What It Takes To Get Rid Of A McDonald's

Here's a question I've asked dozens of passengers in my cab over the years, and I'll ask it to you now: have you ever -- in your life -- noticed a McDonald's that, once it was there, ceased to be there? Think about this for a minute... I'm talking about every town or city you've ever lived in, every town or city you've ever known, every highway you've ever driven on that had a rest stop, every mall you've ever shopped in: have you ever known of a McDonald's that went away?

I'll bet you can't name even one.

I say this because no one in my cab has ever been able to think of one.  Well, actually there was one passenger who could.  He said there was a mass shooting in a McDonald's in San Diego, California, in 1984 in which twenty-one people were killed, and in the aftermath the McDonald's Corporation decided to raze the building and donate the land to the city rather than reopen it.  However, a new McDonald's was eventually built just a few blocks away.  So it's debatable as to whether or not this counts.

Wondering why this was so, I learned through conversations with passengers and with a bit of research on the net that in the great majority of cases the McDonald's Corporation owns the land upon which the restaurants are constructed.  A realtor in my cab recently told me, in fact, that people are mistaken if they think McDonald's is in the hamburger business.  Actually, he said, they're in the real estate business.  The value of their real estate holdings, including the land itself and the buildings, is more than 28 billion dollars.

So imagine my surprise when I drove up 10th Avenue in Manhattan a few weeks ago and noticed that a fence had been constructed around a McDonald's at 34th Street and it was shuttered up.  This was especially interesting to me because this very same McDonald's was, in fact, demolished about twenty years ago and I remember thinking at the time that it was the only one I knew of that had ever gone away. Especially strange, I thought, because it was one of the very few restaurants in Manhattan that had its own parking lot.  You could actually park your car and go into the place to eat, unheard of in the real estate paradise known as Manhattan.  And now it was gone?

No!  What happened was that, Hydra-like, it came back!  A new, bigger, two-story McDonald's arose in its place and was super-sizing the fries, sodas, and shakes all over again.  What, I had to wonder, could it possibly take to kill off one of these joints?

The answer to that question requires a closer look at what's been happening in the section of Manhattan that is bounded from north to south by 34th Street and 30th Street and from east to west by 10th and 12th Avenues.  It has its own new name: "Hudson Yards".  "Hudson" because the Hudson River is right there next to 12th Avenue and "Yards" because the construction that's underway there extends over the West Side Rail Yard, where trains headed for Pennsylvania Station come, go, and hang out.  It's a massive real estate development which when completed is expected to consist of sixteen skyscrapers with more than 12 million square feet of office, residential, and retail space.  An extension of the Number 7 subway line -- a massive construction project in itself -- was recently completed and opened for business with a station on 34th Street between 10th and 11th Avenues, the first new subway station to open in New York City in twenty years.

It's a big deal.

So why did the McDonald's go out?  Well, it was due to the value of its land, of course.  We all know about "location, location, location" and this is a location wet dream.  It's about an acre of the most prime real estate imaginable, literally adjacent to the new subway station.  Who was the genius who years ago decided to acquire a plot big enough for a parking lot?  Incredible.

I had to wonder what the price could have been for the McDonald's Corporation to sell out.  Happily, I was able to extract this information from two recent passengers in my cab.  One was a real estate lawyer and the other an executive of the development company which bought the land. (It's amazing to me how, when I decide that I want certain information, somehow a passenger shows up in my cab who provides me with it.  It's been happening for years -- a phenomenon, really.)

Anyway, what do you think it was?  Before you read on, just sit back for a minute and think about it.  An acre of land in the middle of a huge, huge real estate development in a whole new section of Manhattan that has its own new subway line -- what do you think that's worth in today's dollars?

Okay, here's the answer (drum roll, please)...

One hundred and forty-four million dollars, including the air rights.

One hundred and forty-four million dollars.

So now we know.

That's what it takes to get rid of a McDonald's.

Sorry, Morgan Spurlock.

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 Drunk Drop

In all team sports there are certain set plays that are used as part of a strategy in trying to win the game. In baseball, for example, there's a play called the "suicide squeeze". In American football there's the "down and out". In basketball they have one called the "pick and roll".

In taxi driving, there's the "drunk drop".

The drunk drop is when a patron of a bar or restaurant has become so drunk that he or she is semi-coherent and is bordering on becoming incoherent or even passing out completely. The patron is then escorted, hustled, or just carried from the establishment by bartenders or waiters and is deposited into a taxicab. If the taxi drives away, the strategy has been successful.

I had one a few days ago. It wasn't pretty.

I was cruising down 2nd Avenue on the Upper East Side at around 9 p.m. looking for my next fare, having just returned empty to Manhattan from the Bronx. As I crossed 89th Street someone with his hand in the air appeared from the left side of the avenue so I deftly cut over and pulled to a stop. There's great craft in being able to cut through traffic safely and swiftly, but there's also great craft in being able to instantly size a person up before you allow them access into your vehicle. And in this I was lacking.

As I stopped my cab what I saw approaching from the curb were three people - two men in waiter's attire flanking a middle-aged woman, a blonde, and kind of half-carrying her. In other words she was walking on her own volition, but just barely, and the men had their arms under her arms to catch her should she stumble or fall.

It was a drunk drop in progress.

I think it was because it had been about twenty minutes since I'd dropped off my last fare in the Bronx, plus the fact that it had been a slow night up until that point, that caused me to pause a moment longer than I normally would have in this situation. Normally if I see a drunk drop coming toward me I either just keep on driving or, if I'm already at a stop, I lock the doors. But due to these financial considerations I just froze for a moment. And in that moment one of the waiters got his hand on the door and opened it.

And in came the drunk.

The waiters turned around and walked back into their restaurant, a chic little Mediterranean joint. One of them said something to the other that made him laugh.

For the briefest of moments I let myself think that maybe she'd just turned her ankle or something and wasn't actually drunk at all. Maybe she just needed some help walking and I'd probably be driving her to the emergency room of a hospital. But one look at her as she plopped down on the seat with her head tilted to one side told me that was just wishful thinking.

I asked her where she wanted to go.

There was a long pause. I repeated the question. Finally she said, rather conclusively... "I don't know."

Yes, not only did she not know where she wanted to go, she was sure she didn't know where she wanted to go. But at least she could respond to a question, even if it took half a minute to do so. That was a plus. After another futile attempt to get a destination out of her, I realized I had to pull a play of my own...

The Reverse Drunk Drop.

It's a wise cabbie who realizes that he mustn't step on the gas pedal in a situation like this. There is potential trouble in all directions here, especially if the semi-coherent inebriate is a female. So the play is to reverse the drop that has given you the drunk. Or, to put it in postal terms, "Return To Sender".

I got out of my cab, leaving the woman in the back, and walked into the restaurant. The two waiters were nowhere in sight, but a fellow who looked like he was some kind of a maitre d' was standing there. I told him in a voice that was calm yet had an element of restrained anger in it that two waiters from his restaurant had just put a woman in my cab who was so drunk that she couldn't so much as tell me where she wanted to go. And that they'd better come back and get her out of my cab.

Or I would call the police.

And with that I turned around and walked out of the place.

I returned to my cab, opened the rear door, and confronted the unwanted cargo that was sitting there. She had opened her bag and was looking through the objects in it, apparently hoping to find a clue as to what her destination might be. I was searching for a way to tell her that she was too wasted to meet the minimum requirements for membership in my taxi club when I was confronted myself by one of the waiters who had dumped her there.

He wasn't too happy with the situation.

I was perfectly willing to handle the matter in a civil tone, but the guy, a slightly-built man in his forties who was a bit shorter than I, was in a non-negotiating attack mode. Immediately he was yelling at me, demanding to know who the hell I thought I was, walking into his restaurant like I was some kind of authority. The implication being that taxi drivers should be seen and not heard.

Well, I would say that the guy was clearly an asshole, except that I don't use language like that in this blog. Instead, I will just say that he was clearly an orifice that is found at the very end of the alimentary canal. What followed was one of those scenes that seem comical in retrospect, but in the moment are red-hot episodes of human idiocy.

The waiter got right in my face, giving me about an inch of space between us and also providing me with an opportunity to learn that he'd been sampling the garlic bread in the kitchen. With a "how dare you" this and a "the nerve of you" that, he flew into a self-righteous rage which would have given the passerby on the street the impression that I was the offending party.

Of course it was all pretense. It reminded me of an incident that happened about two and a half years ago in which a passenger in my cab had flown into a weird, out-of-context tirade that was so insulting that it brought me to the verge of a physical assault. (Go to Doctor Evil for that story.) People who have secrets that you're a bit too close to discovering have a definite tendency to become quite upset with you, and the neon sign that announces this is their self-righteous indignation.

This waiter's secret was, no doubt, that he's served the woman far too many drinks. This could be a big problem to the owner of the restaurant (and thus to the waiter) as it could lead to the revocation of their liquor license if harm should come to her as a result. And there may have been other things he didn't want revealed, as well. Perhaps he'd lifted money from her purse after she'd been reduced to a semi-conscious blob. Perhaps he'd overcharged her. Perhaps he'd decided to give himself a $50 tip when he ran her credit card through the system.

Of course I didn't know what it was, but I did know it was something. And what I also knew was that this guy's aggression toward me was about to become a shoving match. And that could lead to a punching match. And that could lead to - well, it could lead to a very bad night, indeed.

But then, as often happens in life -at least in my life - a sort of divine intervention occurred.

In a scene that seemed reminiscent of something that happens in a silent movie, the woman suddenly emerged from the back seat of the cab, took a couple of wobbly steps forward, and then fell straight down like a sack of blonde potatoes onto the pavement.

There was a sudden break in the action.

The waiter looked at the woman.

The waiter looked at me.

The waiter looked back at the woman.

It was decision time.

Fortunately, the waiter went with the woman. He dropped his "you wanna fight, taxi-schmuck?" demeanor and with a new demeanor of frustrated desperation began attending to his fallen customer, first propping her up and then guiding her into one of the outdoor seats on the sidewalk in front of his restaurant. I got back into my cab and called 911 on my cell phone, telling them there was a semi-coherent woman who needed assistance in front of this particular establishment.

They said they'd send an ambulance.

And that was good enough for me.

I took off down 2nd Avenue in search of my next fare with thoughts of drunk drops past and present racing through my mind. And wondering what in the hell my next out-of-nowhere adventure might be.

Which is the best part of being a taxi driver.

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In case you were wondering what your next out-of-nowhere adventure might be, how about considering the possibility that it might be found by clicking here for Pictures From A Taxi? Hey, just a thought...

What Actually Does Drive Me Crazy

It's quite common for passengers to ask me for how long I've been driving a cab. After I tell them it's 31 years and wait for them to stop gasping, a frequent comment I hear is:

"Doesn't it drive you crazy?"

"Doesn't what drive me crazy?" I reply.

They think about this for a moment. "Well... the traffic, for one thing."

"Let me tell you something about traffic," I say. "What actually drives people crazy about traffic is that they can't get where they want to go and there's probably someone getting pissed off at them for being late. But that stress is with the passenger, not the cab driver. Imagine you were cruising around town with no place to go, just listening to the radio. You might find it relaxing. That's kind of what it's like to be a cab driver."

This seems to make sense. Most people never looked at it that way.

Then, just to have some fun, I will say this: "There are, however, two things that do drive me crazy in this business. But you'll never guess what they are."

Passengers love this because it gives us a game to play. Can they guess what drives the veteran cabbie around the bend?

"Mean people?"

"Nah... what would be stressful would be having to be around a mean person all the time. But when you drive a cab the mean people you do encounter are out of your life in ten minutes. That's one of the perks of the job, actually."

"Bad tippers?"

"Noooo."

By this time there is a long pause. They start to go for the long shot.

"People who bring dogs in the cab?"

"Of course not, I love dogs!"

"People who throw up?"

"Well, yeah, but that doesn't count 'cause it only happens about once a year."

"Trips out of Manhattan?"

"That can be annoying but it doesn't classify as something that drives me crazy. Remember, we're looking for two things that are really stressful here."

"Short rides?"

"No, come on, there's nothing wrong with a short ride."

"People who don't know where they want to go?"

"No, what do I care? The meter is running."

"People talking on their cell phones?"

"No, at most that is merely slightly annoying. Definitely not 'drives-me-crazy' material."

Finally there is a long silence and I can see by the expressions on their faces that they're out of guesses and ready to give up.

"So what is it?"

Drum roll, please. But before I give you the answers, I want to say that I think any cabbie in New York who's been driving for more than a year would agree with me on this. And I think you probably have to be on the inside of any activity in order to be able to correctly say what it is about that activity that most infuriates the people who actually do it. Outsiders aren't usually aware of the subtleties.

Okay, enough suspense. Here they are, the two things that actually are the most stressful about making a living as a New York City taxi driver:

1. Any contact whatsoever with the Taxi and Limousine Commission.

The TLC is the city agency which makes the rules for the industry and administers those rules. Although I admit that there have been some improvements recently, its history in my 31 years has been sordid. Without getting into a diatribe about the shortcomings of this bureaucracy, I'll just say that cab drivers have to accept whatever mindless or mean-spirited dictates come down the line (like televisions in the rear compartment that are under the control of passengers and blast out the same commercialized drivel over and over and over into the ears of the drivers) and that even the routine of renewing one's hack license every year has enough potential stress connected to it to make one dread opening the renewal form which arrives annually (maybe) in the mail. (One year, for example, I had to make seven trips to various city agencies to clear up the TLC's own bureaucratic errors.) I could go on and on, but I'm sparing you the horror.

It's the second cause of stress that is by far the worst, however, and although it seems the most obvious to me, no one has ever guessed what it is.

2. I can't find a passenger.

That's right. I am cruising the streets of the city and I can't find a damned passenger! Nearly everyone who ever takes a cab in New York assumes that cabs are always busy because whenever they want to get one, it seems it is difficult to find one that's available. This is true, but it is true only because the taxi business is a peak-hour business. During the rush hours (7 to 10 a.m. and 4 to 8 p.m.) demand exceeds supply. But that's only 7 hours of the day. There are 17 other hours and during many of them, quite the opposite is the case.

Try getting a cab at 2 a.m. on a Tuesday night, for example. Before your hand goes into a full wave, you will find three or four empty taxis cutting in front of each other in their attempts to get to you first. The 13,187 yellow cabs in New York City derive all their business from street hails. You don't get on a phone and call for a yellow cab. You go out on the street and wave your hand. This means we're all in competition with each other and, when supply of cabs exceeds demand for service, it's a horse race, believe me. Did you ever dream of being a NASCAR driver? Come to New York and drive a cab at night instead.

So how bad can it get? Twice I have gone two hours of desperately cruising the streets without getting a single fare. Being empty for 45 minutes is not all that unusual. And that is stress because you have paid a leasing fee for the use of the cab for a period of 12 hours and therefore time is money (or no money).

It is also a bit humiliating in my case because, if I don't say so myself, I think of myself as the Grand Master of finding fares. So for me to go long periods of time trying every trick I know and still finding another empty cab in front of me wherever I turn, well... it can drive me crazy. I start behaving like the maniac taxi drivers I hear passengers complain to me about. Last week, for example, I was cut off viciously on 7th Avenue South by another cabbie who then beat me to a passenger standing off the sidewalk at W. 4th Street. Instead of shrugging it off and continuing on down the avenue to hopefully find another passenger, I tossed a cup of water through his window as I drove by. Idiotic, certainly, but it shows you how crazy even a non-crazy fellow like myself can get.

I once had a passenger in my cab who was a waiter and we got into a conversation about our professions. He told me about his recurring dream of not being able to keep up with business in his restaurant. He said in his dream the space of the restaurant kept expanding and the tables extended out beyond the entrance right out onto the street. He would run and run from the restaurant out into the street trying to take orders and serve food, but the tables kept multiplying faster than he could cope.

My scary dream is kind of the opposite. I am cruising the streets of New York after midnight making every sage move I've learned over the last 31 years. And yet, everywhere I go I find an empty cab already in front of me. I can't find a passenger no matter what brilliant maneuver I make. This goes on for an hour. Then another hour. Finally, completely exasperated, I find myself driving uptown on Broadway. I decide that all my knowledge of where to find a fare has failed me so I just chuck it all out the window and just drive. I know nothing. Further and further I go on Broadway, up into the Bronx, and then even further up into Westchester County. I am now out of the city limits, but I don't care. I just keep going. Broadway is a continuing road and becomes State Highway 9 up there. I find myself passing through small towns and noticing deer on the sides of the road. I don't care, I just keep going. After two hours I find myself in the town of Kinderhook, not that far from Albany, approaching a red light. It is nearly 4 a.m. and of course the town is completely dark and deserted. I'm thinking I ought to turn around and go back to the city, but then, as I come up to the red light, something catches my eye just beyond the intersection. It's a broken-down limousine with two dressed-up party people at its side waving at me frantically. I realize they want my service! No doubt they had rented the limo, now disabled, and see me as a miracle sent to them to take them back to New York! And I see them as a miracle of my own, a signal from the Almighty that my travail has not been in vain, that my insane journey into the wilderness was actually guided by the Divine. I wave back at them through the windshield, trying to communicate that as soon as my red light turns green, I will be there to rescue them. But just before the light changes...

...another yellow cab from New York City appears from out of nowhere, speeds through the intersection, screeches to a halt beside the limo, and picks up the stranded party people before I can get to them.

And you know when you start having dreams like this that it won't be long before you pick up a couple of husky fellows in white coats who take you for a ride to the funny farm. Although, come to think of it, then at least for awhile there you would have had some passengers!

It has also been rumored that failure to click here for Pictures From A Taxi can also cause one to go crazy. But that is just a rumor, of course.

Three Stars

So, did you recognize the movie star? It is... drum roll, please... Susan Sarandon. It may have been difficult to recognize her without her red hair anywhere in sight. Only about half of the dozen or so passengers in my cab whom I showed the pictures to got it right. One passenger, a dancer from Flashdancers, the strip club, didn't recognize her but did immediately comment on her cleavage, which I myself hadn't noticed up until that point. We are all experts in our own fields of endeavor. Speaking of which, here is the newest addition to the streets of New York. The Toyota Prius taxicab.

This is, of course, the hybrid electric and gasoline car which is great on fuel and low on pollution. I asked the driver how much he spends on gas per shift (about 140 miles are driven in a shift, the ultimate in stop and go driving). He said from 8 to 10 dollars. I'm spending between $40 and $50 in the Ford Crown Vic I lease from my garage. Wave of the future? I sure hope so. But how will it stand up to the brutality of driving on New York streets? That remains to be seen. It's a small car.

Now, down to business. The focus of this blog is the "fare of the night" or the "thing on the street", meaning the most interesting people I encounter in my taxi or something I see on the street that's worthy of mention. And here's one I wanted to write about. On Aug. 2nd at 1:30 AM I picked up a happy, young lady in Greenwich Village and drove her out to Astoria. She had been talking excitedly on her cell phone for awhile and when she finished that conversation I asked her what was going on. She told me she is the manager of a restaurant in the Village and they had just received a favorable review in the NY Times. Three stars, as a matter of fact.

Unless you are already familiar with the culture of fine dining in New York City, this may not seem like such a big deal. But I assure you, it is. This is how it goes: someone at some point in his (or her) life realizes that he loves to cook. He may very well have attended and graduated from a culinary school (no small accomplishment). He works for years as a chef in an excellent restaurant. Finally, with investors lined up and with many friends to help him, he takes a mighty plunge and decides to open his own place. Enormous planning and effort are put into this project.

At last the restaurant becomes a reality. But will it be a success or just another one of the many flops? This often depends on a single, fickle, and perhaps fair or grossly unfair variable: the review of the food critic of the New York Times. If the reviewer likes your restaurant, your chances of success have multiplied dramatically. If not, your entire endeavor is most likely headed where the potato peels, egg shells, and fish bones wind up... That's the power of the food critic of the NY Times. So there is real drama here.

My passenger, whose name is Sara (and whose birthday it is) filled me in on the behind the scenes details of the story. She works at the Blue Hill restaurant on Washington Place between 6th Avenue and Washington Square

Park. It's a cozy, little place in the below-ground-level of a townhouse which has been in business for six years. The special feature of Blue Hill is that they prepare only food that has been grown within 150 miles of New York City. Blue Hill had received a two-star review ("very good") from the NY Times when it first opened and, Sara told me, if a restaurant is still in business after six years, it is the policy of the Times to review it again. They'd been informed that a food critic would be dining there that week, but they didn't know what day and they didn't know who it would be. So there was an air of mystery, suspense, and excitement in the restaurant all week. Was the portly gentleman at table twelve actually the mighty reviewer from the Times? Or could it be the woman in the pink suit at table seven?

The moment of truth had arrived earlier that evening. They received word that the review of Blue Hill would be published in the August 2nd edition, and they had received 3 stars ("excellent") from food czar Frank Bruni. The ecstasy of the staff had to be contained as the last diner stayed in the restaurant for an excruciating 45 minutes after the check had arrived. Finally the patron departed and they all celebrated their significant win.

Another example of increasing my own reality by communicating with a passenger. I wouldn't have known anything about all this if I hadn't simply asked her what was going on. If you'd like to see the review for yourself, by the way, google "Blue Hill restaurant, New York City".