Down Goes Frazier

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Okay.

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

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

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

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

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

No response.

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

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

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

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

Oh.

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

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

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

He turned to the other guy.

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

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

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

"Down goes Frazier!"

"Down goes Frazier!"

"Down goes Frazier!"

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

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

Down went Frazier once again!

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

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

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

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

"Who is that guy?" I asked.

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

"What kind of work is it?" 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Damned right. It never happens.

********

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

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.

The Wrong Guy

In my last post ("Doctor Evil") I mentioned someone whom I realized I once had in my taxi back in 1999. You know this person, too, or at least you know of him. You may have never seen his face, but you have spoken of him from time to time.

Has something like this ever happened to you? You are walking on a crowded city sidewalk in a pretty good mood, just minding your own business, when someone walking in the opposite direction bumps into you and knocks you off balance for a moment. But instead of apologizing to you or asking you if you're all right, he turns back and says, "Get the fuck out of the way, asshole."

Or this? You are waiting in line at the QuickChek and someone a foot taller than you blatantly cuts right in front of you with his beer just as you were about to step up to the cashier. You think of saying something to the guy but he looks like a thug, so you just keep your mouth shut and stand there with your half-gallon of milk.

In both cases your urge to react in a forceful way is suppressed by the consideration of what the consequences might be if you did. You might be injured. Hell, you might be killed. You might be arrested and charged with assault. You might have a lawsuit on your hands.

So you stand there and take it. But you soothe your anger by thinking this thought: "Someday that guy is gonna meet the wrong guy." The wrong guy is not you, so you let it pass. But you know he's out there somewhere and it's just a matter of time before he evens the score with this sub-human who was just so incredibly rude to you.

It was the "wrong guy" who got into my cab that night in 1999. I had taken a fare out to Jackson Heights in Queens at midnight on a Saturday night and was heading back toward Manhattan on Northern Boulevard. Suddenly a man came running to the street waving his hand at me. I stopped the cab, he got in, and we drove off.

The first thing I noticed about him were his physical characteristics. He was short - maybe 5 feet, seven inches - thickset, muscular, probably close to fifty years old. He appeared to be Hispanic-American and spoke without an accent.

The next thing I noticed was that he was in a state of extreme agitation. Without any prior conversation these alarming words came shooting out of his mouth: "FUCKING BASTARD! DAMN FUCKING BASTARD!"

"What's the matter?" I asked.

His answer startled me again. Not only because of what he said, but the way he said it. He actually started to cry.

"Oh my god," he sobbed in a lowered voice, "I hope I didn't kill him."

"What happened?" I asked.

"THAT STUPID FUCKING BASTARD!" he screamed. "WHO THE FUCK DOES HE THINK HE'S TALKING TO? I WAS IN NAM, I DON'T HAVE TO PUT UP WITH THIS SHIT!"

"What happened??"

My passenger began crying again. "I think I killed him," he blurted out as he covered his face in his hands. "Oh, God, I hope I didn't kill him."

To say that this guy was "upset" would be an understatement. He was riding on a wave of emotion that went up to anger and down to grief like a yo-yo, back and forth. He was literally inconsolable. It took the full ten minutes of the ride for me to piece together what had happened.

He'd been sitting in a bar, alone, minding his own business. Just having a couple of drinks and brooding to himself about his own troubles. Three rowdy guys entered the bar and sat nearby. One of these guys decided it would be a good time to have some fun at my passenger's expense. He began making belittling comments at him while his buddies laughed. He wouldn't let up and it led to a brawl.

The fight was no shoving match. It was an outright slugfest which ended with the rude guy collapsing on the floor from a chop to his neck which may have crushed his windpipe. He gasped desperately for air before slumping over, unconscious, possibly dying. My passenger ran out of the bar to the street looking for a taxi. My cab became his getaway car.

What the sack of shit didn't know when he decided to forget his manners was that he had finally met "the wrong guy". His object of ridicule was an ex-Marine who knew martial arts and was in no mood to take crap from some punk.

When we arrived at his destination, I advised him not to talk to anyone else about this incident other than a priest. Not to let his feelings of guilt put him into a jail cell. He thanked me and disappeared into the night. I never learned any further information about what may or may not have happened that night.

I found it interesting to observe that, although he may have just killed someone, I felt no fear in being alone with him in my cab. He wasn't my wrong guy. I don't have a wrong guy because I don't go around intentionally insulting strangers.

But we've all met people who do. And it was fascinating to meet the guy they will eventually run into.