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...

5A48 And The Manslaughter Moment

There was a taxi driver killed in a road rage incident last week here in New York City. His name was Mohammed Elwaleed. I didn't know him personally, but the story was in the news for a couple of days. Apparently Mr. Elwaleed got into an argument with another driver at around midnight at the intersection of 65th Street and Madison Avenue. In the course of whatever the argument was about, he got out of his taxi (a no-no in any road rage incident) and was then literally run over by the other driver, who was later apprehended and now faces manslaughter charges.

Mohammed Elwaleed was a 44 year-old immigrant from Sudan who leaves behind a wife and two small children.

It was yet another one of those stories that sobers one up to a disturbing aspect of living your life in a big city - or, really, just living amongst other human beings in this civilization. It's that invisible volcano beside which we are all building our huts. It's needing the ability to know when the stranger who's just appeared in front of you, Special Delivery from Fate, is about to explode.

I had such an incident myself a few weeks ago. I seem to get one or two of these a year on the average.

It started at the beginning of a Saturday night shift when I was assigned the cab 5A48 for the evening. The taxi garage was "sold out" that night. That meant that every cab was out and should you be unfortunate enough to have a breakdown, you were stuck with that car. You couldn't bring it in and exchange it for another one.

As I headed out of the garage with the meter and rate card for 5A48 in hand, another driver noticed the identifying paperwork I was carrying.

"You've got 5A48?" he asked with a disapproving look on his face.

"Yeah... why, it's no good?"

"I had that cab last night," he said quite seriously. "Whenever it hits a bump, it stalls out. Twice it stalled out on me on the highway. I could have been killed."

This comment led to a discussion about how to start a stalled car that was already in motion. The driver who was giving me such a grim warning turned out to not know that in these situations you are supposed to put the car in neutral and start it up while it is still moving. Instead, he had brought the cab to a full stop on the highway, put it in park, and then turned the ignition key.

"No wonder this guy almost got killed," I thought, "he doesn't know how to drive!"

Nevertheless I returned to the dispatcher's window and asked the weekend guy, Wilfredo, about the condition of the taxi. He assured me it had been fixed.

I then returned to the driver and told him what Wilfredo had said.

"If God loves you," he replied, "you will not be harmed."

And on that bright note I made my way to where 5A48 was parked. I did my usual prep on the cab and after about 15 minutes I pulled out onto 10th Avenue to start my shift.

I drove six or seven blocks.

I hit a bump.

5A48 stalled out.

As I put the cab into neutral and started it up without stopping, I assessed the situation. If I brought the thing back to the garage and had the mechanics try to fix it, it could take hours. This was not a common mechanical problem. In fact, in my thirty years of taxi driving, I had never had a cab that stalled out whenever it hit a bump. (It still amazes me that after having driven literally hundreds of different taxis, I can still discover some new mechanical malfunction that I have never experienced before.)

On the other hand I could just continue with 5A48 and hope that I could make it through the shift without any mishaps. After all, the problem was really in the category of a major annoyance rather than a real danger. And since money was at stake (I would not be compensated for time lost in the garage), the choice was obvious.

I stayed with 5A48.

As the night wore on, it was clear to me that I had made the right decision. Although the frequent stalling out was a very major annoyance - the damned cab was stalling out about once every 3 minutes, thus adding up to over 200 stalls before the night was over - I had not lost any business because of it. However, it was contributing to the stress level of the Saturday night shift, which is normally crazier than any other night of the week, anyway. Saturday night is always filled with loud, stupid, and drunk party people and, even without a particularly outrageous incident getting under your skin, it has a way of wearing you down.

All of this set me up for that fare I get once or twice a year.

At 4:53 I was hailed by two guys, one white and one black, at 35th Street and 6th Avenue. They wanted to go up to 125th and Amsterdam in Harlem. Although I was tired and my shift ends at 5:00, it was a good last-fare-of-the-night ride. It would bring me about $15 extra income and I would be able to make it back to the garage by around 5:30, within the acceptable return time.

I headed west to 10th Avenue and figured I'd just ride up 10th, which becomes Amsterdam at 59th Street, all the way to 125th. The lights are synchronized in "the wave" on that avenue, so I would be able to make the entire trip with no red lights. Plus the pavement of Amsterdam is nice and smooth so I didn't expect 5A48 to be stalling out much.

We were on our way.

Within a minute into the ride I could see by the way these two guys were sitting closely together that they were gay and by the way they were talking softly to each other that they were not conversational as far as the driver was concerned. This was fine with me as I was rather exhausted and not in the mood to be chatty anyway. So I turned the radio to the smooth jazz station and headed for 10th, where I turned right and headed uptown.

All was well on 10th Avenue until we got to 51st Street. At that point we hit a delay because there had been a serious accident, with an overturned car, and the police had closed the avenue and were diverting traffic onto 51st toward 11th Avenue. I explained what was happening to the passengers, who didn't acknowledge what I'd said. What it meant was that we were going to have to circle the block and wind up back at 10th Avenue on 52nd Street. The delay took about five minutes.

As I got rolling again on 10th Avenue, the voice of the black guy piped up from the back seat. "Why didn't you take the highway?" he asked. This was not a friendly question. His voice had an edge to it.

I could have taken 11th Avenue up to 57th Street, gotten on the highway that runs along the west side of Manhattan, and exited at 125th Street. It would indeed have been faster, although it wouldn't have been any cheaper because the distance is slightly longer and we would have no waiting time on Amsterdam. So I told him the truth.

"This cab has been stalling out on me all night whenever I hit a bump," I explained. "I didn't want to take the chance of it stalling out on the highway."

My explanation was met with a distinctly stony silence - there was a lingering feeling of distrust and resentment in the air. But I was tired and chose to ignore it. We continued up Amsterdam with no further communication between us until we arrived at their 125th Street destination, about ten minutes later.

The fare was $17 even. The white guy exited first and started to walk across 125th, a wide, two-way street with four lanes. Apparently their place was on the opposite side of the street. The black guy stayed behind and handed me the fare, with no tip, through the partition window.

Not getting a tip was no big deal. Obviously the guy was not totally happy about the ride and not tipping is a customer's prerogative. I was ready to drive off, but before he closed the door, my passenger decided to have some words with me.

"The next time somebody runs off without paying," he said, "that will make it even for this ride."

It was clearly an insult. The guy was saying I had ripped him off and lied to him about the reason for not taking the highway and that, no sir, you could fool some of those suckers but you sure as hell couldn't fool him. And not only that, he had appointed himself the ombudsman for all the inner city kids who run off without paying the fare.

It was a comment that was totally mean-spirited and had a racial undertone to it. Plus, he was totally wrong. In a more perfect world, I might have calmly attempted to handle his considerations or just shrugged my shoulders and driven off. Instead, I resorted to sarcasm.

"So you feel that you paid too much," I replied, my own mocking tone implying that his comment was idiotic and that he was a moron. "And that's the justification for ripping off cab drivers. Did I get that right?"

The guy at this point was standing on the street but had not yet closed the door. His response to my sarcasm was to open the door a bit wider, lean into the compartment, and send a ball of spit straight through the partition window and into my face. He then began nonchalantly walking across 125th Street without having closed the door.

I was, of course, outraged and humiliated. This piece of dog doo had insulted me and now had assaulted me. Nevertheless, my reaction was immediate. I wiped his spit off my face with one of the napkins I always have handy behind the visor, and then did something he hadn't anticipated when he decided to launch his saliva missle at my head. I swung the taxi around in a U-turn and suddenly was in position to run him the fuck over as he crossed the street.

And that was the manslaughter moment.

It's that briefest little speck of time in which you either cross over the line or you do not. Most of us do not. And most of those who do spend the rest of their lives wishing they could take that moment back, as is likely the case with the man who ran over Mohammed Elwaleed.

As for me, I swerved close enough to the jerk to let him know I could have killed him if I wanted to, and shouted out a word at him to indicate that he bore a resemblance to the part of the digestive system that is responsible for expelling waste products from the body.

By the time I got back to the garage my anger had pretty much subsided and I felt grateful that I had been given the ability not to act on impulses.

Perhaps God does love me.

Or perhaps He can barely tolerate me and that's why he made me a taxi driver in the first place.

There is still one place where it is perfectly acceptable to act on impulse, by the way. And that is to click here for Pictures From A Taxi.