Shea Goodbye

I believe that in America the edifices that have the most meaning to the greatest numbers of people - more so than any other public structures - are our baseball stadiums. First there is the love of the game itself. And what follows right behind that is an attachment to the stadium where the game is played at its highest level.

I grew up on Long Island, about 30 miles east of New York City. Throughout my entire childhood I played baseball in one form or another. There were the organized Little League games and the less organized choose-up games; there was stick ball, wiffle ball, softball, and made-up games like "Catch A Fly, You're Up" and "Running Bases". There were even table games (the forerunners of video games) like Parker Brothers Baseball. And of course there were the endless, solitary hours spent throwing a rubber ball against a wall or the roof of the house and catching it as it came back to you.

What went hand in glove with playing these variations were the sacred trips into the city with my father to see his team, and therefore my team - the New York Giants - play Major League Baseball in the ancient stadium that once stood in Harlem, the Polo Grounds. The Giants abandoned New York for California in 1958 but the Polo Grounds was not torn down. It proudly held its position in space until it was occupied by its new tenants, the New York Mets, in 1962. By that time I was 12 years old and, in those days, that meant you were old enough to get on a train with your friends and ride the rails all the way from Long Island to Harlem. To see the Mets!

Not that I didn't still go to an occasional game with my father. I did. But now I went to lots of games with my pals. Then, in '64, Life dealt me a winning hand: Shea Stadium was completed, the new home of the Mets, and it was much closer to my home on Long Island. I was set. In that summer of '64, I was at Shea so often that it became my home away from home and its address in the landscape of my mind would become the place where so many memories of the final days of boyhood would be stored.

Now, as the last game has been played in Shea and it awaits the executioner's wrecking ball, I find myself inevitably reminiscing about the place. I remember in particular two extraordinary games that I attended that year with my friends. The first was on May 31st. It was the second game of a double-header with the San Francisco Giants which lasted 23 innings. Aside from being the longest baseball game ever played, this game had several notable things happen, each of which was so special in its own right that, if you watched baseball games every day for your whole life, you might never see even once: there was a triple play executed by the Mets; there was a steal of home by a player on the Giants, Orlando Cepeda; Willie Mays played not only his usual center field, but played the shortstop position, as well (yes, I saw Willie Mays play shortstop!); and it was later revealed that a pitcher on the Giants, future Hall-Of-Famer Gaylord Perry, threw his first "spitball" in that game.

Of course, the Mets lost, but who cared? My friends and I were baseball savvy enough to realize we'd seen baseball history, and our appreciation of the game was senior to the game's final score. Also, we had a little code that we were proud to adhere to: we never left a game before it was finished. That day we had arrived at Shea Stadium at 11:30 in the morning and we didn't get home until 1 a.m. - a baseball fan's badge of honor.

Then, on June 21st, we went to another Sunday double-header, this time versus the Phillies. In the first game of the afternoon a pitcher on that team, Jim Bunning, pitched one of the rarest of all baseball events - a perfect game. Not a single Mets player reached first base. It had happened only seven other times in Major League history. That pitcher, Jim Bunning, is today a United States Senator from the state of Kentucky. Another less-than-once-in-a-lifetime, extraordinary baseball masterpiece.

But in looking back at my days with Shea, I can see that the memories I take from it that are the most meaningful to me are not recollections of particular games where I happened to be in attendance. They are the memories of the adolescent adventures my friends and I perpetuated in that arena.

This was a time in our lives - between the ages of 13 and 15 - when we were in the process of stepping away from our childhoods and testing out the world of adults, trying to figure out not only where we would fit in, but also experiencing by trial and error what we could get away with. And Shea fit in perfectly with this rite of passage. It wasn't just a stadium to us - it was a challenge.

One thing we knew was that we didn't like to pay to get into the place. So we discovered there were certain gates which, if we felt daring, we could sneak under and get in for free. But usually we did pay the $1.30 general admission, which gave you a seat in the upper deck. However, we never stayed up there. We always snuck down into the box seats and, more often than not, we wound up sitting right behind one of the dugouts.

As the season went on, and our boldness increased, we found new frontiers to conquer. For example, we'd always wanted to catch a foul ball, but we'd never gotten one. Then at one game during batting practice we noticed an errant ball lying near the stands which no one had retrieved. My friend Billy, a bit more bold than the rest of us, climbed over the fence onto the field to get it, then climbed back into the stands where he belonged. He was soon pounced on by a stadium cop who gave him a choice of either returning the ball or keeping it and getting tossed out of the park. The choice was obvious: Billy kept the ball, was escorted outside, then promptly snuck back in and joined us for the remainder of the afternoon.

As the season wore on it seems, in retrospect, that we were beginning to think of Shea Stadium as being ours. What else could account for this kind of impudence: we discovered that if we hung around in our seats for as long as possible after a game had ended and left only when being ordered to do so by security, we could duck into the men's room on our way out and hide there for about twenty minutes. Why would we want to do this? Because when we finally emerged from the men's room, everyone had gone and we then had the stadium all to ourselves. We would actually go out onto the field and run around the bases and talk to each other on the telephone that connects the bullpen to the dugout. A sign that hung above the top step of the Mets' dugout which said "Watch Your Step" wound up in my friend's bedroom.

We had balls, all right.

But what turned out to be our piece de la resistance occurred on Sept. 7th when the Mets played a game with a team then called the Colt .45s (now the Houston Astros). Billy and I decided to go up to the press box level of the stadium in the 9th inning to watch the end of the game. We discovered that if you carried yourself as if you belonged there, security probably figured you were the sons of some big-shot executive and they wouldn't bother you. So there we sat with the media, as if we ourselves were reporters. Then, just as the game ended, we opened a door we shouldn't have opened and found ourselves standing in the broadcasting booth with Lindsey Nelson, the Mets announcer, who was live on the air! The technicians in the booth froze in horror and begged us in pantomime not to interfere with the show, which we did not. Later, as a souvenir of our good behavior, they gave us the lineup card that had been shown on television prior to the game. It listed the players for the Mets on one side and the players for the Colts on the other. Billy and I later flipped a coin for who would get the Mets half. I won the toss, as you can see. That's Casey Stengel's signature at the bottom.

The success of our impertinence may have had an effect on the psyche of my friend, as he went on to have a career as a broadcaster himself. You may have heard of him. His name is Bill O'Reilly and what you just read is the story of the first time O'Reilly ever set foot in a broadcasting booth.
Ahhh, the good old days... sigh... anyway, that's my own story about a ballpark and what it meant to a kid. Thank you for indulging me in this bit of pure nostalgia that has nothing whatsoever to do with taxi driving.

And goodbye, Big Shea.

Feathers In My Bald Spot

One of the few, although truly great, perks of driving a cab in New York City is this: you are cruising down an avenue in search of your next fare when a silhouetted figure appears from about a block away with his arm in the air. As you approach this person - your next passenger - you think he seems familiar and in fact he looks very much like a certain very famous celebrity. Then you realize it is this celebrity. And he's all yours.

Yes, yes, I know, some people insist on being oh-so-very-nonchalant about celebrities. "They put their pants on one leg at a time like everybody else," they will say. And I would agree that just because a person is famous doesn't make him or her basically any different than anyone else. But come on. There is a big difference.

The difference is what is created by what I call the physics of mass communications. The phenomenon of vast numbers of people knowing who you are and having had the experience of being communicated to by you without having had the experience of communicating to you makes for an exotic category of human existence. It creates a vacuum that makes the recipient of all this communication want to communicate back to its source point if he should run into them and conversely it tends to create a feeling of withdrawal on the part of the celebrity who must go through life having strangers constantly approaching them.

All of this is to tell you that I had a big-time celebrity in my cab last week. This is a person who is so famous that almost everyone who has been to a movie theater in the last 30 years would know him. I don't go "ga-ga" over celebrities, but I won't pretend that it wasn't a big kick having him in my cab, either.

It was Robin Williams.

I was cruising down Columbus Avenue on Sunday evening at 6:30 pm and there he was with his arm up in the air at 62nd Street, all by himself, instantly recognizable. In the endless Wheel Of Fortune that brings passengers and taxi drivers together in New York City, it must have been my turn to get him, and I experienced that quick moment of excitement you get when you realize he's "yours".

I say that because having a celebrity in a taxicab situation is quite different than almost any other situation in which you might find yourself suddenly confronting a very famous person.

It means that you're about to be in a context in which having a conversation with this person would be perfectly normal. If you were to run into some big star while walking down the street, you might say hello to him, but you certainly wouldn't stop him in his tracks and expect to have a chat. And it would be the same in the great number of professional situations in which celebrities and mere mortals may have contact. The only exceptions I can think of off the top of my head, other than with taxi drivers, would be with bartenders or hairdressers.

So there he was, Robin Williams.

The first thing I'm going to say is that I'm happy to report that Robin Williams is capable of having a rational conversation with another human being. If you've ever seen him on a talk show, he usually goes on with his jokes and instant impersonations at such a speed that you'd think the guy had been born without an "off" button.

Actually - and not surprisingly - he was friendly, totally approachable, and quite conversational. His destination was downtown to Tribeca, a 20 minute ride, so we had some time to talk about lots of things  -- from his son, Zak, who had been in my cab 5 years ago, to the damned televisions that are now in the rear of NYC taxicabs, to his days doing stand-up for the people sitting in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  And he even managed to slip in an impersonation of Francis McDormand! 

At one point I told him a joke. It went like this:

Q: What is the difference between Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney?

A: Lipstick.

He hadn't heard it before and he laughed. Now that was a win for me - Robin Williams laughed at my joke!

By the end of the ride the affinity between us was sufficient that I felt it wouldn't be inappropriate to ask him to pose for a picture in the cab. I told him it would be a feather in my cap, being that I had a blog and all. Robin pointed out that I wasn't wearing a cap. I realized he was right and said that well, then, it would be a feather in my bald spot, not bothering to mention that I didn't have a feather, either. Here's the shot:

As he headed out the door, Robin reached forward, shook my hand, and told me he liked my "show" much better than what was on the television in the cab. 

That felt good!

Now here's another feather in my bald spot: I have had a photograph published in this week's edition of Time Out New York, the city's premiere entertainment magazine. Each week in a section called "Photo Finish" they publish a NYC photograph and then have an artist do a cartoon of what might have happened after the picture was taken. It's very funny and quite clever.

 
This is the shot they used (from my other blog, Pictures From A Taxi):

What had happened was a bride and groom had taken my cab from their reception to their hotel. Their friends decorated the cab just before they arrived at the taxi. In the artist's sequence, however, a man hails a cab and asks the driver to take him to the "O'Connor wedding". The cabbie says okay and pops open the trunk, which is where the party is actually taking place.

Cute. 

The magazine is available at any newstand in New York and will be there until Wednesday, Sept. 24th. So grab a copy if you're in the city and see it for yourself. It's on page 4.

You can check out what they do by clicking here, and then typing in "Photo Finish" in the search button at the top of the page. You won't see this week's edition, however, as it seems they wait several months to put  certain things in the magazine online. But this will at least give you an idea of what it's all about.

A Fun Evening With Farebeater

The taxidriver/improv event was a fun evening, as advertised.

I was interviewed onstage by the fellow who organized it, Timothy Cooper, and the Farebeater Players then used some of my material and some of their own to do improv and sketches all based on the situation of riding in a taxicab.

Some pics:

That's me on the left, withTimothy Cooper.

Good one-handed technique.

One of the perks for a male cabbie is being able to eavesdrop on female conversation.

Very important to keep the mirror properly adjusted at all times.

Farebeater is a monthly event. To get info on upcoming shows, send an email to timothy.cooper@aya.yale.edu.

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And while you're at your keypad, don't forget to click here for Pictures From A Taxi.

Hear Ye, Hear Ye

Here's an announcement on very little notice, I know.

On this coming Saturday night, Aug. 30th, at 10:30 pm, I will be appearing with the famous Upright Citizens Brigade in the East Village for a short evening of improv. It's the latest installment of an ongoing, monthly series called "Farebeater" about NYC cab drivers. Previous guests of the show have been fellow taxi bloggers Melissa Plaut and John McDonagh.

I will be interviewed on stage for 10 minutes or so about my taxi-driving stories, then the players will do improv based on the material I give them. It should be a lot of fun. I am told it will be about an hour of impromptu performance by some of the most talented people in this arena.

Where Is It? In a theater called Under St. Mark's, 94 St. Mark's Place (that's another name for "8th Street"), between 1st Avenue and Avenue A in the East Village, Manhattan.

How Do I Get There? In studying the NYC subway map, it looks like there are 3 possibilities: take the N train to the 8th Street station, or take the Lexington Avenue line 4, 5, or 6 (whichever train is a local) to the Astor Place station, or connect to the L line on 14th Street and take it to the 1st Avenue station. Or just take a cab, for chrissake!

What Does It Cost? A paltry $6, the same amount you would pay to go 3 blocks in a cab... if you're a big tipper.

So if you are in the city this Saturday night, come on by and say hello. Should be fun.

The Power of Communication

To the experienced eye of a veteran cabbie, the mere appearance of certain people in the back seat translates immediately into misery. You know instantly that this ride is going to be an exercise in suffering, anxiety, and endurance.

That's how it was a couple of days ago at 6:30 pm at 30th and 5th. A pair of perfectly pleasant passengers were replaced before the door could be closed upon her by a middle-aged woman who said these dreaded words as she settled in:

"Will you take me to Brooklyn?"

She might as well have reached forward and twisted my ear or tweaked my nose. A ride to Brooklyn at this time of the evening to a cabbie is money lost. It means he will have to trek it back to Manhattan through rush hour traffic without a passenger. And that is dead time when he would have been making money during this same time if this damned passenger had not gotten in.

Of course a cabbie can just refuse the ride, even though it is illegal to do so. But then he runs the risk of having a problem with the passenger who may decide to bring the matter up with the Taxi and Limousine Commission which will no doubt fine him hundreds of dollars or even suspend his license for the offense. With this in mind, plus having within me a sense of fair play, I long ago stopped refusing rides. And so, with a tone in my voice that conveyed the emotion of apathy if you listened carefully, I said to her these words of my own:

"Uh, yeah, it's okay."

"Take the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel to the Prospect Expressway, then take Ocean Parkway to Foster Avenue and make a left."

"Okay, got it."

It had gotten worse. Not only did she want to go to Brooklyn, she wanted to go to the Kensington section of Brooklyn, which is relatively deep into the borough. Not as deep as Canarsie or Sheepshead Bay, but it was no quick trip over the bridge, either. It would mean 20 to 30 minutes of dead time, the equivalent of throwing twenty dollars out the window.

I pulled out into the traffic of 5th Avenue with a scowl on my face and took a look at her in the mirror as I headed downtown. Oh, god, no. She looked like the John Travolta character in Hairspray. Chubby, bouffant hairdo, like she'd gotten on a bus in 1963 and never gotten off. Here was a person who, in my judgement, surely spent the bulk of her time eating chocolates and watching the soaps and would also turn out to be self-indulgent and mean. I waited for the sniping to begin.

It didn't take long.

"Do you think the Brooklyn Bridge would be as good as the tunnel at this time?" she asked.

I told her since it was rush hour I thought the tunnel was a better choice because it usually has less traffic than the bridge and brought us out further into Brooklyn, thus enabling us to avoid a section of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway which is normally a mess at this time of day. I also mentioned that although there is a $4.15 toll for the tunnel, I thought it was worth it. But that, of course, was up to her.

No reply.

I continued driving south on 5th Avenue and hit a red light at the end of the avenue where Washington Square Park is located. I was feeling some tension in the air so I decided to try to lighten the mood by pointing out a flaw in the statue of George Washington which stands with grand authority at the base of the Washington Square Arch.

"Do you see the statue of Washington over there?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Do you think his head is too small?"

She leaned forward to get a better view. "No, it looks right to me."

I now knew for sure that trouble was coming. I have pointed out Washington's undersized head to a couple of hundred people over the years and with only one exception has anyone failed to agree with me that, indeed, the head is too small. And that one exception confessed a minute later that his own head was too small, so his opinion was jaded. So this woman was actually the first person of all time to disagree. God help me.

I drove on without continuing the conversation. I went west on Waverly Place and hit a red light as we approached 7th Avenue South. And then, her whiny voice:

"Why are you driving west? The tunnel is on the east side."

"No, it's on the west side. You enter it on West Street. Maybe you're thinking of the Queens Midtown Tunnel."

"No, the Brooklyn tunnel."

"It's on the west side, believe me."

"This isn't how the other drivers go."

"How do they go?"

"They take the highway on the east side and then they go into the tunnel."

"If you go that way you have to go all the way around the tip of the island and then come up north again on the west side. It's one way to go but I think this way is shorter and faster. Anyway, the tunnel is on the west side, not the east side."

The silence returned, and this was a bad thing. It was a silence that nevertheless spoke the words, "I don't believe you. You're trying to rip me off." The hostility was now palpable, but I did what any cabbie would do in this situation - I suppressed my own resentment and drove on. I made a right on Leroy Street, following a brilliant route that takes you around the Holland Tunnel traffic by wending through a few curvy streets in Greenwich Village before landing you out on West Street. But my passenger did not appreciate the efficiency of the ride she was getting. She had morphed into a type of passenger I refer to as the evil jockey and was becoming more bold in the saddle.

"Why are we way over here?" she moaned. "We should be on the east side."

I had reached my personal tipping point. "Look," I replied firmly, "you can see for yourself on the map on the tv screen. The Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel entrance is on West Street. And that's on the west side of Manhattan. You don't even have to take my word for it. " (All NYC taxis now have a GPS tracking map on a television monitor that's in the rear compartment.)

My comment was enough to initiate a new period of stony silence which lasted about a minute. And then, in a voice just loud enough for me to hear it:

"Well, this sure is the long way..."

It turned out to be the breaking point. I made eye contact with her through the mirror and laid down the law: "Look," I said, "I'm taking you on the best route I know. If you keep implying that I'm trying to rip you off I'm going to take it as intentional harrassment and I'm going to end the ride. Do you understand?"

There was a pause much akin to the reaction a boxer might have if he'd just received a direct hit. Her reply was a bit odd. "Yes, sir," she said, "I understand."

We continued down West Street toward the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. Not surprisingly, the atmosphere in the cab had gone from stormy weather to an Arctic freeze. After an exchange like that, in the close quarters of a taxicab, the drawbridges over the moats are drawn up and the hostile parties retreat into their own castles. I knew this would happen, but I'd decided I'd rather endure the rest of the ride in that kind of unexpressed resentment than to put up with all these covert little shots. So be it.

Now, the one thing you hope for in a situation like this is that the ride comes to its conclusion as quickly as possible. The worst thing would be that you'd be sitting still in a traffic jam. So, of course, that's exactly what happened next. There was a jam-up as we approached the Ground Zero area and the traffic was reduced to a crawl. I looked out my window. She looked out her window. A couple of minutes ticked by.

And then the most remarkable thing happened.

"Did you see the convention last night?" she asked, meaning the Democratic National Convention which had begun the previous evening.

Her initiating a normal conversation under the circumstances was completely against the rules of Hostile People Not Speaking To Each Other. I was stunned.

"I saw the highlights on the news," I replied.

"Did you see Teddy Kennedy?" she asked.

"Yes, that was amazing," I said, "what a dramatic moment."

"Yes, he was wonderful," she replied.

The conversation continued into a lively and friendly back and forth about the Democratic Convention, city politics, Obama, Giuliani, McCain, and the way the taxi industry is governed. I couldn't help but notice that the more we spoke to each other, the more we liked each other's company and the mental ridges that had seemed so solid just minutes earlier had evaporated. This change of tone was against all the odds.

The discussion went on, and by the time we got to Foster Avenue it had become one of those rides that I was enjoying so much I didn't want it to end. We even continued the chat for a minute after we got to her destination to make sure all points of the conversation had been adequately finalized. She then handed me the fare with an above-average tip.

I offered her the usual comment I make when an enjoyable ride reaches its conclusion: "Take care, it's been nice talking with you," I said.

"It was nice talking to you, too," she said as she opened the door, "once we made up."

We both laughed at her observation, and she was on her way.

I couldn't help reflecting about this ride as I made my way back to Manhattan. This woman had gone in my reality from an unfortunate stereotype that was living up to its expectation to a likable and enjoyable traveling companion, all because she had decided to change hostility into affinity by communicating.

It shows us how quickly and easily relationships can change for the better. This could be said not only of personal relationships but of relationships between groups and nations as well.

And that is the power of communication.

Taxi Driver Cop, Part Two

If you've been reading this blog for awhile you know that I'm big on the karma vs. coincidence thing. I'm not an extremist - I do think there's such a thing as coincidence. Let's say an asteroid has been on a collision course with Earth for a billion years and it comes down on YOU. That's a coincidence. But if you've been playing a favorite song in your head for an half an hour and then the person who sings that song from out of nowhere suddenly gets in your cab, that's karma. It's a your universe being senior to the physical universe or the universes of others thing. There's an energy involved.

So what happened merely 30 minutes after my pathetic attempt to be a taxi driver cop with the fake cab (see my last post) cannot be written off as coincidence. Karma, baby!

It was a bit after 4 in the morning, the time of night when I'm looking for "one more fare" (the shift ends at 5 a.m.). I was cruising up 6th Avenue, approaching 15th Street, when something caught my eye on the right side of the avenue. There was a yellow, medallion taxi stopped in what should be a moving lane and a twenty-something guy standing there with a bicycle on the cab's right side, opposite the driver. I pulled up a bit behind them and stopped, thinking maybe the guy wanted to put his bike in the trunk and for some reason the driver didn't want to do that and maybe I would get the fare for myself. I have no problem putting bicycles in trunks.

But what was happening was actually the beginning of some kind of a confrontation. The guy with the bicycle started screaming at the driver. I couldn't hear what he was saying nor could I even see the driver of the cab. But I could see that for some reason this guy with the bicycle was extremely angry. Right away I decided that I wanted no part of him and locked my doors. I was about to pull away and continue up 6th, but before I could do that, the situation escalated. He started whacking at the taxi's windows with his arm, perhaps trying to break them.

For me - and this is one of the things I like about driving a cab - it was one of those little instantaneous moments of truth. I could drive away. Or I could stay there.

I stayed there.

I had no idea what this guy was so pissed off about, but now it didn't matter to me. He was attacking a taxi and that zone of human activity is mine, so I was on the side of the taxi and its driver. Even so, I had no intention of getting out of my cab and confronting the guy. I just thought that the presence of another yellow cab might act as a deterrent to him.

To the contrary.

He then lifted his bicycle in the air and slammed it against the side of the taxi, breaking the side view mirror off. I'm not sure what category of crime this would fit into - assault with a deadly bicycle? - but it was felony stuff, no doubt. I expected him to then take off, but instead he just stood there and removed his bicycle chain from its prior location, around his neck, and held it in his hand in anticipation of the driver coming out of his cab to attack him, which would have been the all-too-common response to the stimulus. The "thinking" here is that sufficient motivation has been given to warrant a violent reaction, so what he really wants to do, pummel the driver into a paste, could be justified as "self-defense". Psycho.

But, amazingly, the driver did not get out - he just stayed in his cab. The two-wheeled assailant stood there for a quarter of a minute or so and then, deciding that the game was over, walked his bike across 6th Avenue and turned south toward 14th Street when he set foot on the sidewalk. I backed my cab up to the intersection of 14th Street and saw him pick up his bike and begin to walk down the stairs of the subway station there.

The need for justice runs deep in the human psyche. In the relative scale of criminal activity what I had just witnessed was not that big a deal, although it wasn't nothing. Yet I felt something stir deep within that demanded the situation be rectified. Even so, in this society, one is entering a minefield when action is taken. Considerations of physical danger, retribution, lawsuits, lawyers, legal fees, and enormous stress set in the moment one decides to take it upon oneself to do something about it. But there is one thing you can always do, although in these situations it never seems to work.

You can call the cops.

That's what you're supposed to do, right?

So I got out my cell phone and called 911. Inevitably, whenever you dial 911 with a need for immediate assistance, the person on the other end seems to be in no rush at all. I believe it's a game they play. As I tried to communicate the urgency of the situation, the driver of the cab, an Indian fellow, finally emerged from his vehicle, also speaking into a cell phone, and walked toward me. As I explained to him that his assailant had gone down into the subway and that I was calling the cops, the guy suddenly reappeared on the street, bicycle in hand, and began nonchalantly walking down 14th Street toward 7th Avenue. The window of opportunity for having this guy arrested was rapidly disappearing.

What happened next could be described by some as a modern urban miracle. There is an axiom of life in the city that is as unshakable as "you can't fight city hall" and "shit happens". It is this: "you can never find a cop when you need one".

What happened was that, perhaps for the first time in recorded history, I found a cop when I needed one. A cruiser was coming along on 14th Street. I flagged it down, explained the situation to the officers, and they took the Indian driver in their back seat to go hunt for the guy with the bicycle while I kept an eye on his taxi (which he left with the engine running). Within a minute three or four more cruisers arrived on the scene and the guy and his bicycle were under arrest. An officer returned to me to take my name and a statement, thanked me, and said they had all they would need. I wished the Indian driver good luck and was on my way.

The whole incident took about 10 minutes.

And I'm thinking as I zipped up 6th Avenue, still looking for one more fare, wait a minute, this never happens. Some anger management clown with a sense of entitlement in the area of taxi drivers bashes in a cab and then gets arrested?

This never happens!

But it did.

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It kind of makes you want to click here for Pictures From A Taxi, does it not?

Taxi Driver Cop, Part One

Somewhere along the line, many years ago, for some reason I decided that the taxi industry in New York City was "mine". There was enough about it that was a right fit for me to make me not look at its problems as being somebody else's problems. I developed a willingness to be at cause in this particular sector of human activitiy. You could call it a sense of responsibility.

And that's how I became a taxi driver cop.

I find that if I happen to see something very wrong that involves a taxicab on the street, my impulse is to do something about it if I can, within limits. You don't want to put yourself in danger, of course. But if possible, I will act.

And that's what happened last Tuesday night at 3:30 a.m. I was taking a twenty-something female, who'd been working late, to her home in Brooklyn from Midtown. As I glided down Broadway without traffic something caught my eye a couple of blocks north of Houston Street. It was a fake taxi cruising down the avenue just in front of us.

There are a few of these guys out there. They buy themselves a Ford Crown Vic, the vehicle that is the most used as a taxicab in New York, paint it yellow, put a rooflight on top, and do their best to make it look like a legitimate cab. These vehicles may actually be a legal cabs in some other part of New York State, such as Westchester County, but it is totally illegal for them to be used to pick up passengers from the street in the city. That is strictly the province of the New York medallion taxis. (Click here to see my related post, Interview With The Vampire.)

I can tell at a glance when I see one of these guys. Some of the little things that most people wouldn't recognize as outpoints, such as the medallion number or various markings on the cab, are obvious to me.

I pointed the taxi out to my passenger. This would be a good topic of conversation.

"Do you see that cab in front of us?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"Would you get into that cab if it stopped for you on the street?"

"Yeah, I guess so, why?"

"That's a fake cab!" I exclaimed with a bit of dramatic emphasis.

"It is?" How can you tell?"

"Well, for one thing, it's a '97 Crown Vic. Cars that old aren't on the streets as taxis anymore. Also, the medallion identification letter is wrong. See how he's got the letter "I" between the other three numbers? We don't use that letter in the medallion identification system."

"Oh, wow!"

She was impressed, but I thought I could do more. We had stopped for a red light and were able to pull right up next to the fake cab. I looked into the compartment and saw that the driver was a white man in his forties. I had never seen this guy before and decided to let him know that I knew what he was up to. Yeah, let him know that he might think he's clever in stealing business from legitimate taxi drivers, but we know what he's doing and he won't get away with it forever. It was Taxi Driver Cop time.

I called over to him through our opened windows.

"Hey!"

He looked over at me, a bit sheepishly I thought, probably wondering if in fact I was an undercover cop. My passenger was taking it all in with great interest and I have to admit that it did cross my mind that this little macho display might be the kind of thing that turned her on, you never know about women.

"I see what you're doing," I barked in accusation. "You'd better not pick anyone up. I'm watching you!"

I don't see the point in making an attempt to be courteous to a person like this. Here's someone who's blatantly stealing business away from cabbies who are playing by the rules. And, what, we don't have enough competition amongst ourselves wihout him? Fuck him.

He looked at me with a kind of blank expression on his face. This was odd, because I'd expect his reaction to be one of either hostility or fear, but if anything he just looked a little confused. And then he spoke.

"We're making a movie!" he said. And he pointed down Broadway to the next block.

I looked down the street. Parked along the curb were several huge movie trailers and some heavy equipment that are used in big-budget productions. This "fake taxicab" was a movie prop!

I looked back at the driver. He looked back at me with an expression on his face that I believe could be interpeted as meaning, "What are you? An idiot?"

I exhibited one of those shit-eating smiles that people are known to put on their faces when they have just made complete jackasses out of themselves.

"Oh," I said... "never mind!"

It took another fifteen minutes to get the passenger to her house in Brooklyn. But somehow it seemed like an hour to me. You know that expression about how time flies when you're having fun? Well, it turns out time crawls when you're having humiliation.

********

However, time really flies if you click here for Pictures From A Taxi. Or so I've heard.

I'm A Free Agent

Baseball is king in New York City and has been for over a hundred years. So when the Mets fired their manager, Willie Randolph, this week it wasn't surprising that I had a few fares in which this was the topic of conversation. One fan, who happened to live in the building where Babe Ruth died on West 29th Street (the French Building, formerly the French Hospital), was particularly passionate about the turn of events. On and on he railed about the injustice of it all, the enormity of the incompetence of the owners, and the complicity of the players.

It was as if he was a member of the team himself.

When he finally calmed down, he noticed that someone was actually in the cab with him (me) and asked the question I love to hear from baseball fans: "So who do you root for, the Mets or the Yankees?"

The reason I love being asked this is because it gives me an opportunity to expound on my philosophy as a fan to the passenger, and hopefully create a convert. My answer is this: "I'm a free agent." It always brings a smile.

What is a fan who's a free agent? It's a fan who has thrown off the shackles of loyalty and set down conditions of his own by which he may choose to root or not root for a particular team. Yes, I know this kind of fan will be accused by some of not being a "true" fan or of being a "fair-weather" fan. Phooey. That's just manure that's been fed to you by propagandists. Let me tell you something. As a fan, you have a right to get your money's worth and you have a right to your own dignity. Listen here...

My history as a baseball fan has been a torturous one. I began life with the New York Giants in the 1950s for the very good reason that most people have when they become fans of teams: it was the team my father rooted for. Everything was fine until 1958 when I noticed that the first of many knives that were eventually to be found sticking in my back had been planted there by one Horace Stoneham, the owner of the team. He had moved my Giants, and my Willie Mays, to San Francisco.

Think for a moment, if you will, of the enormity of the betrayal involved here. Millions of little kids being told by their fathers that the heroes whose pictures they worship on their baseball cards were no longer around, they didn't play for "us" anymore. Little kids who had spent so many hours memorizing the most trivial details about these men - these Giants - were now being told it was all for nothing. Willie Mays, Don Mueller, Whitey Lockman, Johnny Antonelli - it was just a hoax. They don't really give a damn about you. Beat it, kid.

Nevertheless, when the Mets were created in 1962, I was first in line. Throughout all my teenage years I was devoted to the team, never deviating in my loyalty, never considering switching over to the Yankees even though they had great teams and the Mets were pathetic. And then they let Tom Seaver go because of a contract dispute. And then they painted Shea Stadium a garish blue and put five-story high neon stick figures of baseball players up as decorations. And then they installed a gigantic apple that comes out of a gigantic hat whenever a Met hits a home run.

I was developing issues with this team that were still unclear to me due to the blindness of my devotion. But in 1985, just before that season was about to begin, fate put a player of the Mets in my cab and a process of clarification began. His name was Rusty Staub, a veteran outfielder and slugger, who had been around the Major Leagues for over twenty years and was about to begin his final season as a player. Rusty was a popular figure in New York. He owned a restaurant on the Upper East Side and was reknown as a chef, even doing commercials for American Express in a chef's outfit.

Well, I of course was excited when "Le Grand Orange" (as he was dubbed when he played in Montreal due to his red hair) and the pretty blonde who was with him plopped themselves down on my back seat. As we set off for his destination (his own restaurant) I asked Rusty how it was looking for the Mets in the upcoming season. And I was pleased to see that he was quite willing to talk baseball. There was nothing aloof about the guy, and he went into quite a bit of detail about what had been going on with the Mets over the winter.

But there was something in the way he talked about the team that caught my attention. Whenever he spoke about the Mets, he always referred to them in the third person. He used the pronoun "they". Not "we" - "they". "They" signed this guy. "They" are going to give a certain pitcher a chance to make the team.

After dropping off Le Grand and the blonde, my attention fixed on this observation. The thought occurred to me that whenever I listen to a sports talk show on the radio, the callers invariably speak about the team they root for in the first person. We need pitching. We need to make a trade. As if they're on the team themselves. And yet here was a guy who was actually ON the team who didn't think of himself as a "Met". To Rusty the "Mets" were the people who acquire and release players and sign the paychecks. But he correctly knew who he was: he was a perpetual free agent who was currently leasing his services to an organization known as the New York Mets.

The psychology of this is fascinating. Apparently if you can get the potential fan to make an emotional attachment to your franchise you can lure him into forever living vicariously through the exploits of your players. Obviously, this is true. I had made that emotional attachment. But I couldn't get the thought out of my mind that if a guy who's actually on the team does not have it, then why should I?

I had reached an epiphany of sorts. My understanding had exceeded my emotion. I had become a free agent.

I started looking at baseball differently. I was appreciating the game itself more than I had before. And I looked at the Mets differently. Was this team worthy of my time? If I was going to pick out one organization to know thoroughly and to care about, should this be the one? After carefully evaluating my options, I decided that in fact the Mets and I were a good match. I continued to buy newspapers in order to read about them, to spend precious hours watching them on television, and to keep their station locked in on the radio dial in my cab.

But that changed in 1989. After assembling a championship team with a great cast of characters in the previous five years, the Mets inexplicably started to disembowel themselves, culminating in a bone-headed trade of star players Lenny Dykstra and Roger McDowell to the Phillies for an infielder named Juan Samuel. I exercised the option in my contract and traded myself to the Yankees.

Eventually I sat back and took a good, long look at what it is I expect of a team with which I was willing to enter into a committed relationship. Here are my four little rules:

1. Be competitive. You don't have to win. You don't even have to make the playoffs. But you need to come close. When September rolls around, you should have at least an outside shot at the wild card.

2. Assemble an interesting cast of characters and keep them. One of the great charms of baseball is that over time you can get to know some of the players extremely well. Good teams cultivate a core group of star players who are the backbone of the team. You don't trade these guys. If you lose them to free agency, okay. But you don't send them away.

3. Don't insult my intelligence. I don't come to a game to hear loud rock music, see fireworks, or watch a cartoon-character roll around on the infield. I come to see a game and to learn more about the game.

4. Don't allow criminals or cheats to be on the team. Somebody can throw a ball 98 miles per hour but enjoys torturing dogs in his free time? Pass on that guy.
Four little rules. If you own a baseball team and want to keep me on your roster, you'd better follow them. Otherwise, I'll walk. And it's always my walk year.

********

And when I walk, I usually wind up here (at Pictures From A Taxi).

How To Get A Taxi Driver To Slow Down

Being that I am perceived by so many to be the last English-speaking, American white guy to be driving a cab in New York City, I have often found myself serving as the default complaint department for the entire taxi industry. And the complaint I hear most often is about a ride from hell in which a cabbie drove 90 miles per hour on a highway, zigzagged between huge trucks, tailgated every vehicle on the road, and yet somehow arrived at the destination without an accident.

Interestingly, whenever I hear this story it is told by the survivor with a big smile on his face. Apparently danger is great fun if you come out alive. Nevertheless, I always ask these two questions:

1) Did you put on your seat belt?

2) Did you ask the driver to slow down?

Invariably the answers I get to both questions are, "Uhhh... noooo... ha-ha-ha-ha."

Now as far as the seat belts are concerned, what can I say, obviously anyone should have put them on when being transported by a maniac, and there's no point in belaboring the point. But it's this other question that intrigues me. What is it that stops a person who clearly feels his life is in danger (which it is) from speaking up?

Well, from what I can best perceive, it's fear. Fear that the comment will further anger the driver and that will make him drive even faster, and then there will be an accident for sure. So people just say a silent prayer and hold on tight to their rosary beads and the hand straps.

These passengers, however, do understand, even if it's just on an instinctive level, that asking a driver to slow down is entering a minefield of taxicab etiquette. The truth is that, although a cabbie routinely receives substandard wages and a lower social status than his job deserves, one thing he always feels he has is his professional pride. Like being insulted by a passenger who gives directions to simple destinations (see my last post), being asked to slow down clearly implies that the driver is deficient in the one thing at which he knows he has superhuman powers: the ability to drive an automobile.

And for the most part, this is true. In New York City, anyone who has been driving a cab for two years or more is very likely to have mastered the craft of controlling a car to a level that is not understood by the average driver. It's an ability not only to be at cause over his own vehicle, but to be able to predict the motion of all other particles in the playing field - cars, buses, police cars, trucks, fire engines, ambulances, motorcycles, bicycles, pedestrians, maniacs on roller blades, pigeons, and dogs - and make adjustments to his own motion without even thinking about it. It can be compared to a pianist whose fingers can play concertos while what he's actually thinking about it is just how much emphasis he should give to a note that is still two minutes away.

Indeed, one of the most treasured compliments ever given to me as a driver was from a passenger in my cab who turned out to be an instructor of racing car drivers. He was aware of the nuances in my driving and commented to me about it. Music to my ears!

But what can you do when the driver you are stuck with appears to be not a maestro but a madman? Aside from calling your family to tell them that you love them, here's the solution:

1) Compliment the driver on his driving skill. I mean, heap it on. Say something like, "You know, I've been watching the way you've been moving through traffic and I gotta tell you, you have awesome driving ability. It's like you're an acrobat in the circus or something. Really amazing."

2) And then say this: "But, listen, I think I ate something a little while ago that's not agreeing with me. I'm feeling like I may get sick. Would it be possible for you to drive a little slower please? "

It will work, I guarantee it. You've removed the pride button and you've given him his own personal reason for cooperating with you. The three most feared things in the life of a taxi driver are death, paralysis, and somebody throwing up in your cab.

The funny thing is, I've been giving this advice to passengers for years and then recently I had a passenger ask me to slow down because she was feeling a little nauseous!

Irony!

But that's what life is like, isn't it?

********

And life is also like this: clicking here for Pictures From A Taxi.

How To Insult A Taxi Driver

Taxi drivers become pretty much immune to the unintended insults of passengers. Someone from out of town gives you a twenty-cent tip on a $5.80 fare and then tells you to "have a good night". Okay, he doesn't know about tipping. No big deal, it sails right over your shoulder.

Or a guy and a girl and go beyond the socially acceptable sitting close together while looking affectionately into each other's eyes and break out into a lip-locking, saliva-exchanging embrace, as if there wasn't another human being sitting right there in front of them. You chalk it up to crazy kids in love (with alcohol) and it flies out the window.

Or something as common as a person getting in the cab and barking out the destination without saying "please". Humph, well, okay, not gonna condemn a person in the imaginary Court of Intolerable Behavior just because of that. We'll give the guy another chance.

But there is one thing I find particularly difficult to endure. One thing that sets off a spark that gets an immediate reaction unless I practically gag myself to stop bullets from shooting out of my mouth. And I'll bet you wouldn't guess what it is.

Being told to drive faster? Or slower?

Being accused of going the wrong way?

Being asked why a smart person like yourself is driving a taxicab?

Being told how competent the cab drivers in London are?

No, it's none of these things, although the one about London cab drivers hints of it. Here's what it is: being given directions to a destination that anyone would know unless you were a complete moron. For example, a person gets in and says he's going to Penn Station. Then he tells you how to get there. He doesn't ask you if you know where Penn Station is, although that would be almost as bad. He just tells you how to get there, assuming you don't already know.

This drives me over the edge. And it happened a few nights ago.

A twenty-something guy and girl jumped in the cab at around midnight at 6th Avenue and 36th Street. In a heavily-accented voice, the young man told me they were going to 75th Street between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues. Now, this is easy navigation. Really easy. All a cabbie would have to know in order to carry out this assignment would be a) where is Columbus Avenue and in what direction does it run, b) where is Amsterdam Avenue and in what direction does that run, c) where is Central Park West and in what direction does that run, and d) in what direction does 75th Street run?

All right, there might be one other thing: where is 75th Street? The answer to that is that it's the one after 74th Street. The answers to the other questions are that Columbus is the same as 9th Avenue and runs downtown, Amsterdam is the same as 10th and runs uptown, Central Park West is the same as 8th Avenue and runs both uptown and downtown, and 75th Street, like almost all odd-numbered streets in Manhattan, runs west. I grant you that if you knew absolutely nothing about Manhattan, you would not know these things. However, if you were a taxi driver, you would have mastered these basics literally on your first day or two behind the wheel. Certainly within a week.

Unless you were a complete, utter, and hopeless moron.

So I rolled uptown with the green lights all the way up 6th Avenue until we reached the point where it ends at Central Park South (another name for 59th Street) and then I turned left, heading west toward 7th Avenue. My passengers were chatting quietly to each other and had not engaged me in conversation and I had paid no special attention to them, being content to listen to the oldies station that was playing softly on the radio. But then the guy began his massive faux pas by leaning forward and starting to speak.

"Take Central Park West to 75th Street and make a left," he said.

I bristled. This is like telling a hot dog vendor how to put mustard on a frankfurter. But it got worse.

"Central Park West," he explained, "is two-ways, so you can go uptown on it. 75th Street runs west - you can make a left turn onto it."

That was the end. This was the equivalent of telling the hot dog vendor why people like to put mustard on their frankfurters. I had to retaliate.

"Where are you from?" I asked him.

"Italy," he replied.

"I drive a taxi for 30 years," I said, "and then some guy from Italy gets in my cab and tells me how to get to 75th Street! That's like me telling you where Naples is... please... I'm going to shoot myself!"

Now even though my response was gift-wrapped in sarcasm, it was intended to point out the guy's insensitivity with some humor and get a laugh. I said the same thing once to a fellow from Sweden and he took it well. But the giovanotto (that's "young man" in Italian) did not. He sat there as cold as spumoni and didn't say a word. Clearly, I had offended him.

So what we suddenly had here was a) he unintentionally insulted me, b) I tried to retain my professional pride and unintentionally insulted him, and c) I realized the vibe in the cab was now uncomfortably hostile so, always assuming that more communication is better than less, I tried to lighten things up by making small talk.

"By the way, what's the name of the body of water that adjoins Naples?" I asked. It was just something to say.

I was ignored.

Now I was offended again. I was damned if I was going to sit there and be insulted and then be insulted again by being ignored. I raised my voice slightly and put an edge on it. "Excuse me," I repeated, "what's the name of the body of water that adjoins Naples?"

"The Tyrrhenian Sea," the girl replied in her own pleasantly accented voice.

"Thank you."

And that was it on the peace-making. The remaining 60 seconds of the ride were spent in a silent chilliness that could be likened to the Arctic Ocean at midnight, with a supercheap tip at the end and a brief, two-way staring fight between myself in the cab and the guy as he ascended the steps to his brownstone.

I felt bad that what should have been a pleasant ride home for these people had instead wound up in a whirlpool of hostility.

But not as bad as I would have felt if I'd let the insult go by unchallenged.

***********

And also not as bad as a I would have felt if I'd neglected to mention that you can click here for Pictures From A Taxi.

Tagged

I have been tagged by my cyber buddy Jodester, author of the never-fails-to-bring-a-smile blog, DON'T PANIC, and now I am charged with the responsibility of writing six "random things" about myself, and further charged with the task of tagging six other bloggers. And not only that, there was an implication that it would be rude not to participate.

Oh god, the burden of these social commitments! Now I know how Henry Kissinger must feel!

My approach to my own blog has been that it's more about them, not so much about me. Or maybe I should say it's about me commenting about them. My view is that it's more virtuous to be interested than it is to be interesting. (Not to say that there's anything wrong with being interesting, too, of course.) So having said that and therefore washed away any guilt about becoming self-indulgent, okay, Jodester, here are six random things...

1. I am a creature of habit. I eat almost the same exact meals every day of the week.

2. When I was 19 I was a student in Kenya for half a year and narrowly escaped encounters with a rhinoceros, an elephant, and a swarm of killer bees.

3. I was at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, where Dylan "went electric".

4. I grew up in Levittown, Long Island, the world's first sprawling suburban housing development. (The house I grew up in, the 1951 model, cost my parents $8,000 and came with a television built into the living room wall.)

5. My oldest and closest childhood friend was Bill O'Reilly.

6. In 30 years of taxi driving, I have never hit a pedestrian. Every time you think you've got one, somehow they slip out of the way!

Okay, I am now tagging the following bloggers:

1. Lucky 327 at NYC Taxi. A fellow NYC taxi driver, writer, and photographer.

2. Fee at Five Corners at Claonairigh. She writes about family life at a Scottish B&B. (No, I can't pronounce it, either.)

3. Angela at Pondring. Perhaps the world's greatest Dave Matthews fan.

4. John at Dublin Taxi. Dublin taxi driver who claims there are more taxis in Dublin than in NYC. Can this be true???

5. Bob at Taxi Tales. Insightful taxi driver in a place called Furness, Cumbria, in the U.K.

6. Mike at Mike's Mixed Memories. A retired Maine-er with a wealth of knowledge.

The rules, if you want to play, are:

- link to the person who tagged you (me)

- post the rules on your blog

- write six random things about yourself in a blog post

- tag six people you know in your post

- let each person know they are tagged by writing a comment on their blog

- let the tagger know your post has been published.




And one other thing. Just click here for Pictures From A Taxi!

A Lab, A Mortician, And A Gorbachev

Some recent "fares of the night"...

Sunday, April 6, 10:20 pm - My long dog-less streak finally ended with the arrival of Jake, a Golden Lab, and Mitchell, his buddy, who traveled from 14th and 8th in Chelsea down to Battery Park City in Lower Manhattan. It had been so long since I'd had a dog in my cab - not one since November - that I was beginning to think my taxi had been entered onto some kind of canine blacklist. Why were the dogs avoiding me? Didn't seem fair, especially considering the great publicity I've been giving them. Maybe it's just that people don't bring their dogs outside as much in the cold weather as they do in the warm - a law of averages thing. But now that it's springtime, c'mon dogs, no excuses - you've got my scent.

Anyway, Mitchell tells me that Jake is 11 years old and is a great companion. He and Jake hooked up when a former girlfriend wanted a dog. But when that relationship ended, Mitchell's bond to Jake was stronger than the girlfriend's, so it's been the two of them ever since.

Monday, April 14, 2:00 am - it sometimes happens in a conversation that person A is just dying to tell person B something that will really impress person B, really create the BIG EFFECT, and the slightest provocation will be reason enough for person A to suddenly detour the conversation in the direction of the shocking revelation. It was like that on a late night ride I had way out to Fresh Meadows in Queens with a 30 year-old woman who, as we headed into the Queens Midtown Tunnel, responded to my comment that the congestion tax was "dead" by saying that she is studying to be a mortician.

Well, you know that when someone says that that the rest of the ride will be spent discussing dead bodies and undertakers. Someone tells you she sells insurance, no big deal. Someone tells you she's a chef, great, that sounds nice. Someone tells you she's a mortician - you've got my full attention. It's like someone telling you she's a hooker. Full attention.

The story from my passenger was that she'd been studying to become a forensic psychologist - that's someone who counsels criminals - but realized as she was nearing the completion of her schooling that the idea of listening to people tell her about the horrible crimes they'd committed was utterly reprehensible to her and she'd be miserable doing it. She decided she preferred to work with dead people (she actually said this) and began a course of education leading her into that field.

So how do you become a mortician? First you have to go to a college that has a mortuary science department and get a bachelor's degree. And then you have to do an internship in real funeral parlors.

"What do you have to do to finish the internship?" I asked.

"You've got to do forty cadavers," my passenger replied.

Looking at her in the rear view mirror - she had shoulder-length, straight black hair and a pale complexion - the squeamish thought crossed my mind that this is the last person to get her hands on you, the last person to touch you, yet this was a person you would never see. I found myself waxing poetic on her, equating her in my mind to an angel who helps prepare the soul for its journey into the next life. But this balloon fizzled when the conversation turned to the business of undertaking.

"What do you think of cremation?" I inquired.

"Not much," she replied with a scowl.

I knew what she meant. I feel the same way about pedestrians.

Tuesday, April 15th, 1:06 am - like the mortician, this passenger was a person who needed only the slightest prompting to suddenly tell me all about who he was. I picked him up on 52nd and 8th and, as we were driving uptown on Central Park West toward his 95th Street apartment, I mentioned that I sometimes see racoons crossing CPW late at night. For some reason this was all he needed to inform me, in a Russian accent, of two vital pieces of information:

a) that he was an accomplished artist, and

b) that he was Mikhail Gorbachev's nephew.

His name was Yuri Gorbachev and with his exuberance in telling me about his art, his uncle, and his affilitation with Absolut vodka, I think it would be fair to say Mr. Gorbachev could be described as the opposite of an introvert. He could also be described as a good sport as he playfully agreed to pose for this photograph:

If you'd like to find out more about him and his art, click here.

And as long as you're in a clicking mood, why not put your index finger to good use by clicking here for Pictures From A Taxi?

License Plates

I am a person who knows quite a bit about license plates - it's one of the little bonuses you get when you've been sitting in traffic jams for 30 years.

In the United States, each state has its own distinctive plate and most of these have a slogan imprinted on them, usually right beneath the numbers. Sometime in the '80s I thought it would be cool to memorize each state's slogan and then, once I'd done that, to challenge passengers to "ask me any state and I'll tell you the slogan" (if it has one). Rarely would I be stumped and it was (and hopefully still is) a little entertainment for my passengers, if they can tear themselves away from these damned televisions all NYC cabs now have in the rear compartment.

Most of these slogans are really advertisements for how great that state is or why you should go there and spend your money. Maine's slogan, for example, is "Vacationland". Louisiana's is "Sportsman's Paradise". But there are a few that go against the grain, and these are my personal favorites:

1. Oklahoma - "Oklahoma Is OK". This slogan is taken from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! and if you know the show and the song itself you would know that what they're really telling you is, hey, Oklahoma is a really swell place, why don't you come on over sometime? But if you weren't familiar with the show you could easily imagine that the people who thought this thing up must have low self-esteem. "Oklahoma? Well, to be honest, it's not really that great... it's, well, you know... okay."

2. Missouri - "The Show-Me State". Here's a slogan that clearly says, "I don't trust you." Which is awfully close to just saying, "Fuck you!" Gotta love a state that's upfront with its hostility. But maybe if they start to feel better about things they might consider changing it to "The Anger Management State".

3. New Hampshire - "Live Free Or Die". Uh, aren't we being just a bit extreme here? Couldn't we work out a compromise? How about "Live Free Or Live Not Quite Completely Free"? Or "Live Free Or Live A Bit Encumbered By Circumstances We're Not Fully In Control Of"? I mean, do we have to die?

Here in the States, if owners of cars pay an extra fee, they can have their plates personalized. These kinds of plates can be messages which have meaning only to a few people, like this one...

...or they can be Messages To The World, which can be quite interesting. Now that I'm armed with a camera, I've taken to snapping shots of these kinds of plates whenever I can pull up to them at a red light. So, for your viewing pleasure, please check these out...

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Say what? You want more? Well, dude, just click here for Pictures From A Taxi.

Psycho

Driving a cab in New York City is like having a private little observation booth from which to observe that most peculiar of the Earth's species, the human race. Any broad observation lends itself to categorization and people can be placed into all sorts of categories, of course, but the two most important ones from a taxi driver's point of view are simply the ones all passengers are placed into as they enter the cab: okay or not okay.

"Okay" is anyone who doesn't cause trouble and pays the fare.

"Not okay" is everyone else.

Like workers on an assembly line who deal with the same particles day after day, a taxi driver can usually spot the slightly defective widget almost instantly. It's a filtering system that automatically detects the oddity and sets off an alarm in the driver's mind that commands him to watch this one carefully.

But every once in awhile somebody slips through. He or she seemed fine but then, oh my god, I have been fooled - this person is trouble! I have a certain amount of anger and frustration when I find myself in this situation (because I should have been sharp enough to spot it), but I also have some fascination at being given an opportunity to observe this type of personality in action. Because, after so many years of driving a cab, if someone can slip under my radar, then, man, this guy must be good! And from observing this person, I may be able to learn something.

All of which leads me into telling you about a fare I had a couple of Saturdays ago.

I picked up this person at Penn Station a bit after midnight. He was a twenty-something white male with neatly combed dark hair, normal height and weight, and rather conservative looking, like he might be a young banker or something. He wanted me to take him way out to Douglaston into the farthest reaches of Queens, close to a twenty-mile ride. It's not a fare I want on a Saturday because Manhattan is totally busy all night long and with this passenger I will have close to half an hour of dead time on the return ride without anyone in the back seat. And that's money lost. Nevertheless, I gave him no attitude whatsoever and just started driving across 36th Street en route to the Queens-Midtown Tunnel.

Without my even thinking about it, my passenger had cleared the "Okay" hurdle - he showed no signs of being a candidate for inappropriate conduct, danger, or beating the fare - so I wasn't paying any special attention to him. He told me that when I got out of the tunnel to take the Long Island Expressway to the Douglaston Parkway exit and that he would direct me from that point on. That was fine with me because I haven't had a fare to that part of Queens for five years and certainly don't know the streets out there. So off we went.

As is my normal procedure when the passenger is alone and it's going to be a long ride, I tossed out a couple of comments to see if he was a conversationalist.

He wasn't.

In fact, his demeanor was kind of blank. It was hard to get a read on this guy. He was neither hostile nor friendly, but, whatever, it didn't matter. Some are chatty and some ain't, I don't take it personally. So I turned the radio up a bit to keep myself entertained as we got through the tunnel and began our trek on the L.I.E. Otherwise it would have been a long, silent ride and that in itself can be a little uncomfortable when two people are together that long without any conversation.

The trouble began as we approached the Douglaston Parkway exit. What should happen when a passenger has elected to give directions is that he should be right on top of things. Instead my passenger wasn't paying attention to where we were on the expressway and I had to bring it to his attention that I was approaching the exit which he had told me to take.

"I get off here, right?" I called back to him, wanting to be totally sure we'd had no misunderstanding.

He didn't respond immediately, so I repeated the question. Looking at him in the rear view mirror, I feared I might find him slumped over in a deep sleep or something. But he wasn't asleep. He was looking forward with that blankness I had noted when he got in the cab.

Finally he responded with one word: "Yeah."

This guy had now become visible on my radar screen. He wasn't responding normally and I began to get the idea that there may be trouble ahead. It wasn't any kind of personal danger signal. It was more of a somehow-I'm-not-gonna-get-paid signal or a some-other-kind-of-trouble signal. I went on full alert, particularly because this was a very long ride and if I got beat it would be a loss of $40 or more, and that, combined with the dead time coming back to Manhattan, would really hurt.

We proceeded along a service road that ended at a red light at the intersection of Douglaston Parkway. He should have told me well before we arrived there in which direction to turn, but he said nothing.

"Left or right?" I asked.

There was a pause. Then, "Right".

I turned in the direction indicated and went straight ahead for about half a mile, waiting for further directions, but none came. I checked him in the mirror, again wondering if he'd fallen asleep, but, no, he was fully conscious.

"Just keep going straight?" I asked again, feeling a need to be reassured that he knew where he was going.

"Yeah."

I thought it would be a good idea to re-establish the understanding we had that I needed directions from him, so I reminded him to keep an eye on where we were going so I'd know where to turn. He replied that, yeah, he knew that and to just keep driving straight.

Which is what I did for about another mile until we came to a red light. And that's when this fare descended into the ride from hell. For me.

We sat at the light for twenty seconds or so. There were no other vehicles anywhere around, so the silence and stillness around us amplified the tension I was feeling being around this guy. And then he said this:

"Where have you taken me?"

Oh, shit. I was alone in the middle of relatively nowhere with a nut. Or at least he might be a nut.
"Where have I taken you? What do you mean? I've taken you where you told me to take you."

"Where are we?"

"I don't know - we're on Douglaston Parkway, where you told me to go!"

"You made a wrong turn."

I turned around and looked him straight in the eye through the opening of the partition. "Look, buddy," I said with barely contained anger, "how could I have taken a wrong turn when I went where you told me to go? I was following your directions!"

He just sat there staring at me without saying a word, the expression on his face indicating that he was of the opinion that I was somehow trying to deceive him.

The light turned green, but I didn't move the cab an inch. We just sat there in the middle of the road - no other cars around - in a bizarre, stony silence. The meter clicked an additional 40 cents due to the waiting time.

"The meter's running. Why aren't you moving?"

"I'm not moving because we don't know where we're going!"

I was becoming furious and it was showing in my voice which, although restrained, had been raised a couple of decibels.

"Why are you raising your voice to me?" he replied in a calm, even tone.

Oh my god, the guy was a bona fide psycho. The normal and expected reaction of a passenger in this situation is to be apologetic or at least supportive toward the driver as it was obviously he who has caused the problem. But this guy was not trying to create a resolution to a simple, human situation. He was turning it into a mind game, with he being the matador and I the bull.

And I was stuck in a taxicab with him in the middle of the night with no one else around.

I tried to calm myself down, realizing that, psycho or not, I was somehow going to have to handle this guy and my own indignation and anger at him were not going to be the way to go. I tried to negotiate. "Okay," I said calmly, "what are we going to do here? Where are you trying to go? To somebody's house?"

"I don't see why I should have to keep paying because you're lost."

I looked at the guy in the rear view mirror. "Look," I replied, using all my restraint to keep from screaming at the son of a bitch, "if you think I'm trying to rip you off, I'll tell you what - you just tell me what you expect to pay for this ride and that's what the price will be."

I was of course outraged that I would feel I needed to placate somebody who was so clearly out of line, but that is something a cab driver can always say to make peace with the customer. The expected reaction is then one of conciliation. The passenger should feel at ease and whatever the level of affinity had been before the problem began should be restored. But that's only if you're dealing with a sane person.

What this guy said was - nothing. Instead he got on his cell phone and called someone. The conversation took about a minute, during which time we continued to just sit in the middle of the road at the traffic light, my passenger uttering occasional mono-syllables and myself feeling the effects of severe mental stress. During his chat I heard him say the words "train station".

I turned around and spoke to him. "Do you want to go to the Douglaston train station?"

"Yes."

It was the only piece of information I needed.

"Then we should have turned left at the light when we got off the L.I.E. The train station is north of the L.I.E."

"I told you to go north at the light."

"You told me to go right at the light."

Those turned out to be the last words we spoke to each other until we arrived at the station five minutes later. But rather than having a feeling of relief that our mutual problem had been solved, I instead continued to experience great anxiety during these five minutes about what might happen next. Would he jump out of the cab at the station without paying me? Would he insist that he'd been ripped off and pay me a fraction of what was on the meter? Or would he come up with some other completely unexpected insanity? I was stressing out.

This guy was driving me crazy!

When we got to the train station the meter was $47.80. He handed me three twenty dollar bills and left the cab without another word. A $12.20 tip, excessively high.

Now you might think that this meant that he was sorry about the hard time he'd given me and wanted to make it up to me. But there was no smile, there was no "sorry", there was no indication in any way that that's what he intended. Instead, his act of handing me the money and leaving without a word was in itself another strange action that left me feeling ill at ease.

Nevertheless, I was glad the ordeal was over and that I'd been overpaid. I drove off quickly, noting that he was getting into the driver's side of a parked car as I pulled away.

In retrospect, I found that I couldn't stop thinking about this ride. Experienced as I am, I did not see this guy as just another difficult passenger. No, this guy was more than that. He has a special significance which, if understood, I think provides a valuable "life lesson", and I'd like to share that insight with you.

You noticed that I referred to this guy as a "psycho". I wasn't using the term loosely. We often think of a psycho as a wild-eyed maniac with a gun in his hand. Or someone screaming nonsensical babble as he walks down the street. Those are the easy ones to spot.

But there's another understanding of the term that I like much better because it helps us spot the most insidious of our species. It's someone who is motivated by a continuous intention to harm or destroy. This person is also a "psycho" but is much harder to detect than the loud ones because he can go through life seeming to be a normal person. But if you look closely at this character, you will find a path of destruction everywhere he's traveled.

I looked back at my own thirty minutes with this passenger. Instead of having a pleasant experience with this guy, instead, for no rational reason whatsoever, I was put through the hoops of anger, frustration, anxiety, and resentment. I felt genuine relief to be rid of him.

Then I imagined what my life would be like if this guy was my boss. What would it be like if he was my brother? What kind of existence would a woman have who was married to this guy? Or, worst of all, what if he was your father when you were still a little kid?

Your life would be hell. Your days would be filled with endless problems that would never be solved and you would experience stress all the time. Your confidence and self-esteem would be nonexistent. You would conclude that life was no fun and you might even become suicidal.

Do you know someone who's causing you trouble all the time? Upon close inspection, is it your honest opinion that this person is motivated by a continuous intention to harm or destroy? Does this person leave a path of destruction everywhere he or she has been?

If so, take some advice from a taxi driver.

Get this person out of your life.

Bernie The Bartender

Back in December of 2005 the Transit Workers Union in New York was making a lot of news with threats of a subway and bus strike if a settlement was not reached with the city by the 19th of that month. I thought it was just a lot of noise and would never happen.

But a passenger who was in my cab on the 18th disagreed with me. He predicted the strike would indeed occur and we had a lively conversation on the subject all the way from the Midtown start of the ride to its conclusion in Astoria, Queens. In fact, the conversation led to a bet. If the strike happened he would get a free cab ride and if it didn't he would pay me double the meter - should he ever ride in my cab again.

Seemed like a safe bet to me.

Well, to my surprise, there was indeed a subway strike the next day. It lasted three days, paralyzed the city at the height of the Christmas season, and made life miserable for everyone except cab drivers - we did great!

I was counting my money for weeks but in the back of my mind I knew this guy was out there somewhere looking for his free ride. I found myself thinking, after having a good money night, that, yeah, sure, I just had a good night, but what if that guy I owe the free ride to had gotten in my cab? It wouldn't have been such a good night then, would it have been?

As time went on I would go through phases. For a while I would be cocky, thinking Ha! He'll never catch me! And at other times I'd resign myself to my fate - yeah, as sure as the sun rises, this guy is gonna wind up in my cab again. And then I'll have to pay! A black cloud was beginning to find that it enjoyed hanging out over me.

Well, if you read this blog you know how I feel about fate. It took nearly two years, but he finally tracked me down last September. If I'd been a little sharper I would have recognized him from the street and just kept on driving. But I'm not as fast as I used to be so I stopped the cab when he hailed me and then realized too late what I'd done as he sat down in the back seat.

"You! It's you!" I exclaimed.

"You! It's you!" he replied.

The Reaper had arrived and there was no way I was going to be able to weasle out of it, so I thought, why try? I just told him right off, okay, a bet's a bet and I always pay my bets, so this ride is free. And headed off to Astoria. And I'm thinking maybe it's best to just put this thing behind me and start enjoying life again.

But he wouldn't hear of it.

In an act that can be described only as a blatant disregard for the welfare of others in general and for me in particular he refused to let me settle the debt I had incurred and then went so far as to give me an extremely generous tip despite my protests. And to make matters even worse, he did all this while maintaining a cheerful disposition and engaging in a friendly conversation.

More time passed and it seemed I might never recover from this assault to my self-esteem. I had been turned into a welsher and now a new black cloud had settled in over my domain. My life had gone from merely miserable to completely horrible and I didn't see any way out.

Until I came up with a plan which, I'm happy to say, I was able to execute two nights ago.

I knew it was just a matter of time before I'd get this guy in my cab again. That's just the way life is. So on Tuesday it happened and I was ready for him. I knew it would do no good to bring up the subject of my continued indebtedness so I didn't even mention it and drove him once again out to Astoria, once again enjoying a lively conversation with him, and once again receiving an outrageously generous tip.

But then I tricked him. I told him about this blog and got him to agree to let me take his picture. And here it is...

His name is Bernie and he works as a bartender at a bar inside one of the best hotels in town, the Michelangelo on 7th Avenue and 51st Street.

Now here's what I need you to do. The next time you're in New York put it on your list of things to do to drop in at Bernie's bar in the Michelangelo. Start a conversation with Bernie. You'll find him to be one of the friendliest guys you've ever met. Then, as you're about to leave, put a scowl on your face and tell him you know all about him because you read about him in Cabs Are For Kissing and slam an extravagently generous tip down on the bar just before you head for the door. He'll never know what hit him.

And Revenge, thou sweetest berry on the vine, shall be mine.

******

Also for your "to do" list: click here for Pictures From A Taxi. Please... don't make me beg.