid. His response:

"You wanna get your ass kicked, shithead... huh? Come on, get out of the cab, you fuck!"

That "I am on the wrong planet" feeling came over me. A grown man in a tuxedo who was returning home from a completely worthwhile charity event is now preparing to duke it out with his taxi driver over a currency dispute caused by his inability to differentiate his own fantasy island from the physical universe. Beam me up, Scottie!

It was time to call for the cousin.

Fortunately I was able to get him to come over without having to step out of the cab and possibly getting slugged. After just a few seconds of explanation he realized what was happening, apologized, and handed me $60, keep-the-change style, and that was that. I pulled out of there and headed back toward the George Washington Bridge.

The incident got me thinking about the nature of reality. What is "reality", anyway? If you have the courage to look this word up in a dictionary, you will find ambiguity and contradiction. One definition has it as the state or quality of occurring as fact - that is, not imaginary or fictitious. Another definition includes a kind of existence or universe either connected with or independent of others, as in "alternative realities". Another calls it the totality of "real" things in the world, independent of people's knowledge or perception of them. But right there, the question could be asked how something could be assumed to be actual if we cannot perceive it. And, if we were to assume that there were things that were in existence that were beyond our perception, wouldn't that make them imaginary and therefore, by one definition of reality, not real?

You see how this can drive you crazy.

As far as my belligerent passenger was concerned, he had paid the fare in full (and perhaps had even given me a generous tip) and now I was trying to cheat him. And it made perfect sense to him that he shouldn't let a dishonest creep like me get away with it. This was quite real to him.

It brings to mind that most basic of philosophical questions: if a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it as it hits the ground, did it make a sound?

I now have the answer to that question.

The answer is no.

********

And now that that's been resolved, why not click here for Pictures From A Taxi? It's sooo real.

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...

Angels And Demons

It has oft been said that there's both good and evil in everyone. Another way of saying it is that things are never totally black nor totally white, but in reality are a shade of grey. So it's of great interest to me when I get a passenger in my cab who does not appear to have any shade of grey at all but seems, rather, to be either an undiluted evil or an undiluted good. Characters like this really grab your attention. They've been populating newspapers and novels since observations began appearing in print.

I've had a few lately, and here is my report.

First, the evil...

A few weeks ago I worked a Saturday night shift, something I rarely do anymore even though it's the best money night. I'm just sick of the drunks and, of course, Saturday night is "Drunk Night". I'd much prefer to take a sober business person home from work on a Monday or a Tuesday than to have to endure the party people. But I did work this one Saturday shift and it was a reminder of what a truly wild place New York City is on that night of the week. And it provided me with both of these tales from the dark side.

Marriage Without the "Love" Part

When you drive a cab, especially with passengers who are less than sober, you have an enormous fly-on-the-wall opportunity. There is a definite tendency for people to carry on with each other as if you're not there, and so you have this unique window from which to observe them in an unvarnished state. Some of these people, of course, are married couples.

Now, if you are the survivor of a bad marriage, or if you are currently married and are experiencing some turbulence in your own voyage, you may think you know something about what it's like to be in a destructive relationship. Well, let me tell you something, Charlie or Charlotte, I would bet you dimes for dollars that whatever mess you've been involved in would pale in comparison to the two maniacs I had in my cab on this particular Saturday night.

They were well-dressed forty-somethings who had emerged from a restaurant on the East Side and, from what I overheard of their conversation - which was their entire conversation - they were coming from a dinner party that had been attended by people who were business associates of the woman. So it was one of those situations where "business" is combined with "pleasure", which is often a recipe for "stress". The man abruptly barked their destination - the Upper West Side - at me as they sat down in the back seat without saying the word "please", an indication in itself that I wasn't viewed as being a person of any importance to them, if, in fact, I was viewed as being a person at all. Lack of manners is something I unfortunately am quite accustomed to, so it slid off my back and I started driving up First Avenue toward 66th Street, the road that goes straight through Central Park to the West Side.

Their conversation began with a few back-and-forths about the party in a civil tone. And then the man, who had been walking on a tightrope he wasn't unaware of, made a comment that sent him tumbling toward the pavement far below. He mentioned to his wife that he thought they should have stayed at the party a little longer so she could could chat it up with a particular business associate whom he thought could be a potential ally in some future business scenario.

This one statement was all it took to make the volcano explode. She jumped on him like a lion on an antelope. (Or a lioness in this case.) Her facade of civility disappeared completely and was replaced with a hostility that would have rippled even Jack the Ripper. Not only was he completely wrong in his opinion, she roared, it was utterly, deeply, and unforgivably insulting to her that he should imply that she didn't thoroughly know what she was doing at the party.

He tried to apologize, but his attempts to placate her only seemed to fuel the fire.

Here, she wailed, was yet another attempt to undermine her confidence by someone who was a complete failure in anything he attempted to do. What had he ever done in life? What had he ever accomplished? How dare he suggest that she wasn't adequately skillful in a social situation? Leave the party too soon? All the guests were leaving! Clearly, to try to engage the person he had mentioned in conversation at that time would have been a mistake. You idiot! You idiot! You brainless, thoughtless, trip-over-your-own-shoes idiot!

Like an insect that's caught in a spider's web, he continued to try to wiggle free. Well, he replied, he was just saying. It was just a comment. But she would have none of it. Shark-like, she moved in for more.

"That was your fatal mistake," she snarled. "I'm cutting you out! You're getting nothing!"

I came to understand, as her damnations continued, that she controlled the purse strings in their relationship - she was the one with the money. This conclusion was supported by his complete lack of retaliation to her rantings. Glancing at him in the mirror, he resembled a boxer who had fallen to one knee and was about to receive a salvo of new punches which he realized he was helpless to prevent.

And on they came.

"There will be no third child!" she proclaimed.

"What do you mean?" he said in a kind of stunned apathy.

"I'm getting rid of it," she stated coolly. I noticed a particular perversity in the way she put this forward. There was no sadness or regret in her voice. Rather, there was a hint of the sublime.
He was on his back on the canvas and offered no response. The remaining five minutes of the ride took place in an atmosphere in which the tension could not have been cut with a knife. You would have needed a chainsaw to do the job.

I thought how funny it would be (to me) if I suddenly broke out into the song, I Get A Kick Out Of You. But of course I kept my mouth shut and just kept driving.

After I'd dropped them off, it took me three fares to shake off the effects of the ride. By "three fares" I mean the next three passengers in my cab served as my own personal therapists for downloading on them the emotional strain I'd just been subjected to. Fortunately, they were all good listeners and I felt much better as a result. But I came away with some thoughts.

Firstly, just the amazement at how bad it can get. How evil intentions, dishonesty, cowardice, and propitiation feed off each other until both parties are utterly entrapped by their own personality flaws.

Secondly, I haven't been able to get the thought out of my mind that someday he's going to murder her.

And thirdly, and this is a personal note if you will indulge me, I had the odd realization about a week later that many years ago I had imagined these two people. I wrote a stage play in the early '80s about a married couple who were just like these two. The funny thing is, I'd never actually met anyone like them in real life. I had based my play loosely on the characters in the play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and figured there must be people like that out there. Which just goes to show that if you drive a cab in New York long enough, everybody eventually shows up - even people who had previously existed only in your mind.

Now, it often happens during the course of a shift that you find yourself pulling in the same kind of thing that you'd just gotten rid of in a kind of karmic reverberation. And it happened that night. Just as I had regained my aplomb, I encountered Mr. and Mrs. Insane Number Two in Tribeca.

Mobbed Up

I was driving up Hudson Street at around 1 a.m. looking for my next fare when I was hailed by a young guy who turned out to be a doorman for a small hotel about a block and a half away on Greenwich Street. He had been sent by patrons of the hotel to fetch a cab because Greenwich Street at that hour of the night is relatively deserted whereas Hudson Street is full of taxis en route from lower Manhattan to the passenger-rich Soho and Greenwich Village sections of the city.

It's not unusual for a doorman to provide this service. He hails the cab himself as if he were the next passenger and rides in the cab the short distance back to his hotel. Since he is seated in the taxi, the driver instinctively turns the meter on as the trip begins, which is what I did in this instance.

We pulled up in front of the hotel and waiting there were a man and a woman who I would say were in their mid-fifties. He was about five-foot-eight with about 70 pounds more than he needed and with a salt and peppered full head of hair, and she stood out in a party dress and a puffed-out top of bright red.The doorman exited the back seat as we pulled up to the place, and held the door open for his patrons. The meter had already clicked once, up to $3.40 from its initial drop of $3.00. But the couple did not enter the cab. Instead, the woman came up to me and asked, in an accent heavy with a lifetime in Brooklyn, if I knew any good diners.

I told her I did.

"Do you know one close to here?"

"Yeah, we could go to Greenwich Village. I know a couple of coffee shops there."

"Do they have fried clams?"

"They probably do. They all do."

"What about shrimps?" And then, without waiting for an answer, she turned to the man. "Honey, I can't decide if I want clams or shrimps."

He looked at her with an expression on his face that seemed to say that he was the godfather to women who can't decide between clams or shrimps and that all would be well for her if she just continued never to have an intelligent thought of her own. In short, he was the sugar daddy in this relationship, she was Daddy's little girl. This was apparent to me just from this quick exchange.

"Ewwww," she whined, little-girl-like, "what should we do?"

He murmured something to her I could not hear, and then they did a remarkable thing - they started to walk away.

The doorman and I simultaneously glanced at each other with puzzled looks on our faces. I told him there was now $3.80 on the meter, and that I was owed this, which he understood. Although he was just a kid and had been put in an awkward situation, he nevertheless summoned up his courage and approached the man, telling him the meter had been started when he'd gotten the cab.

The man just looked at him as if he was a bug, gave him a sarcastic little laugh, and continued walking away with his parasite.

And that was it.

Now, this may not seem like such a big deal. One could say it was just two rude people being rude. But let me tell you something - in thirty-one years of taxi-driving, with probably a couple of hundred doormen getting in my cab as this one had, this had never happened before.

It was a first. And firsts are rare after all these years, so it made me examine the incident carefully in my mind. Certainly no huge incident of destruction had occurred. There had been no violence nor bizarre dramatization as had happened earlier in the evening. But still this little episode really stuck in my craw.

I asked myself, who would do something like this? Have a doorman walk a block to get a cab, then not take the cab he'd gotten without a "sorry" or an offer to pay what was on the meter? And then just walk away with a sinister laugh? I couldn't imagine myself nor anyone I know ever doing such a thing under any circumstances. What sequence of events would it have taken to have acquired an attitude like that?

I concluded that it would take someone who was utterly at ease with committing harmful acts upon others. Someone who was a professional at it. Someone who, if he ever thought about it at all, would consider the idea of other people having rights as just an ememy's attempt to stop him from getting what he wants. Someone who, at his core, was evil. And when I say "evil" I mean the continuous intention to do harm to others when there is no need to do harm to others.

So it wasn't what he'd done to me and the doorman that had stopped me in my tracks. It was my perception that this was a person who was capable of an enormous quantity of evil. And the only context I have for such a person are the movies and television dramas I've seen about the Mob, particularly Goodfellas and The Sopranos. The characters in these shows are portrayed as having just these kinds of anti-social traits, and this guy, both in his actions and appearance, fit right into that odd slot.

So I said to the doorman something that I thought might add to his education, or at least make the incident permanently memorable for him. "That guy's in the Mob," I said.

And I drove off looking for my next therapist. I mean, passenger.

The Angels Among Us

I sometimes wonder if there may in fact be such a thing as Intelligent Design when I consider the amazing balancing act between good and evil that exists in the human race. How can there be a species which has among its members ones like the above and others like these...

Several months ago, in the dead of winter, I picked up a middle-aged woman at 3 a.m. in Midtown who was en route to her apartment in lower Manhattan but wanted to make a stop on 23rd Street between 5th and 6th Avenues. It turned out she was a lawyer.

Now, I am as cynical as the next person about lawyers but this one was of a different mold, if in fact there is a mold at all. The first thing I noticed about her was that her manners were totally "in". I said "hello" to her as she entered my cab, as I do with everyone. She said "hello" back. She told me her destination and asked me if it would be okay with me if we made a stop. I told her that of course that would be no problem and I noted the fact that she had asked me this even though she didn't have to. So here was a person who just by her nature was considerate of the feelings and the rights of others. In short, a "social personality".

Not surprisingly, she was an easy converstionalist and I soon learned why she wanted to make a stop in the middle of the night. There was a church on that block, she said, which shelters homeless people. This particular church was not licensed by the city to be a homeless shelter, but did what it could, anyway. (She told me something I didn't know, which was that if a shelter isn't so licensed they cannot provide beds to people. So what this church did was provide chairs to people so they could attempt to sleep in a sitting position in a place where at least it was warm.) The reason she was making a stop here was to deliver paperwork she had been preparing to benefit one of the homeless people in the church, a woman from the suburbs of Connecticut who had lost her job and had subsequently lost her home. The paperwork had to do with red tape hurdles that needed to be cleared in order to situate this woman in affordable housing.

We continued the ride to her apartment building in Tribeca, a nice building in a nice part of town. I learned that in these tough economic times there were more and more people who are truly "homeless" - people who have literally lost their homes and have at least temporarily no place to live, as opposed to people who are also classified as "homeless" who are actually substance abuse cases or outright hustlers. I also learned that she does this legal work pro bono (for free) as a matter of conscience.

At the end of the ride she thanked me again for making a stop in the middle of the ride, as if I had done something extraordinary. She paid me the fare and gave me a way-above-average tip, which I accepted but later felt a little guilty about for having done so.

And I realized as I drove away that this was a person who was also looking out for me. She showed kindness and concern when she didn't have to, traits that came naturally from within. I perceived no grey here. She was all good.

Then, a few weeks ago, I had a fare who was almost a duplicate of this woman in character and deed. I picked her up on the Upper West Side near Riverside Drive a bit after midnight. She needed to place several large boxes in the trunk of the taxi, which I helped her to do. Her destination was a city-run shelter on 108th Street in Harlem and, like the previous ride, she asked me if I would be willing to wait for her while she made a delivery and then bring her to her own apartment building on 97th Street.

I noticed the smell of salami as I loaded one of the boxes into the trunk, and this was a clue as to what she was doing. She told me that she regularly takes excess food from a school to this shelter. She does it out of conscience, I surmised, out of feeling a need to take some responsibility for the welfare of others less fortunate than herself. And, like her predecessor, her kind nature wasn't limited to an exclusive charity, but included me. Aside from a friendly conversation and providing me with an example I could write about, she also gave me an exorbitantly high tip. Which I also accepted but again felt a little guilty about, thinking this was a person to whom I really should be offering a free ride.

In looking back at these four fares, I believe the entire human condition on the broadest of scales could be demonstrated by them.

I believe most people are basically good, but are hindered by forces internally and externally that they have difficulty controlling. And I believe a small percentage of people are actively, continuously perpetuating harm. And thus the story line of the human race is the same one you see in movies all the time, good versus evil.

Why this is so and what should be done about it are the subjects of philosophies, psychologies, and religions. I would not attempt to try to explain it.

I would say, though, that as a member of the grey team, I am grateful for the angels among us.

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And grateful to you as well if you think it might be a good thing to click here for Pictures From A Taxi.