The Car On East 86th Street

You may have heard that we had a blizzard in New York City on December 26th. They say it was in the vicinity of 20 inches and was the 6th largest snowstorm ever recorded here, but I don't know if it was really that big. It was certainly a huge storm, but men in general and weathermen in particular tend to exaggerate when it comes to inches.

In any case, the story here wasn't so much the storm itself as it was the failure of those in charge to clean it up. In New York the snow removal is done by the Sanitation Department. The army of sanitation workers, who are normally removing trash, become the people plowing and salting the streets. It's a highly organized, military-style operation when it's done correctly. The city streets are designated primary, secondary, and tertiary in importance and are attacked in that order. In Manhattan, this means the highways, avenues, and major cross-town streets are cleared first.

Taxi drivers need to be extremely aware of predictions of snowstorms, as the potential for disaster is everywhere even in relatively minor events. Unfortunately, most of us learn this the hard way. I was initiated by ice myself one night in 1981. We were in the beginning of a medium-sized storm and I was driving a Checker cab which had a two-way radio in it for business purposes (no longer allowed in yellow cabs). A call for a lucrative out-of-town ride kept coming through and no one would take it. Eventually the dispatcher was sounding desperate and I hesitatingly agreed to do the job, taking an executive from "Black Rock", the CBS headquarters on 6th Avenue, to his home in Darien, Connecticut. Although the snow was steadily falling, I had no problem getting the fellow to his residence. But a couple of minutes after dropping him off I skidded into a snow drift as I came down a hill and got completely stuck there. The Checkers (like the Ford Crown Victorias we drive today) had rear-wheel drive and thus had terrible traction in the snow. These were the days before cell phones, of course, and I was on a back road at midnight with no civilization in sight, so I was truly stuck and quite upset with Checkers, the weather, God, and especially myself for having taken the job against my better judgement in the first place. Luckily, a couple of very nice people in a four-wheel drive Jeep eventually came along and towed me out of there, even tagging along behind me to make sure I made it back to the highway safely. Lesson learned, and here it is. (New York taxi drivers, take note.)

1. If possible, don't drive at all during a real snow storm (more than three inches). Your chances of having an accident are enormously greater than normal and you won't make decent money, anyway, because the weather will slow you down to less than half speed and there isn't much business on the streets. People tend to stay indoors while the snow is coming down.

2. Wait a few hours until after the snow has stopped falling before venturing out. If the Sanitation Department is on the ball, the primary roads will be plowed and salted by that time.

3. For 24 hours after a major storm, ride with your "off-duty" light on and your doors locked. Ascertain that a passenger isn't leaving Manhattan before you allow him into your cab. The reason for this is that however bad the secondary and tertiary streets may be in Manhattan, they're much, much worse in the outer boroughs. Plus it will take you forever to get back to Manhattan (without a passenger) if you make it back at all.

4. Use the avenues and major cross-town streets as much as possible while driving in Manhattan. If a passenger's destination is on a street that hasn't been properly plowed, ask if it would be all right if you could drop them off on the corner (unless the passenger is disabled in any way).

Following my own rules, I called my garage when the storm was just beginning and told the dispatcher I would not be coming in, even though it was a Sunday, normally one of my driving days. He said that was okay, a fortunate response because the owner of the garage (my boss) might have instructed him to tell any driver who didn't come in that he'd have to pay for the shift even if he didn't work it. That's the way it's been since the recession started in '08 and garages have been overflowing with drivers, some of whom are turned away because there are no cabs for them. This surplus of drivers is a new thing in New York, by the way. In all my years in this business, there had never been a time when there were enough drivers for all the cabs. Until now.

Anyway, I agreed to drive the Monday night shift. It was seemingly a good strategy because the snow, as predicted, stopped falling on Monday morning and that gave the Sanitation Department over six hours to salt and plow the primary streets before my shift would begin at 5:00. That should be enough time, right?

Wrong!

I was alarmed when emerging from the subway to see major Manhattan avenues unsalted and snow-covered - not good! Walking a few blocks to my garage, I stared in astonished dismay at a bus that had been abandoned and was left completely blocking an intersection. It was an eerie sight I had never seen before and looked more like post-disaster than post-snowstorm.

I entered my garage where employees were coping with the chaos that blizzards create in the taxi world. I was given the keys to a cab and told it was "ready to go", meaning it wasn't stuck in a snow drift. An hour later, after clearing the cab and freeing it from the drift it wasn't in, I pulled out into the slippery night, wondering if what I'd seen between the subway stop and my garage had been an aberration.

It had not been. Manhattan was a mess. The avenues and major cross-town streets such as Houston and Canal had been plowed perhaps once before the snow had stopped falling and then were newly covered with a few more inches, enough to keep the top speed of vehicles at around ten miles per hour. Even Times Square was a slippery adventure at 8 p.m. And that's how things remained throughout the night. It wasn't until 2 a.m. that I finally saw some salters and plows on a few of the avenues. And the abandoned bus that I'd seen on my way to the garage was not alone - I encountered at least half a dozen more during the course of my shift.

As the night wore on, veterans of New York snowstorms such as myself and many of my passengers realized something was amiss and we began speculating through our anger as to what the hell was going on. This storm had not been a surprise. It had been forecast accurately more than a day before it arrived. Where was the Sanitation Department? Suspicion began to grow that this may not have been merely incompetence but may have been a union tactic against management - the conspiracy theory! The mayor, who is still trying to master the art of speaking from both sides of his mouth, at first was making excuses, saying that we'd "never seen a storm like this". (Oh, really? I have.) Then, noticing the rising tide of outrage, he started putting heads on pikes. Investigations have since been initiated by the City Council and even prosecutors, so we may someday get to the bottom of it.

But be that as it may, I realized in retrospect that, like many inconveniences and minor disasters, something of value had been inadvertently created by the mess. It was something I'd seen during the night but which took me until the next day to comprehend that it potentially had the stuff of legend about it. Something symbolic. Something that could stand as a metaphor for the angst of urban living.

It was the car on East 86th Street.

At 10 p.m. I picked up a woman at 86th and Amsterdam on the Upper West Side who wanted to go straight across the Central Park transverse to 91st Street and 1st Avenue on the Upper East Side. Our route would take us all the way across town on 86th, a major, four-lane cross-street that runs in both directions (in other words, it's not one-way, like most streets in Manhattan). It was this woman who told me about "the car". Apparently this vehicle had achieved instant infamy in the neighborhood.

She said that not too long after the snow had started coming down heavily during the previous night, at around 7 p.m., a car had been abandoned right in the middle of 86th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues. Not double-parked. Not pushed off to the side. Just sitting there in the middle of 86th Street. She, like I, had seen many big snowstorms in New York City, but she could not recall ever seeing a car just sitting there in the middle of a major crosstown street. Neither could I.

She went on to tell me that earlier in the evening she had taken a bus across town to the West Side, where I'd picked her up. The route of this bus went along 86th Street, but had encountered a problem in transit. It couldn't make its way around this abandoned car - which was still there eight hours after the snow had stopped falling - nor could any of the other buses on the 86th Street route.

Solution? Take a detour. All day long and into the night the buses that normally go straight across 86th had instead been making a left turn onto 2nd Avenue, going down to 79th Street (the next major cross-street), and then coming back uptown to 86th on 3rd Avenue in order to avoid "the car".

Slip-sliding along 86th Street, we wondered when we got over to the East Side if "the car" would still be there between 2nd and 3rd Avenues. Actually I was hoping it would be, as I wanted to witness the spectacle for myself.

It was!

We had a mutual lamentation about the absurdity of it. How many individuals and city agencies had dropped the ball here? First, of course, the person who had walked away from his own car and had not come back to get it out of there, even many hours after the snow had stopped falling. Second, the people in the area who assumingly could have at least helped him push the car off to the side. Third, whatever towing service the owner of the car could not get help from. Fourth, the Traffic Department which normally will tow your car away if it is twenty seconds beyond the time posted on the "no parking" sign. Fifth, the Police Department, which has tow trucks of its own. And sixth, the Transit Authority which we can assume was too busy trying to get their own buses out of the snow to do anything about a car that was blocking one of its routes.

There was, however, one city agency which had not dropped the ball.

The Sanitation Department.

For surrounding "the car" on both sides were piles of snow which had been deposited there by the plows attached to city garbage trucks, thus creating an impassable island in the middle of 86th Street.

You've gotta love irony.

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And you've gotta love Pictures From A Taxi, too! Click here.

My Cab Runneth Over

Sometimes during the course of a shift a taxi driver may notice that events of the night seem to be taking on the form of a theme. Let's say, for example, that you get three drunks on three separate rides and they all have red hair. You would think of that shift as the "Night of the Red-Headed Drunks". Or you get not one, but two passengers who offer you a big tip if you'll allow them to continue smoking their cigars in the cab and then two more who just light up cigarettes without even asking if it's okay. That shift would live in your memory as "A Smokey Night in New York City".

I had a shift last Tuesday that had a theme of its own. It was all about fluidity. Not the figurative kind. The literal kind. Of the three forms of matter - solids, liquids, and gases - the one that gives taxi drivers the most trouble by far is liquids. Gases aren't too great either but they can't compare to the misery caused by liquids that are out of control. Any cab driver reading this will immediately think of some outrageous incident involving a liquid that wasn't in the place where that liquid should have been. It happens to everyone who drives a cab.

The precursor to my evening was the weather itself. It was the kind of night that writers think of when they write, "It was a dark and stormy night..." Well, it was a dark and stormy night. Actually, come to think of it, every night is a dark night or it wouldn't be a night, would it? But I digress. This one was dark and stormy. The rain was cold, just a few degrees above the freezing mark, and it was a steady, unrelenting kind of rain, the kind that, if you weren't careful, could make you start thinking about how miserable not only the weather is, but how miserable existence itself is. It was that kind of rain.

So the stage was set. The first sign of trouble was at 7:11 when a young lady got in at 64th and Park, headed for Suffolk and Rivington in the Lower East Side. "Take the FDR," she said, and then settled back in her seat with her cell phone glued to her ear. The FDR (named for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd president of the United States) is the highway that runs along the east side of Manhattan and is the fastest way downtown, so I had no problem with her route. It was her next comment that gave me pause.

"I'm feeling nauseous," she suddenly announced out of nowhere. I wasn't sure if she was directing her origination to me or to the person on her cell phone, but it was said loud enough for me to hear it and when I hear the word "nauseous" it gets my FULL ATTENTION. It's like telling your dog that it's meal time. The ears go straight up.

I stopped at a red light at 64th and 2nd a moment later and turned completely around in my seat to take a good look at her. She seemed all right. "You're feeling nauseous?" I inquired. "Oh, don't worry," she replied rather pleasantly, "if I'm going to throw up I'll get out of the cab first. But I'll be okay."

That was troubling. The problem was that I would be on the FDR in about a minute and on that highway there are no shoulders, thus no place to pull over. So I had to make a quick decision. Either she was a good or a bad vomit risk. If she was bad, I'd have to insist on staying off the FDR and sticking to the streets. If good, we would proceed as planned. I put her through a mental filter. She showed no signs of being drunk - that was good. She didn't have any signs of being sick - that was good. And she was conversing cheerfully with whomever was on the phone with her. Good again. I decided to get on the highway.

Now, since this is a post about misbehaving liquids, you're probably thinking that was a big mistake and she barfed in the cab. But, no! My judgement was good and we made it down to Suffolk and Rivington without further ado. It turned out this fare was just an incident in a theme.

The night went on. The rain continued and continued, only letting up for brief moments before resuming its assault. One passenger commented that "at least it isn't snow", but I informed him that snow was in the forecast for the next day. A gloom had set in, an ominous feeling that we were in the hands of a deity who was out to get us for something we must have done but could not remember what. It was a feeling that was exacerbated within me by the behavior of a 30-something male who got in the cab at Church and Vesey at 9:45 and wanted to go to the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn.

I went up Church and made a right on Canal, heading for the Manhattan Bridge. We stopped for a red at the corner of Lafayette and then, without warning, he told me to pull over.

"I have to piss," he proclaimed, as if this was something that happens all the time in the course of a taxi ride.

A sense of urgency set in. A pisser isn't as alarming as a puker, but it's alarming enough and I didn't have a read on this guy. Was he about to pee in his pants, and thus on the floorboard? That could be almost as bad as vomit. There was a garbage truck on my right that was blocking me from being able to get over to the curb and I told him to hold on until the truck moved. But he didn't hold on. He opened his door and went directly to a newsstand that was closed up for the night and took aim.

Meanwhile, the light turned green, the garbage truck moved out of the way, and I had a few moments for reflection while I waited for my passenger to finish making his contribution to the evening's rainfall. I realized this was only the fifth time in 32 years of cab driving that someone had gotten out in the middle of a ride to take a piss. (Yes, I've counted them.) So he'd entered an elite group. But beyond that, I considered the possibility that some kind of karma was at work here. All this rain, then there was the girl, and now this guy with his bladder. If I indeed was being toyed with by Fate, would Fate be kind? Or would I be washed away as if I were a metaphor in Somebody's parable?

The night went on. I brought my passenger to his building on Taaffe Place and headed back to the city. The rain just kept coming down and a wind had picked up that was really blowing things around, making garbage bags fly across the avenues like some kind of urban tumbleweed. But hours went by and the rhythmic counting of my windshield wipers finally had me forgetting about the possibility of a confrontation with a liquid destiny.

Perhaps it was this complacency that made me a target for a passenger who got in at 12:40 at 21st and 7th and was heading down to Varick and Broome. He was a middle-aged gentleman carrying a huge, flat object wrapped in a huge plastic covering, presumably to protect it from the rain. He placed the object carefully across the back seat and then slid in next to it. Of course, I was curious about what it was, so I asked him about this thing resting beside him on the seat.

He told me it was a sign. It turned out he was a sign maker by trade and the sign he was carrying was going to be displayed on the front of a store but first he needed to bring it back to his studio for some final touches. He was a friendly person and, since I was interested to learn about his craft, a lively conversation ensued. He told me he'd been doing it for ten years, that business was always good since there were only three other sign makers in that part of the city, that his business was recession-proof, and that he wished he'd started doing it long before he did, instead of wasting his time at his previous occupation, a building superintendent. Now he was his own boss and was making great money doing something he really enjoyed. And it was also in harmony with his talent as a fine artist - he was a painter.

He went on to tell me about a project he hopes to be commissioned to do by the city. Sixth Avenue, when it was renamed "Avenue of the Americas" many years ago, used to have circular renditions of the coats of arms of all the countries in North, South, and Central America displayed beneath street lamps all the way from Tribeca up to Central Park. Most of them are now gone and the few that remain are in very poor condition. He told me he wants to be the one to restore these heraldic devices. And, he confided, he has a friend who knows Mayor Bloomberg personally, so he thinks he may have an insider's shot at landing the job.

Well, the guy struck me as being a genuine craftsman, a master of his trade, and a relatively fulfilled human being. It was a pleasure to talk with him and I felt a good rapport as he paid me the fare. He opened the door, took one step out into the rain, and then he blurted out two ominous-sounding words:

"Oh, shit."

"What's the matter?"

"Uh, the paint spilled."

This didn't compute. Paint spilled? What paint? How could paint spill? I didn't know what he was he talking about.

"What do you mean?"

"I had a can of paint in the bottom of my bag. It must have fallen out of the bag while we were talking."

"What??? You mean you spilled paint in the cab?"

"Uh, yeah. Sorry."

I jumped out into the rain and looked in the rear. A puddle of white paint covered the right rear floorboard area and there were splatterings on the hump and on the left door panel as well. It was a disaster.

"Do you have any paper towels?" he asked.

"Not enough to clean up that mess!" I said. "Oh my god, is that stuff oil-based?" I cried out in desperation. If it was, I knew that no one could ever get it out and that a) my night was over, b) the entire vinyl floorboard covering would have to be replaced, and c) if this guy didn't pay for it, I would wind up with the bill from the taxi garage. It was enough to make vomit look like a good thing.

"No, it's acrylic. I can get it out with soap and water."

"Thank god!"

And with that, my passenger told me he was going to go down Broome Street to his studio and that he'd come back with soap and towels. He then took off in the rain, taking his sign in its plastic bag with him.

It was a moment of truth. I wasn't sure if he'd return at all and had to make an instant decision - should I insist on accompanying him to his place to make sure he didn't run off on me? Or should I let him go without a word of protest? I decided to trust him, based on my impression of him as being an honest person.

Well, it's nice to be right about someone's character - in two minutes he was back with a couple of towels and a bottle of Fantastic cleaner. Fifteen minutes later, the mess was pretty much gone. I complimented him for taking responsibility for what he'd done and we shook hands.

I was back in business, although the time I'd spent standing out in the rain watching him clean up left me close to soaking wet. But that was as it should have been, considering the theme of the evening:

My Cab Runneth Over.

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Now, if you're ever feeling washed away yourself, here's a little life preserver for you: just click here for Pictures From A Taxi.