Long-Haired Peanut

It's dog time once again.

Traveling with me recently from Hell's Kitchen to the Upper West Side were Peanut, a long-haired chihuahua, and owner Eric (getting kissed), along with Eric's friend (whose name I didn't get - sorry!).


I had not known that there was such a thing as a long-haired chihuahua, so this was that day's "thing you learn every day" for me. Eric said Peanut had been abandoned in Astoria and wound up in the Humane Society's shelter. There were many people wanting to adopt him and the staff were careful to place him with someone who would provide a safe and loving home. And that was Eric.

Peanut turns out to be not just another pretty face who is mellow and doesn't bark much. He does tricks. He will howl, play dead, sit, and roll over on command. Plus he's got great fashion sense - check out that jacket!

Characters

Some recent ones...

Sunday night, 3:48 am, 49th and Broadway. A twenty-something, good-looking female comes out of the Playwrights Tavern, gets in the cab, and we are headed for 79th between West End and Riverside. She has a nice, friendly space about her and it would be easy to have a conversation with her, but, as is the case so often these days, she is preoccupied with a cell phone conversation that was already in progress before she got in the taxi. Some kind of a late-night emergency is underway and she asks me in a polite way to get her there as quickly as possible.

There is virtually no traffic at this time of the night and I know where the green lights are, so within four minutes we have shot up the Henry Hudson Parkway to the 79th Street exit and have arrived at her desintation. But she directs me not to turn off the meter - another passenger is going to join us and then we will be proceeding to 88th Street between Columbus and Central Park West. Within a minute her friend, another twenty-something female, comes running out of an apartment building, crosses 79th Street, and jumps in the taxi.

Of course my curiosity has been aroused and I am wondering what the emergency is all about. I'm thinking it's most likely a romantic problem. The second girl is probably having boyfriend troubles and needs a shoulder to cry on. Or maybe it's a family crisis. Maybe she just got a phone call from her mother in San Diego and learned that her brother was in a car accident. Or maybe her dog is sick and she needs to get him to a vet. No, that couldn't be it - she doesn't have a dog with her. Maybe she realized she doesn't have any decent clothes to wear to work the next day and she wants to borrow something from her friend. No, who the hell would do that at 3:48 in the morning?

I find myself in full fly-on-the-wall mode with the radio off and my ears straining to hear what they're talking about (also known as "eavesdropping"). I have a feeling this is going to be a good one. And it is. The second girl, it turns out, was awakened from a deep sleep by something moving under her pillow and now is afraid to stay in her own apartment. So she's going over to her friend's place to spend the rest of the night. What was under her pillow?

A mouse!

She goes on to say that she's not sure if there's one mouse or more than one mouse but her attempts to kill it, or them, with mouse traps coated with peanut butter and chocolate syrup have failed. And now she's too freaked out to stay there.

When we arrive at 88th Street I tell them I couldn't help overhearing their conversation (which was fine with them) and I make the obvious suggestion: get a cat! The second girl says that, in fact, she is planning on "borrowing" the cat of another friend of hers. Which gets me thinking this could be a brilliant business idea - "Rent-A-Cat". Hmmm....


Monday night, 11:15 pm, Empire State Building. two young guys come out of the Empire State Building on 33rd and 5th, jump in the cab, and we are off to Greenwich Village. They turn out to be from Sweden and are in search of a bar I had never heard of, The Spotted Pig, at Greenwich Avenue and 11th Street. They tell me it was recommended to them by a customs agent at the airport which sounded like a weird source of information to me so I joke that it's probably a set-up for a drug bust. They wonder if I'm familiar with a band that's supposed to be playing there but I tell them my usual answer to the subject of popular music which is that I haven't been aware of anything new since the Beatles broke up. And, in fact, I'm still waiting for the Beatles to get back together again.

Well, I said the magic words. They are Beatles fans, big time. One of them is actually wearing a Beatles t-shirt and the other has a very cool Beatles belt on. AND they are members of a rock band called Like A John Needs A Yoko! I am blown away. How refreshing it is to meet a couple of guys who are about 30 years younger than I am and who know more about Beatles music than I do!


Their names are Jon (on the left) and Andy. You can hear some of their music if you click onto their link, above. I tell them my John Lennon stories (click on the "John Lennon" label below to read it) and a May Pang story I happen to have and they are truly a receptive audience.

It's too bad these guys are over twenty-one. I want to adopt them.


Tuesday night, 9:35 pm, 52nd and Broadway. Two thirty-something fellows and a sixty-ish woman, all from the U.K., squeeze into the back seat and are en route to the Marriott hotel in Brooklyn Heights. One of the gentlemen is the stage manager of a Shakespeare company that is performing The Taming of the Shrew at B.A.M. (the Brooklyn Academy of Music). We engage in a lively conversation about the show, his job, and the Bard, but it is something that the lady says that amazes me.

She mentions that she is from Wales but has never been to London.

I have been to London. Twice. And she has been to New York. But never to London. I didn't delve into how that could be - it seems incredible to me - but I found it to be fascinating. And it reminded me of another fare I had many years ago.

In 1986 I picked up a woman who was in her thirties who was accompanied by her mother, who was probably close to seventy. The daughter lived and worked in the city and was playing tour guide hostess for her mom, who was seeing New York for the very first time. What amazed me was that Mom was from New Hampshire, only a five or six hour drive away.

How could someone live their entire life so close to the greatest American city, the center of the universe, so to speak, and never think it worthwhile enough to come see it? I asked her why she had decided to come now.

"To see Liberace!" she said.

Indeed, the great showman was playing at Radio City Music Hall at the time. And it turned out to be his last appearance in New York, as he died a year later.

Timing is everything.

Click here for Pictures From A Taxi.

Television Interview

Well, I had my two and a half minutes of fame last week (I don't get the full fifteen). I did an interview for a television show called blogtv.sg that's produced in Singapore. It's a program about blog topics and bloggers which both goes out on the airwaves in Singapore and is also available online. You can see it yourself by clicking on the link at the bottom of this post.

A couple of weeks ago I received an email from one of the shows staff, the friendly and efficient Jessica Yeo, which informed me what the show is all about. They were planning to do an episode about taxi drivers and, in doing their research, they found me.

I corresponded via emails with Jessica, who told me in advance what the questions they would be asking me would be and set up a time for an online conference using webcams. Now, pardon me if I don't yet take this in stride. It may have become business as usual for many of us to be able to see and hear people on the other side of the world, but I still think it's a miracle. Or some kind of black magic voodoo.

But unfortunately the voodoo wasn't working quite right that day as we ran into some transmission problems. First there was trouble getting a video connection and then, once that was straigtened out, the audio wasn't good enough for use in a tv broadcast. So what they did was take some video footage of me from which they later used a still image when they taped the show. Then they did the interview on the telephone and used the tape of my voice, after it was edited, on the program.

Overall the whole process was fun and really quite flattering. That they would find me and my blog worthy of being spotlighted did serve as a nice validation for what I do and I appreciated that very much.

Click here to watch the show. My interview is in Segment 3. The other two segments are about taxi drivers and taxi passengers in Singapore, and I think they're worth watching, too. It may take a minute or so to download. Click here to hear the unedited version of my conversation. (And to see my less-than-flattering picture.)

Hope you enjoy it!





And don't forget to click here for Pictures From A Taxi.

Sketches

Usually when I write a post I'm trying to make some kind of a point - choosing certain people or incidents which illustrate a theme - but I'm falling short of points to make right now, so here are some notes about some of the more memorable passengers who were in my cab last Saturday night, on March 10th.

Just some sketches, not complete portraits.

6:30 pm, from Grand Central Station to Hope Street in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn: a 40-something man tells me the address he's going to in Brooklyn is a house his father bought in 1952 and that he's lived in all his life. I immediately think how wonderful it must be to never have to worry about paying rent or a mortgage because about a third of the money I make goes to that cause, but I don't mention this to him. He tells me he is soon going to have the house, an old three-story building, demolished and a new structure with 2.4 times as much square footage built in its place. (2.4 times whatever the square footage is that already exists is the formula the city codes permit for tearing down one building and putting up another one, he told me, an interesting fact about the city that I didn't know.) He's going to put in one-bedroom apartments and rent them at the going rate ($1,500 per month) when it's done. Is he going to live in the building himself when it's rebuilt? He doesn't know. Where will he live while the construction is under way? Again, he doesn't know. He goes on to tell me that there are pitfalls involved in this project, particularly in the area of the funding. That if you're not careful and savy you can really be screwed. I see clearly that my passenger is not one of the sharks that normally swim in these waters - he's a straighforward and unpretentious man - and suggest that he should follow the advice of someone he already knows who may have some experience in this game. A nice guy, I wish him success.

7:04 pm, from Houston and 1st Street to Bleecker and LaGuardia Place: a couple in their 50s, en route to Kenny's Castaways, a honky-tonk bar in the Village. Through conversation I learn that the man is a retired fireman. He left the department in 2002 and was one of the heroic people who spent the month following Sept. 11 digging through the rubble in hope of finding survivors. And now he is paying the price. Polyps were found on his larynx and spots on his lungs. He discusses the treatments he is receiving for his condition and I ask if by any chance he knows a friend of mine who is also a retired fireman, John McCole. And he does! Small world! But he didn't know that John wrote a book, THE SECOND TOWER'S DOWN, about his own experiences at Ground Zero and his path to recovery from the ordeal. So I am able to recommend the book to him. He offers me has hand to shake, a gesture of kindness I find just a bit humbling because I have so much respect for this individual.

8:02 pm, from 43rd and 2nd to 23rd and 7th: a young couple en route to a comedy club. They can't figure it out themselves, so they ask me this question... what does it mean when they advertize the comedy club as having a "no drink minimum"? They are baffled by this. I tell them that a lot of clubs have a one or two drink minimum added on to the price of admission but this place doesn't. Thus, it's a "no drink minimum". Case closed. Smiles return to their faces.

8:54 pm, from 16th and Park to 157th and Riverside Drive. A married couple with their infant daughter. It takes a minute or two to buckle up the baby's car seat (smart move on their part) and we are on our way. They tell me the route they want to take: the FDR Drive to the 155th Street exit! My attention immediately goes onto the humiliation I described in my last post (I needed help from a man from Mexico to navigate the streets at this exit) and, as we head up the Drive, I explain to them what I had written, including the part about how either I was an idiot or the city was unfathomably huge. The young mother, who turns out to be a wiseass and completely on my wavelength, suggests that perhaps it's not a matter of either/or. Perhaps the city is, indeed, unfathomably huge and I am an idiot. To make matters worse, I have forgotten the route that the Mexican showed me and once again I need directions from my passengers. This time, however, I am taking notes. (If you want to see what the route actually is, look at the "comments" section of the last post.) As we approach their destination, I divert their attention from my incompetence by telling them I know the slogans on the license plates of all the states in the union. (Florida - "The Sunshine State", etc.) It's one of the few perks of this job, obtained from year after year of staring at license plates in traffic jams. They test me out with a few tough states and I pass with flying colors. They are delighted and have forgotten about the 155th Street thing. Even the baby seems happy.

10:35 pm, Perry Street and Hudson. I am hailed by a frat boy who then opens the back door and starts talking to his frat boy friends on the sidewalk. I sit there for over a minute before they decide they do not want a cab after all and then close the door without so much as saying a word of apology. I am infuriated and step out of the cab (a no-no) and announce to the group that they need to work on their manners. There is a moment where they were wondering if I was going to take a swing at one of them, but I just get back in the cab and drive away thinking how bad can it get to be my age and still having to put up with this shit.

12:51 am, from 58th and Madison to Van Dam and Varick. How bad can it get? My question is answered as three semi-drunk frat girls get in and demand that I turn my radio to 97.1 (hip-hop) and blast the volume. We get into a disagreement about it that starts to turn nasty before one of them suggests a compromise: turn the radio to one of the stations I like and blast the volume to that. I go along with that idea but still find the seventeen minute ride feels like an hour and a half.

12:57 am, from Van Dam and Varick to Union, New Jersey. My spirits pick up again as two perfectly nice girls jump in and negotiate a price for a ride to Union, NJ. I suggest $40.00 plus the Holland Tunnel toll to which they readily agree and we are off. As we we get through the tunnel, however, I realize why they were so agreeable about the price. I had thought they meant Union City, a much closer destination. Nevertheless, we ironed out what could have been a tense situation very easily, and they agreed to pay $65 for the ride. I am back in the city in just over an hour, so that was good money. I begin to think life ain't so bad after all.

3:05 am, from 6th Avenue and Bleecker to 48th Avenue and Vernon in Long Island City. Four thirty-somethings in the cab, with one of them sitting up front with me. I learn through a circuitous conversation that my front-seat companion and I went to the same high school! (Clarke High School in Westbury, N.Y.) I ask him to tell me the names of some of his teachers, as I'm wondering if any of the ones I had (twenty years earlier) could still have been there during his time. Oddly, though, he could only remember the names of two teachers, neither of whom I had myself. I find this strange because I could easily name twenty or more. Nevertheless, I think this is a wild coincidence.

But it gets me thinking. Earlier in the evening I had a passenger who knows my friend John McCole. And then I got another fare to that 155th Street exit, a destination I had been to a few days earlier and still had my attention on, but before that I hadn't used that exit in, what? -- five or six years. And finally there's this guy who went to my high school. It raises an age-old question: is it coincidence or is it karma?

Could be the subject of a new post...




Click here for Pictures From A Taxi.

The Monster City of the World

I suffered through two humiliations recently, both of them occurring in the same shift.

The first was at the hands of a 14-year-old boy who got in my taxi in the West Village and wanted to go to Montgomery Street in the Lower East Side and then gave me directions for how to get there. The audacity of a teenager assuming that his driver, who's been behind the wheel of a cab for twice as long as he's been alive, doesn't know how to get to his destination!

The second, a few hours later, was from a man from Mexico who instructed me on how to get to where he wanted to go, 155th Street and Lenox Avenue, from the 155th Street exit of the FDR Drive! Where does someone who's probably not even in this country legally find the gall to think that I, a native New Yorker, would not know such a thing?

Let me tell you something. What was humiliating was not that these two individuals would try to give me directions. That would be merely annoying. What was humiliating was that in both cases they were right! I didn't know Montgomery Street and the route from the 155th Street exit of the FDR to 155th and Lenox is quite tricky and I've never mastered it.

How could such a thing happen? How could someone who's been driving a cab for 29 years not know every single street in his own city? There are two possibilities:

1) I am an idiot.

2) New York is so huge it defies comprehension.

For the sake of my own self-esteem, we're going to go with number two.

New York is known by several nicknames - "The Big Apple", "The Melting Pot of the World", "The City That Never Sleeps" (but it does take cat naps, trust me). In a recent post I referred to it as the "City of Infinite Realities". I've got another one for you. It's a title I attach to the city in my own mind whenever I get a ride to the far reaches of one of the boroughs and find myself temporarily lost, as if I'd been swallowed by a whale and was now trying to navigate my way out of its intestinal tract. I call it "The Monster City of the World".

New York is a place that is unfathomably huge. It is so difficult to convey to a visitor the seriousness of this immensity that I usually find myself rattling off my favorite statistics:

- Over 6,000 miles of paved roads. That's the distance from New York to Los Angeles. And back.

- 770 miles of subway tracks. (Now there's a place you can get lost.)

- More than 100 miles of steam pipes under the streets.

- The "Over 200 Club": over 200 hotels, over 200 Starbucks, and over 200 McDonald's in the five boroughs.

- In excess of 17,000 restaurants overall.

- 13,087 yellow taxis. And more than double that number of other types of car service vehicles (limos, community car services, and corporate car services).

- If you took Brooklyn by itself it would be the 4th largest city in the United States. Brooklyn is bigger than Philadelphia.

- The population of New York is over 8 million. Add to that about another million visitors on any given day. The population of Ireland is 4 million. So the population of the city is twice the population of that country. Although I grant you that half the population of Ireland is already in New York, so that stat may be a bit misleading.

You get the idea. New York is huge, massive, gigantic, humungus, immense, enormous, and just staggeringly large. And that's not to mention big, big, BIG! The Monster City of the World. And I admit to taking some pride in knowing as much of it as I do. But do I know every street? No way - not even close. Hell, there are entire sections of the Bronx that I barely know at all. And Staten Island? Forget-abowt-it.

Which is why I will continue to feel a twinge of humility when some kid or a guy from another country assumes correctly that I need help in getting to his destination. Ouch!



Click here for Pictures From A Taxi.

Aqua Dog

My first fare of the night last Saturday went from Midtown to the Upper West Side with three passengers in the back seat: a young woman named Doria, a young man named Klery, and a young dog named Scuba.

Scuba is a Pug who's having his second birthday on March 6th. Doria and Klery are planning a big bash for him and all his friends and are hoping it will be as big a hit as last year's party in which not one, but two, doggie birthday cakes were served and then devoured by the furry guests. (No, not the guys with the goatees - the dogs. Apparently there is a place that makes cakes for canines. Who knew?)

As I've said before, it seems that every dog that gets in my cab has, or does, some kind of special thing. Scuba's special thing is that he takes showers with Doria and Klery (now there's a taxicab confession for you!). In fact, he has his own shampoo in the bathtub. He just loves being in the water.

And that's how he got his name.

Happy birthday, Scuba!




Click here for Pictures From A Taxi.

Undercover Taxi

Take a look at this picture. What do you see?

Good guess, but you're wrong! It's actually a police car.

I mentioned in my last post that the police activity I found myself in the middle of had vehicles of all types rushing to the scene, and that some of those vehicles were cars that look like taxicabs. This is one of them.

These "taxis" are used as undercover cars in general police work. You may see them cruising the streets as you would a regular patrol car or perhaps pulling over a motorist (they're equipped with flashing lights and sirens) who ran a red light or something. The cops are in plain clothes, not uniforms. I would guess there are about 20 of these cars in the city. I see them every day.

How can I tell? A very experienced eye can see certain differences at a glance. First off, there's the medallion number. (These are the four digits in the rooflight that are used to identify one cab from another.) If the first two digits are 6Y, it's always a police car. If the first two digits are 2W, it might be one. (Some are, some aren't.) Then there's the license plate. Real cabs have the four-digit medallion number there, too. As you can see in this picture, this car has a different set of numbers. Another thing is the black molding strip running across the doors. The Ford Crown Vic taxis that are in service today all have a yellow strip, not black.

The cops (there are always at least two in a car, sometimes more) who drive these vehicles never pick up passengers. They have meters, but they're always running. So another way of identifying them is to look inside, if you can, and see what the meter's total is. Very likely it reads some ridiculously high amount.

Seven hundred, twenty-five dollars and seventy cents. Plus the fifty-cents night charge. It's like a picture from taxi driver heaven. This is what we dream about!

Cops And Casting Directors

It's often been said that New York is a city of infinite variety but, to be more accurate, I prefer to say it's a city of infinite realities - infinite realities all jammed together in such a tight space that you are in a constant state of exposure to them. It can be amazing how quickly you may find yourself in an utterly different reality than the one you were in just moments ago.

No one knows this better than a taxi driver...

Last Monday night just before midnight I sat in front of Nobu's on 57th Street waiting for a fare. Two middle-aged women came out of the trendy, expensive Japanese restaurant and climbed in. One was going to Gramercy Park and the other on to the Park Slope section of Brooklyn. In overhearing some of their ebullient chatter I ascertained that there had been a party at Nobu's to celebrate the opening of the movie MUSIC AND LYRICS, a romantic comedy which premiered at the Zeigfield Theater in midtown earlier in the evening.

"Did you see Drew?" one asked the other.

"Not at the restaurant," replied her friend, "but she was sitting right in front of me in the theater."

After the first one was dropped off at 21st Street and 3rd Avenue, I kind of continued the conversation as if I'd been involved in it all along. I learned that my passenger was the casting director of the movie - she had made the decisions as to which actors would play which roles, including Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore. I asked her various questions about casting and about this film in particular, and she was quite conversational, but I saved my big question until the end of the ride.

"So," I asked, "if you were casting me in a movie, what kind of role could you see me playing?"

"I don't know," she said, "I can't see your face."

I turned around and moved a bit to my right so she could see me clearly through the opening in the partition.

"A leading man!" she exclaimed.

I laughed out loud a bit past the time normally allotted for laughing out loud because this was a JOKE. I may be vain, but I'm not vain enough to imagine that with my oversized nose, bald spot, and baggy eyes I could ever be cast as a leading man in this lifetime. (Although, then again, there is Woody Allen. Hmmm....)

"No, come on, seriously," I said with a smile.

She took a better look. "I could see you as a teacher," she said. "You're an intellectual."

Well, I was happy with that! My feeling of self-esteem had been upped a notch and she left me with a big smile on my face (and a nice tip in my pocket) as she exited the cab and ascended the steps of her brownstone. I headed back to Manhattan on Atlantic Avenue and in eight or nine minutes I was gliding off the exit ramp of the Brooklyn Bridge, ready to find my next passenger, wherever that may be.

And then, in the blink of an eye, that city of infinite realities thing kicked in, big time.

It was a cop thing. As I headed west on one of my downtown routes (Worth Street), I noticed something only the experienced eye can perceive at a glance. There was police activity suddenly occurring, but it wasn't just any police activity - it was something big. Police vehicles - patrol cars, detectives' cars, even a few taxis that are actually undercover police cars - were appearing from all directions and they were moving faster and more erratically than they would under normal circumstances. There were sirens blaring north of me, south of me, east of me and west of me. Whatever was going on, it was big and I was in the middle of it.

I crossed through West Broadway on Worth Street just moments after a police car slammed to a halt on the north side of the intersection. The doors of the cruiser opened simultaneously and coming out of the vehicle was something I'd seen only three times in 29 years of taxi driving: cops with guns drawn.

You might think otherwise if you'd never been to New York City and the only thing you really knew about it were the things you'd seen in movies, but a cop with a gun drawn is an extremely rare sight here. I'm told most cops go through a twenty-year career without ever having drawn a weapon. It's not something that is done lightly.

I stopped the cab on the west side of West Broadway and tried to decide what to do. It was a safety versus curiosity dilemma. An officer holding a pistol in both hands was crossing the avenue and moving very carefully on foot toward a parking lot to my right, his body shifting from left to right as he tried to extend his range of vision. Oh, yes - I was in a dangerous place.

My digital camera, which I carry by my side at all times, has a video function which I've just lately been starting to play around with. A moment of truth was at hand: do I get the hell out of there or do I stay and take pictures? I knew it was a photo op that might never come again, but on the other hand there was the thought that I could be a paragraph in tomorrow's newspaper.

I went with some kind of journalist's instinct. I reached into my backpack on the seat next to me, pulled out my camera, and started fumbling with it.

I adjusted the control knob to "video" and tried to push the right buttons to get it going. It was one of those moments-seem-like-minutes time expansions: the cop with the gun was crouching down and pointing his gun at an SUV that was parked in the lot - I finally got my camera rolling and started pointing it at this cop and other cops with guns drawn - it occurred to me that this might not be such a great idea after all - the cop turned away from the SUV and looked at me - I put the camera down, thinking he might think I was pointing a gun at him - the cop shook his head at me (I realized a couple of minutes later that he thought I was a cop in an undercover taxi and the shake of his head meant there was nobody in the SUV) - I decided to get the hell out of there - I drove to Hudson Street and made a right.

That all took place in a span of about 20 seconds. Sorry to say, the video showed only blurred images, which is too bad because I would have loved to have been able to post it here. (I did learn one thing: you've got to be ready and you've got to be fast.)

My next passenger was waiting for me as soon as I turned onto Hudson. I drove him to Astoria in Queens and we had an interesting conversation about cops and photography.

Later in the night I looked at all this in retrospect. The shift in realities could be compared to changing channels on television. In the blink of an eye I had gone from romantic comedy (the casting director) to action flick (the cops). It was like YOU'VE GOT MAIL meets THE FRENCH CONNECTION.

New York City.



After reading all those words, what you need now is a picture. So click here!

The Ding

Bad karma is like bad weather. You're doing nothing out of the ordinary, or at least that's how it seems, and then suddenly out of nowhere - you're in it. One bad thing after another happens.

I had a shift like that recently.

First there was a woman who gave me a ten-cent tip on a $7.90 fare. She probably thought she was giving me a $1.10 tip but didn't notice that there is a one dollar surcharge added to the total on the meter during the evening rush hours (in this case, $6.90 + $1.00 = $7.90). That was no big deal but it annoyed me and most likely set me up mentally for the next bad thing.

Which was getting the finger from a pedicab driver. Pedicabs have multiplied like cockroaches in the city, even in the winter, and, although I admire drivers who provide their own horsepower, they are becoming a traffic nuisance. This one particular person was pedaling up 6th Avenue in a moving lane, apparently suffering from the delusion that he was a Chevrolet. So I tapped my horn. The guy, who had a face that looked like it belonged in a penitentiary, flipped me the bird and threatened to fuck me up but good. That was a first. So much for the thought that the pedicab drivers were just a bunch of swell, good-natured college kids.

But these incidents were merely preludes to the ding.

The ding. The dreaded ding. It's an occupational hazard for a cab driver and a big-city quality of life item for anyone who dares to drive a car into Manhattan.

The ding is when the door of one vehicle opens too widely and knocks into the door or fender of another vehicle.

They come in two varieties. One is the ding that happens when the owner of the dinged vehicle is not anywhere around. The other is when he is. In the first instance the handling is to say to yourself, "Oh, damn, that's terrible, gee, I'm sorry that happened". And then drive away. In the second instance you must actually confront and handle an angry human being.

Since I was having a bad taxi karma day it meant, of course, that the owner of the other vehicle was right there. Here's what happened...

I was waiting at a red light on 68th Street, facing Columbus Avenue, with no passengers in the cab. On my right was a black, expensive-looking SUV. A sixty-ish woman appeared from the sidewalk and walked toward me. Like when you can see an accident coming but are helpless to prevent it, I surmised immediately that a spatial problem was at hand. I was too close to the SUV and there was no room to move forward. Unless this woman opened the door of my taxi very carefully the potential existed here for a ding.

As she came closer my apprehension grew. Because I could now see, simply from her facial expression and demeanor, that she was not the open-the-door-very-carefully type. To the contrary, she appeared to be an old-fashioned, quintessential battleaxe. If Oscar the Grouch had a 65 year-old sister, this would be her.

And to add to the tension - considerably - I then noticed that a middle-aged man was sitting in the driver's seat of the SUV and he was watching this woman with the same apprehension that was impinging on me. Like a meteor that has been on a journey of a hundred million miles and is finally turning into a firey ball as it hits the atmosphere, a moment of truth was suddenly at hand.

The woman put her fingers on the handle of the right rear door... she pulled the handle up... the door began to open...

DING!

True to her character, she then climbed into the back seat and pretended that nothing had happened. The driver of the SUV - of course - jumped out in great alarm to inspect the damage. But then, acting on an instinct that I didn't really know that I had, I did something that turned out to be a karma-crusher.

I grimaced. And my grimace was noticed by the other driver. It was a facial expression that said, "I could see this coming but there was nothing I could do about it. Nevertheless, even though I have been victimized by the actions of a careless person, it is my responsibility."

My expression of pain actually made him sypathetic to my own plight and gave us both a common enemy. So when he noticed a smudge of yellow paint on his black door - although he could have made an issue of it - he dismissed it as no big deal and let me go on my way. But not before shaking his head and rolling his eyes as if to say, "Too bad you and I both have to live on the same planet with the moron sitting in your back seat."

I could feel the jaws of fate release me, no doubt to go off seeking fresher meat somewhere else. But I still had to deal with the black mass sitting in my back seat.

"What does he expect? I have to get into the taxi!" she barked.

"He expects the person opening the door to be careful not to put a dent in his car," I said with an edge in my voice.

"There was hardly any room!" she protested.

"It's one of the skills," I replied. The implication being as a veteran New Yorker she should know better.

"I have a bad leg! I need room!"

"Okay!"

The light turned green and we headed to Central Park West and then uptown toward her destination, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. A minute of stony silence was suddenly interrupted by her angry voice propelling itself toward me from the rear.

"Well, why do these people insist on driving their cars into Manhattan? There's no room for their damned cars and they think they're too good to ride the trains!"

I realized by this time that there would be no point in arguing with her (since she was incapable of admitting that she'd done anything even slightly wrong), so I employed the same technique that is used on drunks who go on a rant about politics: I patronized her by agreeing with everything she said. You may say it was the coward's way out, but it was quite effective in getting us to the museum in peace.

I pulled up in front of the Met, where tourists were waiting at the taxi stand for a cab to arrive. She paid the fare and gave me a surprisingly decent tip and then swung the door open to its full length, very nearly knocking down my next passenger.

As I watched her make her way to the stairs that lead into the museum's entrance, it seemed that a storm system had left my cab and was headed into the building where so many of the world's art treasures are stored. I listened to the news the next day to learn how many Van Goghs and Cezannes had been destroyed, but, oddly enough, there wasn't any mention of it at all.

Click here for Pictures From A Taxi.

Art Buchwald Made Good Copy

A few days ago Art Buchwald, the American polical satirist, died at the age of 81. I had him in my cab once and, in recalling that ride, I realized there are two things I have taken from him and made my own.

His gloves and his umbrella.

Just kidding. The first was something he said to me in my cab. This ride occurred in December, 1980, and the reason I can remember its exact date is Ronald Reagan had been elected but had not yet been inaugurated. The conversation went something like this...

Me: What are you doing here [in New York City]? Aren't you supposed to be in Washington?

Buchwald: Nah, Washington's dead. Nobody's around 'til the inauguration.

Me: So what do you think of Reagan? Do you think he'll be a good president?

Buchwald: He'll make good copy.

"He'll make good copy." I've been using that phrase to describe anyone or anything that seems promising ever since he said that to me. I know it's a newspaper term that didn't originate with Buchwald, but that's how it got into my mind. I think we usually don't remember how something like this enters our consiousness, but in this case I do. It came from him.

The second thing was a writing thing. After having had this honor of transporting his butt from point A to point B, I started paying more attention to his columns and, in reading them, I came to recognize the basic form that the newspaper essay takes. First, a premise is stated. ("People act strangely when the moon is full.") Second, data is supplied to back up the premise. ("I saw old Jed flying a kite in the middle of the night and he was wearing Spock ears.") And third, the premise is re-stated, perhaps with a humorous twist, to end the essay. ("Yup, people sure do act strange when the moon is full. Excuse me - I've gotta go get my Spock ears back from Jed.")

A well-written essay in a blog uses this same format. It's how a point is made as opposed to wandering off in all directions.

I don't know if he invented this form - he probably didn't - but nevertheless I did gain my understanding of it from him. So that's two things I got from this guy.

And, you know, I do have a collection of gloves and umbrellas that people have left in my cab... hmmmm... does anyone know what size glove Art Buchwald wore?

The Wisdom of the Carrot

Every night one or two passengers, on the average, will tell me they're in a BIG rush. The implication (or direct message) being that I need to get them there FAST! Nothing wrong with that. I don't fault anyone for telling me what the situation is. 

But there's just one problem - it doesn't motivate me to do anything extraordinary to help them solve something that is their problem. I will just acknowledge what they said and drive them to their destination in the same way I would have driven if they hadn't said anything at all. But I won't run red lights, make illegal turns, or drive ten or fifteen or twenty miles per hour faster than I would normally drive. What they have failed to do is to tell me specifically what's in it for me. 

Now, some passengers will make the infamous statement that they will "take care of me" or will "make it worth my while". This promise is most often heard when five people are trying to squeeze into the cab (the rules say we can only take four and the driver could get a ticket if it's seen by a particularly mean-spirited cop). Experience shows conclusively that what follows this ride is an average or even a below-average tip. Thus a seasoned cabbie translates "I will take care of you" as "Hey, stupid fuck-head, I want you to go ahead and risk a fine and in exchange you will get nothing special." It's an insult. 

All of which leads me into what was last night's "fare of the night". It was the rare - and I do mean rare - person who understands that the best way for me to solve his problem is to tell me why it's in my own best interest to make it my problem. Here's what happened... 

 A twenty-something guy jumped in the cab at Grove Street and 7th Avenue South in Greenwich Village at exactly 11:51 PM. His destination was Fulton and Gold in the Financial District, a short ride that required knowledge of lower Manhattan's geography. I pulled out onto 7th Avenue South, quickly figured out the route in my mind, and told him how I intended to go. This was meant as a passing comment, not really requiring discussion, but it turned out my passenger was quite concerned about getting there as soon as possible and wondered if another route might be better. I told him the way I wanted to go was the best way (which it was), and then he said the magic words... 

 "My fiancee's birthday is at midnight and if you can get me there before then, I'll give you ten dollars over the meter." 

 Bingo! 

His problem became my problem. I immediately turned into a NASCAR racer, zig-zagging my way around the Holland Tunnel traffic, making the difficult and crucial green light at Canal Street, flying down West Broadway to Duane Street, catching the greens on Church and Broadway, circling around City Hall Park and somehow making the light at Beekman, and finally delivering my passenger to Gold and Fulton at 11:58. 

The fare was $7.80. He gave me a twenty and happily told me to keep it. But before he jumped out I acknowledged his brilliance by sharing with him this bit of information which I will share with you now...  

It took me nine years of taxi driving before I noticed how rare it was for someone to offer me a specific reward for doing something special for them. Once I became aware of this, I started to count the number of times it would happen and have kept this tally in my mind. That was twenty years ago. Counting last night, the number of times this has happened is... (drum roll, please)... EIGHT! That is correct. Eight times. Thousands and thousands of people have told me they are in a big rush and eight have had the wisdom to offer me a specific reward if I can solve their dilemma for them. 

I believe there is a huge life lesson to be learned here. 

Let's call it the wisdom of the carrot.

The Case of the Twisted Testicle

Are you a people-watcher? Do you ever look at people walking by on the street and wonder what they've been doing all day? In New York, with its endless stream of humanity shuffling by, this is a popular activity. Most people appear to be pretty much the same as each other, but what do they actually DO?

One of the great things about taxi-driving is that people plop themselves in your car and you have a chance of turning this idle daydream into a tour of someone's reality. And sometimes, once you know it, you think, "Who in the world could ever have guessed THAT?"

I had one of these the other day.

I was cruising up 1st Avenue, looking for my next fare, when I saw two people, a man and a woman, hailing me in front of New York University Hospital at 32nd Street. At first I thought they were together but as I approached them I could see that they were standing a bit of a distance apart and were actually in competition with each other for possession of my taxi. In these situations I will try to position the cab so that the rear door is an equal distance between them when I stop and then let them settle it (or fight for it) between themselves. I don't know who's been standing there the longest and I don't want to appear to be favoring one over the other.

Anyway, the man, a thirty-something, got in. And right away he had something to say about the woman he'd left behind. "Man, I hate that. She thinks because she's a woman that she has some kind of a right to the cab. She knew damn well I was out there first and she walked right in front of me."

"Oh, you were out there first? I couldn't tell."

"Bitch!"

This outburst led to a conversation about the etiquette of taxi hailing, which is basically an uncodified sector of human conduct. You can often see what someone's made of when he or she is trying to catch a cab because there are no social consequences involved. The assumption is that the other person is someone you will never see again. It's a situation that can bring out the worst in people.

My passenger was a veteran taxi-hailer and understood but didn't excuse the every-man-(or woman)-for-himself attitude that some New Yorkers display in the catching a cab crunch time. "Everybody's in a rush," he said, "but after being in surgery for six hours I'm not gonna stand there a let someone shove me aside."

"Oh, you're a surgeon?"

"Yeah."

"What's your specialty?"

"Urology."

Well, that was interesting, so I delved. I asked him some questions about what kind of surgery he'd been doing for six hours, thinking he'd probably tell me he'd been removing kidney stones or something. Instead, he told me this story...

My passenger had operated on a young man who'd had a twisted testicle. I immediately thought of some joke which I won't embarrass myself by repeating here, but my passenger would have none of it. He explained what the situation had been in a straightforward, professional manner.

The testicle had become twisted around itself in the scrotum and, because its supply of blood had been cut off, was in danger of dying unless corrected within a matter of hours. So this was actually an emergency. To make matters worse, the (female) anaesthesiologist, although aware of the situation, had decided to take a meal break, thus delaying the surgery and adding considerable tension to the matter. When she finally did show up, my passenger had words with her and told me he intended to report her. (Looks like he was having a bad female-karma day.)

The surgery, which consisted of untwisting the testicle and sewing it to the inner wall of the scrotum, was performed successfully. And my concern that here was yet another thing I needed to worry about was pacified by learning that the poor guy's runaway testicle was an unusual, genetic disorder.

Now I imagine myself sitting in a sidewalk cafe with a friend, watching the people who are strolling by. We amuse ourselves by guessing what these people may have been doing all day.

A muscular, young man wearing a hard hat walks by.

"Oh, he must have been working at a construction site," we say.

A woman with two small children at her side walks by.

"Oh, she must have been caring for the children," we say.

My passenger walks by.

"Oh, he must have been untwisting someone's testicle," we say.

The things you learn driving a taxicab.

More Fun With Street Signs

Here's a street in Tribeca that always asks a question...




This street, also in Tribeca, is for people who can't get to it on time...

When the married former mayor of New York, Rudy Guiliani, was having an affair with a woman on his staff, he ordered the street where she lived renamed in her honor...




Oh, all right, I lied. It's actually "Essex Street" in the Lower East Side.

A Pedestrian Thing

Last night I had a "thing on the street" that involved a pedestrian. I'll tell you about that in a moment, but first a few words about this group of people as a whole.

Pedestrians - I have no use for them. Really, what good are pedestrians to a taxi driver? If I don't already have a passenger in my cab, I see them as people who should be giving me some business. And whether I have a passenger in my cab or not, here is a whole segment of the population that slows me down when I'm trying to make a turn. A pox on them, I say.

The truth is, pedestrians in New York should be looked upon as tourist attractions. Many of them are daredevil lunatics, right up there on a level with people who jump off cliffs with an elastic cord tied around their leg. Admission could be charged for the privilege of seeing these people risk their lives for nothing.

An avenue with cars, buses, and trucks zipping by? Hey, man, I ain't gonna waste twenty seconds of my life waitin' for no light to change. I'm goin' NOW! And I'm gonna eat my fries while I do it.

Have you ever actually witnessed someone being hit by a car? Most people haven't, but I have, four times. It's a gruesome thing to see, even if it happens at a slow speed. But it gives you a healthy respect for the physics involved after you see a human body bouncing across the street like a rubber ball.

But most pedestrians here do not have that reality. The walk/don't walk signs are universally ignored. The majority of people will wait for the moving vehicles to pass by, but there is a growing contingent of fools who will just walk in front of cars on the assumption that they are seen and the car will stop.

I ran into one last night. Not literally, but almost. Here's what happened...

I picked up a fare, a middle-aged man headed for Penn Station, at 60th Street and 5th Avenue at 10:40 PM. I drove down 5th to 37th and made a right turn with the intention of catching the green at 6th Avenue and then proceeding through Broadway to 7th Avenue, making a left, and driving to Penn Station at 34th Street.

There were no cars in front of me on 37th Street, so making the light, which had just changed to green as I turned onto the street from 5th, was definitely possible. I picked up my speed to about 30 mph (the speed limit in NYC) and I could see as I got about three quarters of the way to 6th that pedestrians were crossing through their "don't walk" sign at the corner. Nothing unusual about that. So I sounded my horn as I approached to warn them that I was coming.

Everyone stopped - except one woman.

What happened, quite quickly, was a "this is my turf" confrontation. Like animals with territorial instincts, some people just won't give ground on the notion that this is sacred soil and it is mine. So she stopped in the middle of the crosswalk and stood there, daring me to run her over.

Now most people would say that was insane, even if she had the right of way, which she didn't. But it was worse than insane, it was criminal. Because she was holding in her hand the hand of a small child! She wasn't just sacrificing herself to the cause, she was taking her kid with her.

So, of course, I stopped. And then we had "words", since I had missed the green light and was now waiting on the red. What exactly those words were I could not say, not because I don't want to repeat expletives, but because we were shouting at each other at the same time and neither of us could hear what the other one was saying. Not that it would have mattered. This was not a person who was going to admit that there was even the slightest thing wrong about what she had done. And yet my passenger and I agreed that she should have been arrested and charged with endangering the welfare of a minor.

God, sometimes I wish I was a cop.

Lady Jane

And now for the year's first dog.

I recently picked up Lady Jane (the Rottweiler-Shepherd mix with the big nose) and Amy (the human with the nice smile) on 42nd Street at 10th Avenue and drove them down to the East Village. As is the case with every dog that gets in my cab, there was a story.

Amy was planning her Christmas vacation, a five-day trip out west, that would include skiing in Colorado. This meant that Lady Jane would have to be left in New York because they don't allow dogs at the ski lodge. So preparations needed to be made. Amy had heard of a woman who dog-sits on the West Side for $50 a day and she had just brought Lady Jane over for a meet and greet at the woman's apartment. Apparently all had gone well. Lady Jane and the woman's two Chihuahuas hit it off splendidly.

Amy adopted her dog at a place called the NYC Animal Care and Control. They told her she had been tied to a tree and then abandoned near the FDR Drive (a highway on the east side of Manhattan). Amy was immediately charmed when she saw her, paid a $100 adoption fee, and brought her back to her apartment and a surprised roommate. The dog was given the title of "Lady" to make up for her humble beginnings with a touch of aristocracy. And the three of them have since been living happily ever after in the East Village.

Lonely for New York? Click here!

A Moderate Muslim

Tonight's fare of the night was a man in his 30s who approached my cab at 3 AM while I was waiting at one of my "strategic spots" in Greenwich Village. (A "strategic spot" is a certain place where I may just sit in my cab in order to "fish" for a fare when it is slow on the streets.) He came up to my window and asked me if I knew where a certain club was located (I think he called it the "Orchid Club".) I had never heard of it, so he elaborated by telling me it was a club for transsexuals.

I knew there was such a place just a couple of blocks north of where I was sitting, so I told him its location and, when I mentioned that there was always a "trannie" sitting on a stool out in front of the joint, it rang a bell with him and he was sure that was, indeed, the place he was looking for. I thought he would just walk off but instead, perhaps feeling guilty that I wasn't going to profit by being honest and helpful, he asked if I could drive him there. That was fine with me so he jumped in and we went for what amounted to merely a ride around the block.

Now what was interesting about this guy was that he mentioned that he was from Turkey. I know that Turkey is a Muslim country so right away the idea that a Muslim man would be going to a transsexual club struck me as fascinating. I had already gained his confidence by not invalidating him due to his choice of night clubs, so we could speak frankly. And we did.

He told me that he was, in fact, a Muslim, but (obviously) a moderate one. And this led to a discussion of which Muslim countries in the world would tolerate the presence of transsexuals. He said only in his own country, Lebanon, and Indonesia could such a thing be found. Morocco, he said, was liberal but not that liberal. Everywhere else - Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc, etc - forget about it. He went on to say that Turkey was by far the most moderate Muslim country in the world and that is why it is one of America's most important allies. An interesting thought.

With so much attention in the news these days about fanatical Muslims it was encouraging to me to meet someone who can consider himself to be of that religion but not feel compelled by it. Obviously this was a person who thinks for himself. In his own way, a breath of fresh air, in my opinion.

New Year's Eve

Driving on New Year's Eve is not like driving on any other night. It's in a category of its own. It's the night that every other busy night is compared to. New York, the city of people in motion, is in its highest gear. Anything can happen.

It went like this for me...

I started the shift at 5 PM at the garage on W. 44th Street. I was given 3G71, an old cab in good condition. The radio had good reception and the cup holder wasn't broken, as they so often are, so I was happy. After cleaning up the car and getting my trip sheet in order, I was ready to pull out and was struck by a feeling I get only on New Year's Eve. It's the feeling of being the pilot of a jet fighter that is heading out for battle. Not that I've ever been a jet pilot. But it must be the same.

There are three things to be careful about on this night. One, the traffic in the Midtown zone where Times Square is located. Two, drunks vomiting in the cab. And three, getting stuck in a the middle of an unruly crowd. (Sometimes known as "a riot".) Happily, I successfully avoided all of them and had a great night.

But I want to brag a bit and tell you this is not a matter of luck. It's a matter of experience. Where to avoid being. Who to avoid taking. And when to leave your meter on so the roof light stays off so people will think there's still a passenger in the cab and thus leave you alone, so you can get on a highway and get the hell out of the badass part of town you didn't want to be in in the first place. That all comes from experience.

In New York City New Year's Eve goes all the way to 5 AM and beyond. And the night can be divided into two distinct parts: before midnight, and after. Before twelve, no one is drunk and everyone is heading out to their party. Interestingly, there is a lull from 11:45 to 12:15 during which time it is impossible to find a fare. Everyone has gotten to their destination and no one is leaving, of course, until after "the ball drops". So instead of roaming the streets without a customer, I took a break and went over to Central Park West, parked the cab and watched the fireworks.


Not a bad way to bring in the year.

Then at 12:15 it starts again and gets busier and wilder as the night presses on. Soon everyone who gets in the cab is somewhat plastered and a cabbie finds himself in taxi driver heaven: dozens of people on every block desperately trying to get his services. It warms the heart, it does.

But, as I said, my night went smoothly. No one was too drunk. No one was particularly obnoxious, and thank God no one threw up. Most of my fares were just cheerful people having a good time. Three of them kind of stood out for me, all of them females.

The first, an elderly black woman, was going on a short ride early in the evening from 118th Street to 116th Street in Harlem to sing in the choir of her Baptist church. She said she does this every year and always has a great time. Her church is one of churches in Harlem where tourists come to hear gospel music and she told me they are sometimes so crowded they have to turn people away. This woman was so wholesome and connected to her community that it made an impression on me.

The second was my last fare of 2006. A young lady, probably not even 30 years old, coming from New York Hospital on the Upper East Side to 79th Street on the West Side just before midnight. She told me she was a doctor who'd been on call at the hospital for the last 15 hours. What kind of a doctor? A psychiatrist, she said. Well, I don't want to offend anyone, but ever since I saw my cousin's life destroyed at the hands of psychiatrists, I am not a fan of the profession. Nevertheless, we had a polite conversation and I asked her the question I always ask psychiatrists who get in my cab. "What's your definition of 'the mind'?" I asked. (I once had a psychiatrist tell me, as if it was a secret just between him and me, that "no one knows what the mind is". Ever since then, my question persists.) She struggled with this for a bit, saying "that's a good question". Finally, she answered. "It's where the intellect resides," she said. Oh, okay, that clears that up. (P.S. Find me one cardiologist anywhere in the world who has difficulty telling you what "the heart" is.)

The third memorable ride of the night was a blonde in her thirties going straight up 1st Avenue from 34th Street to 60th Street at around 1 AM. She said she was feeling ill with a congested nose and other symptoms but had to go to a friend's house for her traditional black-eyed pea soup which she has every year on New Year's Eve for good luck. And now she just wanted to go back home to sleep it off because she has to be in L.A. tomorrow for work. "What kind of work do you do?" I asked. I noticed a sly smile appear on her face in my mirror and I knew this would be good. "I'm an adult film performer," she said. Her name was Houston and she specializes as the middle-aged mother the teenage boys get their hands on. "I can't give blow jobs with my nose stuffed up," she said. "You've got to be able to breathe through your nose!"

Who knew?

When I finally called it a night close to 6 AM I had grossed my highest ever and, just as important since I'm always on the lookout for omens, I had a good feeling about 2007. I'm predicting a good year.

The Windows at Lord & Taylor

When I started this series of pictures of the department stores' Christmas windows, I promised to show them all: Macy's, Bloomingdale's, Saks, Lord & Taylor, and Bergdorf Goodman. What I didn't know was that Bergdorf Goodman, the ritziest of all these stores, doesn't do Christmas windows. They have winter scenes promoting their merchandise, but no holiday themes. Apparently they are too cool to play that game. No wonder I never go into Bergdorf's. Also because I couldn't afford to buy a paper clip in that store.

So here are the windows of Lord & Taylor. As I did last week at Saks, I showed up at 4 AM and this time had 5th Avenue between 38th and 39th Streets, where the store is located, all to myself.

They took a fifty-year period of time in the 1800s in New York City as their theme.

So that wraps up the Christmas windows.

And now, to wrap up the year, I'd like to thank everyone who's been reading this blog and offer to you this New Year's wish from a taxi driver:

May your best days be yet unseen,

And may all your lights be green.

James Brown NYE

I guess it shouldn't come as any great shock when someone who's 73 dies of natural causes. Still, the sudden departure of James Brown comes as a slap in the face to Baby Boomers such as myself. Here was a guy who's been around our whole lives and who was still doing it - never stopped giggin' - and then, like a fireworks show that you didn't know was over, it's just over.

He was scheduled to perform at B.B. King's Blues Club in Times Square on New Year's Eve. I went over there on the day he died to bear witness.
The marquee had not yet been changed.


As I took some shots, a man from the club came out with a ladder to perform a sad job.


He told me they were just removing the "NYE" from the marquee and "James Brown" would stay up for a while, and he kindly invited me into the lobby to photograph and sign a memorial poster, which I did.



A fond farewell to the Godfather of Soul, the "king of us all, y'all".

He Reads Lips

I was heading down 2nd Avenue a few nights ago around midnight when I picked up a young guy at 31st Street. He told me he was heading for 19th between 5th and 6th and then said something that really caught my attention. He told me he was deaf and if I wanted him to understand anything I wanted to say I should move my mirror down so he could see my lips.

I started driving down the avenue and it took me a few moments to process this information. The first thing that occurred to me was that my passenger, although he said he was deaf, spoke in a normal-sounding voice. I haven't had a lot of experience with the deaf, but it seemed to me that they most likely either don't speak at all because they use sign language or they would have a noticeable speech impediment. So this was odd. I decided to give it a test.

I looked at him in the rear-view mirror. He was looking out his window to his right. "SO HOW'S YOUR NIGHT GOING?" I asked in a loud voice, leaving the mirror in its normal position and keeping my head facing forward. He didn't respond in any way. So I knew that he was, if fact, quite deaf because there was no way he wouldn't have heard me.

The next thing that occurred to me was that in all my 29 years of taxi-driving, having transported countless thousands and thousands of people around New York, this was the first time anyone had ever told me that he could read lips. In fact, I've never met anyone in my life who has this ability. (Have you?) I wanted to know more, so I started a conversation by continuously turning my face toward him so he could see me. Here's what I found out.

His name is Nino and he's twenty-four years old. Nino was not born deaf. He's only been losing his hearing gradually over the last few years, which is why he can speak in a normal voice. He comes from a family of sixteen brothers and sisters (!), none of whom have any hearing problems. So the condition is not genetic. In fact, the doctors don't have a definite explanation for it. What they do know is that damage to a nerve is causing him to lose his hearing. Nino said it may have been from a sports injury or from exposure to loud music, but no one knows for sure.

Amazingly, he has never been taught how to read lips. It's just a skill he picked up out of necessity. He doesn't know sign language, but says it's something he will probably have to learn. Even so, he has no trouble communicating with anyone as long as he can see their lips. I, for one, never would have guessed that he was deaf if he hadn't told me.

I would have said he was just another good-looking guy heading out to a club on a Saturday night.

The Windows At Saks

The Saks Fifth Avenue department store is located exactly in the middle of New York City at 5th Avenue and 50th Street, directly across the street from Rockefeller Center. This area is so crowded during the day and evening that it can be difficult to walk on the sidewalk. So I stopped by at four in the morning to take these shots.

It was kind of cool to have the whole street to myself, actually.

The motif they chose this year was the snowflake. You can see that the windows themselves are in the shapes of snowflakes.

The "story" in the displays is the journey of an ice crystal that joins with other ice crystals to finally form a snowflake.

Next up: Lord & Taylor.

But first click here for Pictures From A Taxi