Welcome, New Inductees

It takes something really special to make it into the Traffic Jam Hall of Fame. In fact, since its inception in 2007, there has been not a single addition to its ranks. So imagine my astonishment when last week not one, but two candidates showed that they had what it takes to achieve traffic jam immortality and were immediately nominated for admission into the sanctum sanctorum of the Hall. Two in one week!

In New York City traffic jams are a way of life. Veteran New Yorkers have been known to laugh in the face of out-of-towners who think they know anything about what a traffic jam really is. You got stuck on the interstate for fifteen minutes on your way to the mall? Whaddaya kiddin' me? It took me an hour and a half to get from 31st and 2nd to 58th and 9th! And that was on a Sunday!

As common as it is, however, to be trapped in the misery of going nowhere forever, it is not the length of time of the jam up that earns even consideration for admittance into the Hall. Roadwork, an accident, bridge or tunnel delays? No, these are routine. It has to be much more than that. Indeed, it has to be something so outrageous, so unexpected, so never-seen-that-before that one considers writing a letter of recommendation to the Committee.

So I'm happy to report that my two nominees were put on the fast track and, after a late-night session, have been granted admission by the Powers That Be. I present them to you now... trumpets and drums, if you please... our newest members of the Traffic Jam Hall of Fame!

57th and 5th

I was waiting in front of the Apple Store on 5th Avene between 58th and 59th Streets at one a.m. on November 12th, hoping to get a computer geek (or anyone else for that matter) as my next passenger. In true New York style, this store is open 24/7 and has turned out to be a spot where a cabbie can find some business all night long. Sure enough, within five minutes four nerdy type fellows jumped in and asked me to take them to Grand Central Station, a three-minute ride.

I pulled out from the curb to the intersection at 58th Street where the light had just turned red and while we were waiting there I was informed by the guy sitting next to me in the front that they had ten minutes to make their train. Plenty of time, I told him, but to add a bit of tension to the ride he explained that if they didn't make this particular train the next one wouldn't be leaving the station until 6 a.m. Still, I told him, there was nothing to worry about. After all, it was one in the morning and, as we could both plainly see, 5th Avenue was empty in front of us. So relax, I said, there's never any traffic at this time of the night.

Right?

There are those who believe you must never say things like that. It's called "tempting fate". There's some kind of Force, you see - call it Fate, God, Zeus, or Google - that overhears everything we say and then, just for sport, starts fucking with us. I should have kept my mouth shut.

The words had barely left my lips when a police car with lights flashing entered the intersection a block down the avenue at 57th Street and just stopped there. This was followed by two more cruisers, lights also ablaze, who did the same. A big cop wearing those knee-high black boots of the Highway Patrol (and the Gestapo) jumped out of one of the vehicles and held his hands over his head, bringing the cars on 57th Street to a halt. A few moments later our own light on 58th turned green and we moved up to 57th where we were greeted by a second cop, also with his hands in the "stop" position.

It looked to me like some V.I.P. motorcade was about to come on through. Perhaps a prime minister from Somewhere Special or a Secretary of State or something. Government big shots who are considered security risks do get this kind of treatment in New York. But at one a.m.? Odd, but possible.

"Probably someone much more important than you or me," I said to my front seat companion with a trace of sarcasm in my voice. I understand the need for security, I guess, but it does interfere with my making a living. You wonder if it's really necessary.

"Do you think it will be long?" he asked, a bit of concern apparent in the tone of his own voice. The sure thing of making the train was appearing to be not such a sure thing anymore.

"Nah, don't worry," I replied. "I'm sure they'll be out of here in no time at all."

Well, "no time at all" becomes magnified when every minute counts. In what was becoming forever, our light at 57th turned red. The cops remained in the intersection and nothing happened. Another thirty seconds ticked by. The light turned green. The cops just stood there, looking down the street. With tension mounting, there was finally activity to our right on 57th Street. Another couple of police cruisers appeared in the intersection and made right turns onto 5th Avenue. And then, at last, we were able to see what the cause of the delay had been.

It was a tree.

Yes, the enormous tree that had been chosen to be the star of the show in Rockefeller Center this Christmas season was making its final leg of a trek from a town in Pennsylvania to its new home in Midtown, New York City. A future of being oohed and ahhed at by millions of tourists lay before it. So why not kick things off with a little traffic jam in the middle of the night on November 12th, just to get things off on the right foot?

Flanked by a couple of those cars with "oversized vehicle" warning signs attached to them, the tree made a right turn onto 5th Avenue and proceeded at five miles per hour toward Rockefeller Center at 50th Street. The cops kept us sitting there at 57th for another minute before finally clearing out of the intersection and joining their caravan a couple of blocks down the road.

What had started as a routine little ride to Grand Central Station had now entered crisis management mode. With only five minutes left to make the train, my passengers, who up to now had seemed relatively unconcerned, had become silent and tense. Visions of five hours of camping out in the station were creeping in on them. I put on my Racing Driver hat.

Zipping down to 54th Street, I made a quick decision to take a detour to Park Avenue in order to avoid further delays by the Great Tree Procession in front of us on 5th. With some extra speed and a cautious running of a red light, I got them to Grand Central with three minutes remaining on the clock. After a quick payment of the fare and a thank you, my passengers bolted out of the cab and headed for the entrance to the station, four nerds doing the hundred-yard dash with what should have been just enough time to catch the train.


Now, in my day I've weathered some of the greatest traffic jams in the history of New York City. I've been filibustered by several presidents of the United States. I've been blockaded by Fidel Castro, held hostage by Ahmadinijad. I've been rendered into collateral damage by a Mafia hit in Midtown. I've been stopped in my tracks by the camels, elephants, and zebras of the Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus. And now I've been humbled into submission by something that's not even a member of the animal kingdom.

But it is a member of the Traffic Jam Hall of Fame.

The Entire East Side

My favorite shift of the week is the Sunday night shift. Even though it's usually quite slow after midnight, the passengers on Sundays tend to be friendlier and certainly more sober than any of the other nights of the week. And with a little luck you might get an airport ride early in the shift, say, between 5 and 7 pm - the time when there are tons of flights coming in - and that means a quick turnaround with a new fare, hopefully back to Manhattan. And that means good money. Cha-ching!

And so I was quite pleased to pick up, as my first fare of the night on Sunday, November 13th, two people who were LaGuardia bound. After putting their luggage in the trunk, we had a brief conference to reach agreement on the best route to take. Should it be the Queens-Midtown Tunnel (a $4.80 toll and all highway on the Queens side), the Triboro Bridge (longer, less chance of traffic, also a $4.80 toll, and all highway after the bridge), or the 59th Street Bridge (free, and closest to us from where we were located on 46th Street and 10th Avenue)? Since they said their flight was to leave at 7:00 and it was then 5:00 (plenty of time), the choice was obvious: the 59th Street Bridge. I made a right on 56th and we were on our way.

My passengers were a young, married couple from Sweden who, they said, were living and working in Dublin. They were both cheerful and the fellow was particularly conversational, telling me that part of the reason for their trip to New York was for a surprise reunion with his sister, who lives in California and was in New York herself for the weekend to celebrate her thirtieth birthday. His wife was pleasant, as well, although not as chatty as her husband. She struck me as the more practical of the two, showing some concern about any potential traffic problems that could lie ahead of us. I set her mind at ease by saying that they had wisely left more than enough time to get to LaGuardia, which is normally a twenty-five minute trip, but added that, of course, you never could know for sure what might happen with the traffic in New York City.

"Don't worry, though," I reassured her, while showing my age, "you'll be at LaGuardia so early you'll be playing Ms. PacMan for an hour just to pass the time."

Remember what I said about tempting fate? You would have thought from the previous night's debacle that I would have learned to keep my mouth shut.

We proceeded at a decent pace on 56th Street until we got to Lexington Avenue, two and a half "avenue blocks" from the bridge (in the New York street grid the distance between the avenues is considerably longer than the distance between the streets) and then we hit a wall. The trained eye (mine) can very quickly ascertain the degree of severity of traffic jams in the city and I knew immediately that something was amiss here. Not only was the traffic backed up all the way to the next avenue, 3rd, but it was solid, meaning it was moving forward at a pace of only three of four car lengths for each change of the light. It took us five minutes to get close enough to 3rd Avenue for me to see that the problem on our street was due to massive gridlock in the intersection - our backup on 56th was being caused by an even bigger backup on 3rd Avenue. And this translated to me instantly that there was huge - huge! - traffic on the bridge itself.

My passengers had remained calm and cheerful. Time was on their side and a five-minute delay on the crowded 56th Street wasn't enough to raise an eyebrow. But in my mind a little alarm clock was ringing. Something was wrong here - you just never see this kind of traffic at this particular place and at this particular time - but I couldn't imagine what it could be. However, I did know the 59th Street Bridge was no longer an option.

"Listen," I announced, "Something's really bad on the bridge. I'm gonna take the Midtown Tunnel. I know it's $4.80 more for the toll, but it's the best thing to do with this kind of traffic. God knows how long we might be sitting in it."

They were fine with it. So when it was finally my turn to zigzag around the cars jamming up the intersection, I went straight on 56th toward 2nd Avenue instead of making the left onto 3rd, which had been my original intention. 56th was relatively clear on that block, and that was a good thing, but when we reached 2nd Avenue I saw that our traffic problems were not only behind us, but ahead of us as well: 2nd Avenue, which should have been free-flowing, was also a solid wall of barely moving vehicles.

So now we were stuck in whatever it was. The entrance to the Midtown Tunnel is at 2nd Avenue and 36th Street, exactly one mile from where we were. To get to the third possible route, the Triboro Bridge, would mean circling back in the direction of the 59th Street Bridge traffic. I decided our best bet was to just stick with 2nd Avenue, even though it was a river of brake lights as far as the eye could see.

We plunged into it.

Well, the conversation quickly changed from how a couple of Swedes wound up in Dublin to, gee, do you think we're going to make our plane? I told them they probably had enough time to walk to LaGuardia and still make the plane but secretly, since I had no idea what was causing this mess, I was wondering the same thing. For the next ten minutes we moved so slowly on 2nd Avenue - not even one block for each change of the light - that the possibility of missing the flight was becoming less and less remote.

More than anything, though, I was dying of curiosity to know what was causing the problem. It had to be something huge. An accident? No, couldn't be, accidents only tie up traffic for just a few blocks. A fire? No, fires cause only small delays and detours, never anything like this. I decided it had to be a disaster - something like a plane crash, a building collapse, or a terrorist attack. Yeah, it had to be on that order of magnitude. I turned the radio on to the news station and within a couple of minutes I had my answer...

...the Upper Level of the 59th Street Bridge was closed in both directions.

Yes, it immediately fit. That would do it. The 59th Street Bridge is the busiest passageway in New York City. It takes, by far, more vehicular traffic than any other bridge or tunnel. Close down half of it and you have an automatic traffic disaster. It explained both slowdowns: the gridlock on 3rd Avenue was from cars trying to get onto the bridge; the inch-by-inch on 2nd Avenue were the cars doing what we were trying to do - get away from the bridge and get to the Midtown Tunnel instead.

So the mystery was solved, except for one thing: why? Why in the world would they do such a thing? It had to be an incident of cataclysmic proportions.

Now I will tell you why it happened, but before I do, let me remind you that it is not merely the size of the traffic nightmare that earns one consideration for entrance into the Hall. It has to be something special, something that makes it a champion. It's like professional athletes. Sure, you have to be damned good to even make it to the pros, but we don't place laurels on the heads of the average players. We bestow immortality only on those who have proven to be the best of the best. And so it is with the Traffic Jam Hall of Fame.

So without further ado, here it is. Here is why the entire East Side of Manhattan was brought to a standstill for the entire afternoon (as I later found out): they were filming a scene from the latest Batman movie!

Yes, a movie company paid, I assume, a large amount of money to get permission from certain city officials who, in the "let them eat cake" style of our current mayor, chose to close down our most traveled bridge for several hours in the middle of the day. How many hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people suffered for this? How many lost an hour out of their day? How many missed the first act of the Broadway show they were trying to get to? How many missed their train? How many missed their plane?

Fortunately my own passengers did make it to LaGuardia before their flight left without them. But not before it took them forty-five minutes to travel one mile on 2nd Avenue in a taxicab which cost them an extra $17 in waiting time and another $4.80 for a toll they shouldn't have had to pay.

As outraged as I am about this latest concession to materialism (our bridges are now for lease), it would be unfair to take it out on the jam itself. Just as certain athletes who were known for being antisocial sons of bitches off the field are nevertheless honored for their achievements on the field, proper acknowledgement must not be denied when it has been earned, regardless of how the damned thing was brought into the world.

And so, in the spirit of fair play, I now open wide the portals to our newest member. Welcome, The Batman Jam, to the Traffic Jam Hall of Fame!

********

And I welcome you to click here for Pictures From A Taxi.

"Make The Light"

Among the many annoyances in the game of taxi driving is the rare passenger who has the nerve to tell you how to drive. Not where to drive or what route to take, and not even how not to drive ("please don't drive so fast, I'm feeling nauseous"), but how to drive.

Examples:

"Change lanes."

"Get ahead of that bus."

"Go!"

And my favorite: "Make the light!"

Let us consider for a moment the implications involved in making such a statement. It is as if to say:

"Not only do I not regard you as a professional who knows how to do his job, I think I'm better at it than you are, so do what I tell you."

Or, to put it more bluntly:

"You're an idiot. I'm smart. Obey me."

A couple of years ago I was going down 11th Avenue with a passenger in that back seat when we hit a bit of heavy traffic and he abruptly commanded, "Get in the left lane!" Never letting a comment like that go by, I made eye contact with him in the mirror and said, Robert de Niro-style, "Are you talking to me?" And then, not waiting for a reply, "You must be talking to someone else, because no one talks to me like that!" He immediately changed his attitude and we had a relatively pleasant ride across 23rd Street to his destination at 6th Avenue.

It's a good feeling when little mutinies like that are squelched and you can regain the captaincy of your ship. Your dignity is restored and life seems to be worth living again. Which leads me to the latest incident on this chain...

I was cruising on West 63rd Street a little after 6 p.m. a few weeks ago when I was hailed by a doorman on the block between Central Park West and Broadway. He opened the door and in came a 60ish woman in a rush to get to 65th and Amsterdam, a short ride. About fifty yards in front of us was a green traffic light and she barked out those words:

"Make the light!"

I bristled internally and continued driving at my normal speed. Now, there seems to be a Force that decrees that whenever a passenger says, "Make the light!" the light you've been ordered to make will turn yellow just as you're approaching the intersection and you will have a moment of truth to decide whether to speed up and maybe go through a red, or to play it safe and hit the brake.

Right on cue, the Force did its thing and the light turned yellow.

I had my moment of truth, and...

I hit the brake.

My passenger was very displeased. She grunted an "ugh" and barked, "You could have made it," with a scowl on her face that was so pronounced that it was clear that from her point of view stopping for the red light wasn't merely an error, it was a crime.

So the scene was set for conflict. My professionalism had been assaulted, and there would be a response. But rather than turning around and giving her a lecture about safe driving, fines, and suspended licenses, I tried to reason with her. First, I pointed out the layout of the intersection in front of us.

Broadway, as its name implies, is a wide road with an median of greenery separating two directions of traffic, so the width of the intersection has to be considered before crossing it at a yellow light. Following Broadway, a mere fifty more yards away, is the next intersection, 63rd and Columbus Avenue. Having driven through these intersections perhaps a hundred thousand times in the last 32 years, I am quite familiar with the timing of the lights there and I knew that even if we'd made the yellow light at Broadway at the last second, we certainly would not have made the next light at Columbus. However, when the light turns from red to green at Broadway and you drive straight ahead, you will always get a green at Columbus, too. So there was no reason to speed up to "make the light" at Broadway in the first place.

My passenger's response to this perfectly rational and accurate dissertation was to snap back, "We won't make the light at Columbus". It was a direct contradiction to what I'd just said.

"Yes, we will," I replied.

"No, we won't," she returned, as if we were having a verbal tennis match.

The thought occurred to me that here was a situation where I could win a bet. I could say, "Oh, really, if you're so sure of that let's make it double the meter or nothing." I could add a few extra doubloons to my coffers with this ride and, better than that, I could humble this old crab and put her in her place. But I decided not to stoop to that level. It would be like taking candy from a baby. Better than that, I thought, would be to offer her a deal in which she couldn't lose, except if losing meant that she'd have to shut up and eat crow.

I said these words:

"Tell you what, if we don't make the light on Columbus, this is a free ride."

The success of my strategy was immediate. She did shut up, her demeanor changing instantly into an interested facial expression that said, "Well... okay...". The eating crow part would come in just a bit.

In a few more moments, our light at 63rd and Broadway turned green. The light ahead of us at Columbus, the light I had to make, was already green, as I knew it would be. With just fifty yards between these two lights, it was impossible not to make that Columbus light.

My foot pressed down on the accelerator.

You know, there's a military truism that in combat operations, nothing ever goes according to plan. Apparently the same thing is true in taxi driving. For just as I drove through the Broadway intersection, not one, not two, but three cabs suddenly appeared in front of me and stopped to discharge passengers at the Empire Hotel, the only building on the tiny block. These taxis didn't pull over to the side. No, they just stopped in the middle of the street, making it impossible to get around them.

Precious seconds ticked by. A couple of beeps from my puny horn did nothing to move them. The light at Columbus turned yellow. The light at Columbus turned red. And I found myself in the midst of my latest humiliation, a knife in one hand, a fork in the other, and a crow on a platter in front of me.

I tried taking it like a good sport, laughing out loud, and not trying to wiggle out of the noose I'd created for myself by using the cabs blocking the street as an excuse. "Well," I said, "a deal's a deal. This is a free ride."

Of course, what I was hoping she would say was what any fair-minded person would say - that it was all right, that she wouldn't hold me to my offer. But instead, what she said was, "Well, I'll give you a good tip." In other words, "Thanks for the free ride, sucker."

My only solace was that my misery would be brief. 63rd Street runs into Lincoln Center at Columbus, so we had to make a left turn, go down to 62nd Street, make a right, and then drive over to the next avenue, Amsterdam, make another right, and finally go just three blocks to her destination, the Lincoln Center Library, at 65th Street. As it turned out, the reason she was in a rush was because she works in the library and was running late for the evening shift.

In the few remaining minutes of our ride, which seemed like an hour to me, she did an attitude reversal. No longer was she an ill-mannered cow in a china shop, stomping over anything in her way because she was late for work. Her getting something for free had trumped her bitch card, and she became a chatty human being sitting in the back seat. But I even found her attempt to be sociable offensive when she asked me this famous, left-handed question:

"So what else do you do besides drive a cab?"

I am asked this occasionally, and when it happens I usually look at it as a cast-not-your-pearls-before-swine situation. The person who asks it is telling you that the job you are doing is considered by him to be beneath his standard of what a respectable job should be - would he ask a teacher what else does he do besides teach? - and what I normally say is, "This is it, I drive a cab." And then give him a little speech about the good things of taxi driving - freedom, adventure, the whole human race sitting in your back seat, no boss, no four walls, no office politics, no deadlines, no bringing your work home with you. I leave out the parts about twelve hour shifts, no health care, no pension - things like that.

But to this passenger, probably because I was hoping she would realize it would be mean-spirited to hold a working man to his promise of a free ride, I tossed a pearl.

"Well," I said, "I'm a writer."

"What do you write?"

Holding back a temptation to say "words", I told her I had a blog.

"You must have lots of stories."

"Yes, driving a cab and stories are a good fit," I agreed.

"So much material," she added.

"That's the thing - the material just comes right to you," said I, mentally noting the irony of someone who could be "material" herself commenting about the abundance of material.

Amazingly, against all odds it seemed that we were developing some rapport between us and, as I pulled in front of the Lincoln Center Library, it started to feel like this ride might actually have a pleasant ending. I had left the meter running and the total was $6.00, including the $1.00 evening rush hour surcharge and the 50 cent New York State tax. So here was a second moment of truth - would she redeem herself by handing me the full fare, telling me thanks, but no thanks, for the free ride offer? I had already decided I would say that I appreciated that and then, like Harry Chapin in his Taxi song, stuff the bills in my shirt and we'd both be on our way.

But instead she handed me $2.00, opened her door, said, "Have a nice night," and walked away. I watched her enter the library and shot an imaginary arrow through her head. Then, realizing I had an extra arrow in my quiver, I took it out and shot myself, too.

For having offered, and given, a free ride to someone who was not one of the nice people of this world.

********

Target practice? Don't shoot a mean person. Send an arrow over here instead for Pictures From A Taxi.

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.

The Congestion Tax

There's been a lot of talk in New York City recently about a plan put forward by Mayor Bloomberg to create an electronic vehicle entry fee for cars and trucks entering Manhattan below 86th Street - $8 per day for cars and $21 per day for trucks from 6 am to 6 pm, Monday through Friday. Certain vehicles, like taxicabs, would be exempt. The idea is that traffic congestion will be eased because fewer vehicles will enter the city.

Now here is a subject that I can rightfully proclaim myself to be an expert in. There are subjects that I pretend to be an expert in - like baseball and Humphrey Bogart movies - but after 29 years of navigating the streets of New York City, this one is my baby. Hell, I could sell my services as a consultant here. Sit down, Mayor Bloomberg. I am the man.

Now you might expect me to be in favor of this thing because it wouldn't affect me personally and it might relieve the traffic jams I am stuck in. But I'm not. I am against the plan. Here's why...

1. It won't work. When I am sitting in traffic in Midtown, I look around and what do I see? Other taxicabs, other for-hire vehicles, buses, trucks, and some private cars, pretty much in that order. The cabs, buses, and for-hire vehicles are exempt, so nothing is affected there. The trucks will pass along any cost-of-doing-business increases along to the consumer, thus making the plan inflationary. And the private cars for the most part are already paying a fortune in parking fees, so another $8 is not likely to make much of a dent in their numbers.

2. It's elitist. Big companies and individual fat cats wouldn't notice this tax any more than they would notice the price of a bottle of Dom Perignon going up a few dollars. But the "little guy" would. It would be the small business owner and middle-class Joes who would suffer from it and, don't forget, it is this class of people who are providing services to those who have the wherewithal to live in Manhattan below 86th Street. You need the service people to be able to get to you.

Let me tell you something. Since 1977 I have been listening to suggestions from frustrated passengers on how to ease traffic congestion in Manhattan. Some of my favorites:

*** Ban trucks except at night. (A common sentiment.)

*** Ban private cars altogether. (Hear it all the time.)

*** Ban pedestrians. (All right, that's my own idea. I hate pedestrians!)

*** Build cement walls in the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels when nobody's looking to get rid of all the New Jersey drivers.

*** Parking tickets are not enough. Bring back the pillories and water dunking to publicly humiliate offenders.

*** Pay really mean-looking people to stand at the bridge and tunnel entrances and give the finger to motorists bringing their private cars into the city.

*** Bring in the National Guard. Or the Marines. Or the Mob. Or Guiliani.

*** Just make Joe Torre the traffic commissioner.

All kidding aside, here are my own thoughts about easing traffic congestion in Manhattan. These would not make as much money as a congestion tax, but they would work.

a) Make it absolutely unthinkable to double-park in Midtown. A double-parked vehicle takes up a what should be a moving lane and slows down everything behind it. All the enforcement resources available should make this particular offense their number one target, and a massive public relations campaign is needed to educate the public on this. Hey, once it was socially acceptable not to clean up after your dog. Now that is a total faux pas and there's no dog shit in the streets. The same should be true about double-parking. A crime against humanity!

b) Make ferry service abundant and cheap. You want fewer vehicles on the island of Manhattan? Make municipal ferry service the obvious way to go. That means enormous parking lots in Brooklyn and Queens and frequent ferries across the East River and frequent buses greeting passengers on the Manhattan side. And it must be so cheap that traveling this way would be a no-brainer. The NY Waterway, which runs ferries from Weehawken, New Jersey, to the west side of Manhattan is a great idea but it's run by an individual for profit and is expensive. Ferry service must be super cheap and run by the city itself.

c) Put enough traffic cops on the streets to eliminate gridlock. People who are stuck in traffic love to blame a traffic cop if they see one. I disagree. These guys and gals are needed at every key intersection - especially on all the streets leading to the bridges and tunnels, like Canal Street - to do one thing: prevent gridlock. But there aren't nearly enough of them. Here's an idea. Take some of the people who spend their time writing tickets on illegally parked cars and redeploy them to directing traffic. Or (since that would never happen) use the funds derived from tickets on illegally parked cars to hire more traffic cops who actually do direct traffic. What an idea.

d) For God's sake, get rid of the street fairs! Okay, this is a weekend problem, not a Monday to Friday problem. But it is a problem and one that is totally created by the city itself and could easily be eliminated. These so-called "street" fairs shut down traffic on major avenues every weekend once the weather is warm and cause massive congestion. And what are they? Nothing more than flea markets selling schlocky merchandise. Hundreds of thousands of people are inconvenienced for the benefit of a very few. They must go!

So there it is, an educated opinion. We'll see how this thing goes. It should be interesting.

Just Another Saturday Night

It's hard to drive a cab in New York on a Saturday night without seeing something or hearing about something that's basically outrageous. Here are last Saturday's entrees.

11:50 pm - I was taking a fare up 1st Avenue and we hit traffic at 56th Street. This isn't unusual because there's often a back-up here for the 59th Street Bridge, so I wasn't taking much notice of what was going on. But after we moved inch-by-inch for a couple of minutes I finally noticed some flashing police lights up ahead at 58th Street. And then, as I approached the intersection, I discovered the actual cause of the jam-up.

Two police cars were parked in the right two lanes, and all the other vehicles had to merge to the left to get by them. So what was the emergency? Someone on the 3rd or 4th floor of a townhouse had rigged up the pay-per-view broadcast of the Mayweather/De La Hoya fight so it projected onto the wall of an adjoining building. It could be seen from the street and a small crowd had gathered at the corner to watch it. Were the cops monitoring the crowd? Policing the traffic flow? No, they were standing there next to their patrol cars, wide-eyed, watching the fight. All that was missing were their bags of popcorn.

Add that one to the Traffic Jam Hall of Fame.

2:14 am - In the field of humor, there's a difference between a funny thing happening to a normal person and a someone who is a "funny person". For example, if Betty wore a fruit basket hat on her head to a costume party, it would be funny. But if Betty wore it on the street because she thought it looked pretty good and at the same time would remind her to pick up some peaches at the supermarket, she would be a "funny person". She would not think of herself as being funny, but others, seeing the outpoints in her behavior of which she was not aware, would laugh.

I had a "funny person" in my cab on Saturday. He was a twenty-something guy en route from 33rd Street and 11th Avenue to 60th and Amsterdam. He was a cheerful and pleasant person, but not the brightest star in the sky. The first thing that happened was that he noticed that I was a white-skinned, American guy driving a cab.

"Oh, wow, you're white!" he said.

Observations like this from passengers are so mundane to me by this time that, to try to keep it interesting, I feel compelled to play around with it whenever someone mentions it. I looked at my arm in mock surprise.

"You're right! I am white!" I said. My sarcasm went right over his head and out the window. He continued on in the same way.

"You know how long it's been since I've had a white cab driver? Like... years!"

"Really!"

"Yeah! All these guys are from Pakistan or someplace."

"They are?" I thought for sure he would pick up on my attitude, but he absolutely didn't get it.

"Yeah! I don't know, maybe India, I don't know, but, man, you are like the first American driver I've had in a really long, long time, man!"

"Wow!"

"Yeah, serious, man."

I found myself smiling at his profound inability to understand that, of course, how could I not know this extremely well. Not to be unkind, but the guy was stupid in a charming sort of way. He was funny. I decided to change the subject as it was hopeless to keep on being sarcastic with him.

"Where are you coming from, the Copa?" I asked.

"No, I was at Stereo," he said.

Now this was a huge surprise to me. There are two clubs right next to each other at 33rd and 11th, the Copacabana and Stereo. The Copa gets a primarily Hispanic, hetero crowd and Stereo is hardcore gay. Although this guy wasn't Hispanic, I figured he had been at the Copa as he didn't fit the gay mold at all.

"Oh... so how was Stereo? Big crowd in there?"

"I don't know, I didn't get in," he said.

"Why not?"

"I was supposed to meet a friend of mine in there, " he said. "So what they do is, first they make you wait outside. Then they finally let you come into this entranceway they have before you can actually get into the place. And then these two guys frisk you to see if you have any weapons."

This is standard operating procedure at clubs in New York. The police department is very tough on club owners if there's ever any violence inside the premises.

"So what was the problem?"

"Well, when they frisked me, they felt me up," he said flatly. "They touched me all over. They even touched my dick. And then they tell me I'm not on 'the list', so I don't get in anyway."

I was shocked. "They touched your dick!" I blurted back to him.

"Yeah."

Actually the incident struck me as being not only outrageous, but humorous, too. The idea that gay security guys get to molest the customers in a gay club as a normal function of their job seemed highly comical to me. And that they could do this and still not even let the guy into the club made it seem like their real function wasn't to find weapons, but to feel everybody up. But my passenger wasn't reacting like it was either outrageous or funny. To him it was just something that happened, like receiving change at the check-out counter of the deli.

I tried to delve a little to see if I could get more of a response to the incident from him. "Maybe you should look at this as a bonus," I said. "You got felt up for free."

"But I'm not gay," he said.

"You're not?"

"No, I'm straight. It's my friend who's gay."

"Oh... uh, okay... so... what are you going to do now?"

"Go see my girlfriend."

Just another Saturday night.




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Traffic Jam Connoisseur

I was traveling south on Broadway a few days ago with a passenger in the cab when I unexpectedly hit bumper-to-bumper traffic at around 83rd Street. Traffic flows and stops flowing in predictable patterns in New York City and this was not a place, nor a time (9 pm), where I would expect to be suddenly at a crawl. I told my passenger it was probably just a double-parked truck and we should be moving along at normal speed within a minute or two.

But two, three, four minutes went by and we'd only moved three blocks. I was about to suggest that we detour over to Columbus Avenue, when the traffic began to pick up just a bit and I could see some flashing lights not too far in the distance. Since these lights were yellow and not red, I thought it was some kind of road work or utility work in progress and figured it made more sense to stick to Broadway rather than make a detour as the source of our delay had been identified and wasn't too far away. My passenger agreed. And then the traffic started moving a little quicker and in another minute I could see what was actually screwing things up.

It was a house!

A pre-assembled house on a flatbed truck and a couple of cars with "oversized load" signs on them were taking up two of Broadway's three moving lanes, causing all other vehicles to squeeze into one lane to pass them. Who in the world would ever have guessed that that was actually the cause of the problem! As I waited my turn to merge into a single file and then was finally released onto an unobstructed Broadway, I was reminded of something that has happened to me after all these years of taxi driving.

I have become a connoisseur of traffic jams. Some people are connoisseurs of fine wines. Some are connoisseurs of cigars. French cuisine, Chinese vases, antique cars, shoes, Barbie dolls, Civil War memorabilia, ladies' undergarments - they all have their connoisseurs. But I, the New York taxi driver, I am a connoisseur of traffic jams.

One of the great topics of conversation in a taxi is, "What the hell is causing the traffic to slow down?" (Or stop completely.) Usually it's the mundane - the expected delay as you approach the 59th Street Bridge; the inescapable backup as you head toward the Theater District around showtime; the agony you feel as you realize the Lincoln Tunnel traffic is backed up on 11th Avenue all the way to 55th Street.

Most traffic jams are quite predictable and can be taken in stride. Or avoided altogether if you're a savvy driver. It's the unpredictable ones that are the province of the connoisseur. There are two types: a) the jams where you never know what caused them. They're just there and no explantion is ever found. b) the jams that, when you do learn what caused them, you say to yourself (like with the house going down Broadway), "Who in fucking hell would ever - ever! - have possibly guessed that this was what was causing me to sit on my unmoving ass for the last half an hour?"

Here's one of my favorites of all time. It happened in 1997.

I had a fare to Forest Hills in Queens at about 7:30 pm. It was a lousy ride because it means a twenty-minute trip back to Manhattan, most likely without a passenger, at a time of day when it's very busy there. So it's a money-loser. But I never refuse a fare so off we went. When we were about five minutes away from my passenger's destination we hit a mother of a traffic jam on Queens Boulevard. It just suddenly came to a dead halt at a time and in a place where the traffic should have been moving along with no problem.

After trudging along for ten minutes I could see a multitude of red lights flashing in the distance and thought it was most likely a serious accident so, after a conference with my passenger, I took a detour and did some zig-zagging in order to get him to his apartment building. It was a great move which saved us both some wasted time.

After dropping him off, I found myself quite near to whatever was happening, but fortunately I was on the opposite side of Queens Boulevard and the traffic was moving along pretty well on that side of the street. I naturally tried to see what was going on but all I could see were police cars with their lights flashing. I was ready to forget about it and just get back to Manhattan as quickly as possible when a minor miracle happened. I got a fare going back to the city, a middle-aged woman en route to Midtown.

After getting over my shock and joy of getting this lucky ride, I of course asked her if she knew what was going on. And, miracle number two, she did! I was certainly expecting to hear a story about a gruesome accident or a disturbing crime - but no. Here's what she told me...

It seems a woman who was an amputee went into a hair salon to get a new haircut. She was so displeased with the result that, as a protest against the morons who had done this to her hair, she decided to take off all her clothes and just sit there. The salon people called the police and when it went out on the police radio that a nude, female amputee was refusing to put her clothes back on, every patrol car within ten miles showed up. The traffic jam was caused by all the police cars which had nowhere else to park, so they just blocked up the boulevard.

Well, of course. That's what was causing the traffic jam. Why didn't I think of that in the first place?




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