A Brave New World

You know, this blogging phenomenon has to be one of the greatest things that's ever happened to humanity. We are living in an age of freedom of the press that would have been beyond imagination just a few years ago. The idea that a person such as myself can sit in his home and instantly publish communications with hundreds or even thousands of people all over the world... well, it's staggering if you think about it.

Let's be resolved to never let anyone take it away from us.

Having said that, I'd like to thank every single person who has come to this site in this passing year and found it worthwhile to actually read anything I've had to say. Time is valuable. Thank you for spending some of it here.

Here's hoping we all have a 2008 we can look back at and say, "Wow, that was a great year!"

May your best days be yet unseen,

And may all your lights be green.

(A picture I'm rather fond of from the post A Day In The Life. Happy New Year everybody!)

Christmas Windows

People come from far and wide to see the window displays at the major New York City department stores. Here's a sampling...

Bloomingdale's

Sak's 5th Avenue

This window was my favorite. (Of course.)

Macy's

Boomerang

Something happened a few days ago that has only happened three other times in the 30 years I've been driving a cab: I had the same passenger twice in the same shift.

If you're like me, when something like this occurs you immediately start calculating the odds against it. In this case, it's not difficult to do. There are 13,187 medallion (yellow) cabs in New York, so there are the odds right there - 13,187 to 1. But also if you're like me you wonder if it's strictly coincidence or if there's some other intangible force (let's call it karma) at work.

If you've been reading this blog you know that karma vs. coincidence is a recurring theme here. I don't say that there's actually no such thing as coincidence (as some extremists do), but I am definitely on the karma side of the fence. So please read what happened, and then you tell me: karma or coincidence? Here goes...

At 6:30 pm a woman got in my cab at 42nd and Lex who was going up to 55th and 3rd. She spent most of the ride on her cell phone and only when we were approaching the destination was there any conversation, and that was merely me asking her which side of 3rd Avenue she'd like to be dropped off on. She said she was going to 919 Third Avenue and didn't know where the building was, but she'd find it, so wherever I wanted to stop the cab was all right.

As it turned out, I know the building well because it's a 45-story office tower I often wait in front of to get a passenger. I pointed it out to her and made a humorous comment about the place as she handed me the fare.

"Make sure you don't bump into anyone when you enter the lobby," I said. "Everyone who works in that place is a lawyer."

It's true. Nearly the entire building is occupied by law firms, and that's why I often wait there for a fare. Lawyers work late and they're still streaming out of the joint between 7 and 9 pm.

My passenger seemed amused by my comment so I added another quip. "In fact," I said, "if I ever need free legal advice, I just wait in front of 919 Third Avenue. Everyone who gets in is a lawyer. It never fails."

This brought a big smile. She handed me the fare and an above-average tip, waved goodbye, and was on her way. I pulled out onto 3rd Avenue feeling good about the ride. It's always nice to leave them with a laugh.

My next passengers, two businessmen going to the Penthouse Club on 45th and 11th, got in almost immediately. The crosstown traffic was awful and it took nearly half an hour to reach the place. The following passenger went to Central Park South between 6th and 7th. And the one after that brought me back to the East Side, to Sutton Place at 56th Street.

In the perpetual hunt for the next passenger, my normal move from this location is to drive west on 55th and pull up in front of 919 Third Avenue. The entrance to the building is actually on 55th Street and there's usually room to stand there so you're not blocking traffic. So off I went on my usual route, but I didn't have to wait as I approached the tower. A person who was leaving the building had already spotted me and was giving me a hail.

It was her - the same woman whom I had dropped off at this building an hour ago was now leaving it. We recognized each other before she even opened the door and of course as we began a new trip to her new destination - 40th and Lex - we remarked on how slim the chances are of this ever occurring.

Nevertheless, if this was all there was to the story I would probably say it was just coincidence. The odds are 13,187 to one, not a hundred million billion kazillion to one. 13,187 to one can happen.

But there's more.

My passenger went on to tell me why she had gone to 919 Third Avenue in the first place. She represents a construction company and was there to make a presentation to a law firm that is considering doing business with her group. This meant that she had to stand in front of a bunch of lawyers she'd never met before and speak. So as a way of breaking the ice she told them she'd been taken to their office building by a cab driver who knows the place is filled with lawyers and gets free legal advice by waiting there for fares.

She said they were "in stitches".

Now for me, this was beyond wild. This never happens! In the taxi business you quite often have conversations with people you never expect to see again. Sometimes you wonder what future effect you may have created by the things that you have said to that person, but you never - never! - actually get to find out. They go on their way and disappear from your universe.

But this time I did find out. Like a boomerang that's been tossed out into the atmosphere, it turned around and came right back to me.

I just can't believe that was coincidence because there was a factor involved beyond two ships merely passing in the night. There was an incomplete cycle of communication in the middle of this. My passenger perhaps wondering what that cabbie would have said if he knew that his comments were cracking up a bunch of lawyers as he continued to drive around the city. You get the sense that you've entered the uncharted territory of telepathy here. Something is going on. It's not just coincidence.

Okay, you're not convinced? Then come with me. There's more.

My passenger was now curious about me as a taxi driver. She wanted to know how long I'd been driving and how I liked the job. She then asked me what my most interesting story was. I replied that she'd have to give me a category of "interesting". She chose "poignant".

Well, I went immediately to the vault and pulled one out. Here is the story I told her...

One rainy day about twenty years ago a woman got in my cab with her young son, a toddler who was in the area of two years old. As she entered the taxi she suddenly realized that the top of a ring she had on her finger was gone. The ring had contained a pearl surrounded by diamonds but now all that remained of it was the thin gold band. She was distressed about the loss and was trying to come to grips with the reality that it was gone and she'd never see it again.

The little boy, meanwhile, was not particularly concerned with his mother's loss and was as cute as could be. He had no apprehension about chatting with his taxi driver and for the whole ride kept up a lively conversation with me. One thing he told me was his name. It something Eberhardt (I have forgotten the first name). He seemed to have just recently learned it and was quite proud of the fact that he did indeed know his own name.

When we got to their destination, a street on the Upper East Side, the building we stopped in front of had a sign above a ground-level office that said "Eberhardt Architecture". I said to the little boy that I bet that his daddy worked there and he enthusiastically told me that yes, his daddy did work there. The woman then paid me the fare and left the taxi with her son.

Nine hours later I had ended my shift and was gassing up the cab. In the normal course of cleaning up any debris that had been left by passengers, I opened the back door and looked for anything in the ash trays or on the floor. There, under a rubber mat on the floorboard, was the part of the ring that had been lost by my passenger.

The next day I went back to "Eberhardt Architecture" and returned it to Mr. Eberhardt, the boy's father. Only because the child had been so proud of knowing his name was I able to remember which building it had been where I'd dropped them off. If it had not been for his eagerness to have a conversation with his taxi driver, the ring, which I was told had belonged to the lady's mother and was a family heirloom, would never have found its way back home.

And that was the story.

My passenger had listened carefully.

"I know him," she said.

"What? Who?"

"Eberhardt."

It turned out that my passenger, who is in the construction business, knows Eberhardt, the architect, on a professional basis. Get out your calculators and figure out what the odds are against a person who asks me to tell her one of my taxi stories actually knowing one of the characters in my own story!

And when you've figured that out, please send me the answer to my new address. I'll be just beyond that signpost up ahead.

In the Twilight Zone.

(Of course you do not have to actually be in the Twilight Zone to click here for Pictures From A Taxi. But it probably wouldn't hurt.)

5A48 And The Manslaughter Moment

There was a taxi driver killed in a road rage incident last week here in New York City. His name was Mohammed Elwaleed. I didn't know him personally, but the story was in the news for a couple of days. Apparently Mr. Elwaleed got into an argument with another driver at around midnight at the intersection of 65th Street and Madison Avenue. In the course of whatever the argument was about, he got out of his taxi (a no-no in any road rage incident) and was then literally run over by the other driver, who was later apprehended and now faces manslaughter charges.

Mohammed Elwaleed was a 44 year-old immigrant from Sudan who leaves behind a wife and two small children.

It was yet another one of those stories that sobers one up to a disturbing aspect of living your life in a big city - or, really, just living amongst other human beings in this civilization. It's that invisible volcano beside which we are all building our huts. It's needing the ability to know when the stranger who's just appeared in front of you, Special Delivery from Fate, is about to explode.

I had such an incident myself a few weeks ago. I seem to get one or two of these a year on the average.

It started at the beginning of a Saturday night shift when I was assigned the cab 5A48 for the evening. The taxi garage was "sold out" that night. That meant that every cab was out and should you be unfortunate enough to have a breakdown, you were stuck with that car. You couldn't bring it in and exchange it for another one.

As I headed out of the garage with the meter and rate card for 5A48 in hand, another driver noticed the identifying paperwork I was carrying.

"You've got 5A48?" he asked with a disapproving look on his face.

"Yeah... why, it's no good?"

"I had that cab last night," he said quite seriously. "Whenever it hits a bump, it stalls out. Twice it stalled out on me on the highway. I could have been killed."

This comment led to a discussion about how to start a stalled car that was already in motion. The driver who was giving me such a grim warning turned out to not know that in these situations you are supposed to put the car in neutral and start it up while it is still moving. Instead, he had brought the cab to a full stop on the highway, put it in park, and then turned the ignition key.

"No wonder this guy almost got killed," I thought, "he doesn't know how to drive!"

Nevertheless I returned to the dispatcher's window and asked the weekend guy, Wilfredo, about the condition of the taxi. He assured me it had been fixed.

I then returned to the driver and told him what Wilfredo had said.

"If God loves you," he replied, "you will not be harmed."

And on that bright note I made my way to where 5A48 was parked. I did my usual prep on the cab and after about 15 minutes I pulled out onto 10th Avenue to start my shift.

I drove six or seven blocks.

I hit a bump.

5A48 stalled out.

As I put the cab into neutral and started it up without stopping, I assessed the situation. If I brought the thing back to the garage and had the mechanics try to fix it, it could take hours. This was not a common mechanical problem. In fact, in my thirty years of taxi driving, I had never had a cab that stalled out whenever it hit a bump. (It still amazes me that after having driven literally hundreds of different taxis, I can still discover some new mechanical malfunction that I have never experienced before.)

On the other hand I could just continue with 5A48 and hope that I could make it through the shift without any mishaps. After all, the problem was really in the category of a major annoyance rather than a real danger. And since money was at stake (I would not be compensated for time lost in the garage), the choice was obvious.

I stayed with 5A48.

As the night wore on, it was clear to me that I had made the right decision. Although the frequent stalling out was a very major annoyance - the damned cab was stalling out about once every 3 minutes, thus adding up to over 200 stalls before the night was over - I had not lost any business because of it. However, it was contributing to the stress level of the Saturday night shift, which is normally crazier than any other night of the week, anyway. Saturday night is always filled with loud, stupid, and drunk party people and, even without a particularly outrageous incident getting under your skin, it has a way of wearing you down.

All of this set me up for that fare I get once or twice a year.

At 4:53 I was hailed by two guys, one white and one black, at 35th Street and 6th Avenue. They wanted to go up to 125th and Amsterdam in Harlem. Although I was tired and my shift ends at 5:00, it was a good last-fare-of-the-night ride. It would bring me about $15 extra income and I would be able to make it back to the garage by around 5:30, within the acceptable return time.

I headed west to 10th Avenue and figured I'd just ride up 10th, which becomes Amsterdam at 59th Street, all the way to 125th. The lights are synchronized in "the wave" on that avenue, so I would be able to make the entire trip with no red lights. Plus the pavement of Amsterdam is nice and smooth so I didn't expect 5A48 to be stalling out much.

We were on our way.

Within a minute into the ride I could see by the way these two guys were sitting closely together that they were gay and by the way they were talking softly to each other that they were not conversational as far as the driver was concerned. This was fine with me as I was rather exhausted and not in the mood to be chatty anyway. So I turned the radio to the smooth jazz station and headed for 10th, where I turned right and headed uptown.

All was well on 10th Avenue until we got to 51st Street. At that point we hit a delay because there had been a serious accident, with an overturned car, and the police had closed the avenue and were diverting traffic onto 51st toward 11th Avenue. I explained what was happening to the passengers, who didn't acknowledge what I'd said. What it meant was that we were going to have to circle the block and wind up back at 10th Avenue on 52nd Street. The delay took about five minutes.

As I got rolling again on 10th Avenue, the voice of the black guy piped up from the back seat. "Why didn't you take the highway?" he asked. This was not a friendly question. His voice had an edge to it.

I could have taken 11th Avenue up to 57th Street, gotten on the highway that runs along the west side of Manhattan, and exited at 125th Street. It would indeed have been faster, although it wouldn't have been any cheaper because the distance is slightly longer and we would have no waiting time on Amsterdam. So I told him the truth.

"This cab has been stalling out on me all night whenever I hit a bump," I explained. "I didn't want to take the chance of it stalling out on the highway."

My explanation was met with a distinctly stony silence - there was a lingering feeling of distrust and resentment in the air. But I was tired and chose to ignore it. We continued up Amsterdam with no further communication between us until we arrived at their 125th Street destination, about ten minutes later.

The fare was $17 even. The white guy exited first and started to walk across 125th, a wide, two-way street with four lanes. Apparently their place was on the opposite side of the street. The black guy stayed behind and handed me the fare, with no tip, through the partition window.

Not getting a tip was no big deal. Obviously the guy was not totally happy about the ride and not tipping is a customer's prerogative. I was ready to drive off, but before he closed the door, my passenger decided to have some words with me.

"The next time somebody runs off without paying," he said, "that will make it even for this ride."

It was clearly an insult. The guy was saying I had ripped him off and lied to him about the reason for not taking the highway and that, no sir, you could fool some of those suckers but you sure as hell couldn't fool him. And not only that, he had appointed himself the ombudsman for all the inner city kids who run off without paying the fare.

It was a comment that was totally mean-spirited and had a racial undertone to it. Plus, he was totally wrong. In a more perfect world, I might have calmly attempted to handle his considerations or just shrugged my shoulders and driven off. Instead, I resorted to sarcasm.

"So you feel that you paid too much," I replied, my own mocking tone implying that his comment was idiotic and that he was a moron. "And that's the justification for ripping off cab drivers. Did I get that right?"

The guy at this point was standing on the street but had not yet closed the door. His response to my sarcasm was to open the door a bit wider, lean into the compartment, and send a ball of spit straight through the partition window and into my face. He then began nonchalantly walking across 125th Street without having closed the door.

I was, of course, outraged and humiliated. This piece of dog doo had insulted me and now had assaulted me. Nevertheless, my reaction was immediate. I wiped his spit off my face with one of the napkins I always have handy behind the visor, and then did something he hadn't anticipated when he decided to launch his saliva missle at my head. I swung the taxi around in a U-turn and suddenly was in position to run him the fuck over as he crossed the street.

And that was the manslaughter moment.

It's that briefest little speck of time in which you either cross over the line or you do not. Most of us do not. And most of those who do spend the rest of their lives wishing they could take that moment back, as is likely the case with the man who ran over Mohammed Elwaleed.

As for me, I swerved close enough to the jerk to let him know I could have killed him if I wanted to, and shouted out a word at him to indicate that he bore a resemblance to the part of the digestive system that is responsible for expelling waste products from the body.

By the time I got back to the garage my anger had pretty much subsided and I felt grateful that I had been given the ability not to act on impulses.

Perhaps God does love me.

Or perhaps He can barely tolerate me and that's why he made me a taxi driver in the first place.

There is still one place where it is perfectly acceptable to act on impulse, by the way. And that is to click here for Pictures From A Taxi.

The Top Ten List Of Exactly Where To Stop The Cab

Since the writers at Letterman are on strike, many Americans are currently suffering from Top Ten List withdrawal syndrome. Hopefully this will help - it's my own top ten list of descriptions I've received from passengers of exactly where they want me to stop the cab...

10. "By the second pile of garbage."

9. "Next to that idiot over there."

8. "Near the thing."

7. "Anywhere where you won't be honked at."

6. "In front of that little oasis between the tenements."

5. "Over on the left on the right."

4. "Okay, right here. No, not right here, over there. Okay, right here."

3. "Right where that man just cleaned up after his dog... I hope he got it all."

2. "Right where the derelict is sleeping... oh, no, he's not sleeping, he's just lying there."

And finally - drum roll, s'il vous plait - the number one description of all time...

1. "A little bit past the dead pigeon, please."



And if you will stop your cursor right here, you can click onto Pictures From A Taxi.

The No Sex Zone

I was waiting in the taxi line at Flashdancer's at 4 am recently when a young woman and a guy hurried out of the place and got into my cab. She wasn't one of the strippers - the girls who work there never get into cabs with customers - she was the girlfriend of this particular guy and they had just spent some together-time in the club. Their destination was the West Village, a two-mile trip from our Times Square starting point.

They immediately snuggled up close together and started laughing and were kind of pecking at each other, so I knew that these two were strictly into their own world and that this would be a non-conversational ride. That was all right with me because I'd already been driving for over ten hours and was hitting my post-4-am-wall, that mental/physical barrier which says that this will be the last ride of the night. So I just turned up the radio a bit and put my proverbial eyes on the road.

But before we'd gone ten blocks I noticed in the mirror an unmistakable shift in their positions. The girl had moved down in the seat and the guy was straight out on top of her. There was no question about it - they were about to start fucking. I drove for about another block and then actually surprised myself at my own reaction. I suddenly pulled over to the side of the street, right next to the Hard Rock Cafe, and stopped the taxi.

"I don't have to put up with this," I barked. "Take another cab!"

They had already straightened themselves up, and the guy started to say something in protest. But I cut him off before he could get a syllable out of his mouth.

"Don't give me a hard time," I said, "just get out and take another cab!"

The girl, who had one of those classic shit-eating smiles on her face, gave him a little shove and they both immediately exited the premises without any further words being exchanged.

I drove off a bit in a daze, wondering if I should look for another fare or just call it a night. As I moved down 7th Avenue, I found that my attention was stuck not on the fact that two people were about to have sex right there in the seat behind me - that has happened a number of times - it was on the way I had handled it. That had never happened before.

In the past I must admit I have always found the titillation factor to have outweighed the indignity factor. I have been more interested in voyeuristic aspect of this weird social situation than in keeping my own dignity intact by not allowing ill-mannered people to get away with pretending that I don't exist.

For several days I found myself mentally returning to the incident and wondering what had changed with me. And then it hit me like a slap in the face. Oh my god, I am over 50 years old and have gone through male menopause without even knowing it!

Shit!

I'm getting old!

My fears were confirmed when I remembered what had happened about a week before I had had the two would-be fuckers in my taxi. I had picked up a young guy from this very same strip club and gotten into a lively discussion with him about breasts, something that was not hard to do considering he was coming from the Double D capital of the west side of town.

Why, I had beseeched him, did men almost uniformly have such an obsession with breasts, anyway? A breast is a gland for God's sake, right up there next to the thyroid and the pituitary. In fact, it's not even a part of the reproductive system. It really belongs to the digestive system, if you think about it. I mean, it secretes milk! What's the big deal?

Of course, he looked at me like I was out of my mind and said he didn't care if they belonged to the digestive system or the solar system - he just wanted to get his hands on as many of them as possible.

Now I realize the only reason I could even say such a thing to this perfectly normal guy is that I am on a steep slope that winds up in a nursing home. There I lie in my bed watching The O'Reilly Factor on an overhead television and wondering when the nurse will show up to change my diapers. It's depressing as hell.

So depressing, in fact, that the only way I can think of to cheer myself up is to publish some pictures of dogs that have recently been in my cab. And here they are...

Pictured here is Pippen, a three year-old King Charles Cavalier Spaniel who was named after a character is Lord of the Rings. According to his owners (whose names I didn't get) Pippen is a big eater and can "almost talk".

And this is Phoebe, a four year-old French bulldog, with owners Ruben and Eric. Phoebe barks when she sees an animal on tv; she fetches like crazy; and if someone is being loud or is upset, she will actually climb up on that person and put her paw on his or her mouth or chest.

There you go, it worked... I'm cheered up already!

And you can cheer up, too, by clicking here for Pictures From A Taxi.

Halloween, 2007

Halloween was on a Wednesday this year so that meant there were two Halloweens in New York. One on the Saturday night before Halloween (Oct. 27th), the party night, and one on Halloween itself (Oct. 31st), the trick-or-treat and Halloween Parade night. There is no better vantage point to see all of this than to be a taxi driver.

You drive around the city and as the night goes on more and more people appear on the sidewalks dressed as clowns, witches, cowboys, pimps, driver's licenses, nuns, boxers, cartoon characters, ketchup and mustard bottles, and cops. And more witches. Some of them get into your cab - my favorite this year was a young lady who was being "Miss Scarlet" from the game Clue. (She did it in the billiard room with the rope.)

But one of the hazards of these nights - it seems to happen every year and this year was no exception - is that I may find that I'm not sure if my passenger is wearing a costume or not! After all, this is New York City.

It becomes one of those awkward social situations. I want to comment on the costume, assuming it is a costume - but I don't want to offend the passenger in case it's not.

"What are you? A pimp?"

"I beg your fucking pardon, asshole, this is how I look. You got a problem with that?"

"Oh... sorry!"

Now that would make for an uncomfortable ride. On the other hand, if it's one of these borderline costume situations and you get it right, well, maybe you have made the passenger's night. A few years ago a young man got in my cab wearing a bright white suit, a white vest, and a black shirt opened three buttonholes down to reveal a gold chain. We exchanged some chit-chat en route to his Tribeca destination. I really wasn't sure if this was a Halloween costume or not. Finally, I took a stab at it.

"Tony Manero?"

His face lit up in a huge grin. "You got it!"

This year's version took place on Saturday night at 2:15 am. I was cruising down 5th Avenue and a teen aged kid stepped out from the curb to hail me. I saw from a distance that he was wearing what, for lack of a better term, I will call an "inner city" outfit - on over sized baseball cap, with the bill of the cap off to the side, and a sleeveless t-shirt. Now if you're a taxi driver, this is not what you want to see hailing you. "Inner city", "teenager", and "taxicab" are not a good mix. If ever there was a candidate to beat you for a fare, it is this. So I was actually thinking of passing this kid by, but then I realized that he was standing alone on the corner of 87th Street, right in the heart of American Aristocracy territory, where no inner city kid would ever be standing alone in a million years.

I realized this was rich kid wearing what for him was a Halloween costume. I stopped and he got in. His destination was 76th and 5th, a mere 11 blocks away.

"Going to a party?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"Who are you supposed to be?"

"Someone from Long Island."

I discreetly refrained from informing him that I myself had been born and raised on Long Island and continued the ride. At 76th Street he handed me a twenty dollar bill for a $3.80 fare and said, "Keep the change, this will be the best tip you'll get all night!"

Now this was truly remarkable for a few different reasons. First, kids are never good tippers. Second, members of the American Artistocracy are never good tippers. And third, it wasn't my best tip of the night!

Earlier in the evening, at 9:20, a beautiful and intriguing Englishwoman named Ann got in for a ride from Times Square to the Gansevoort Hotel in the Meat Packing District. She was quite interested in all aspects of taxi driving, especially celebrity stories. I wound up telling her my Leonardo di Caprio story which ends with Leo asking me who my best celebrity tipper had been. I told him it had been John McEnroe, who had given me double the meter. Leo then said, "Well, I'm going to give you triple the meter!" And he did.

Ann informed me that although she was not a celebrity she was going to outdo Leonardo di Caprio and give me four times the meter and proceeded to pay $40 for an $8.60 fare. (Which is actually five times the meter and secures Ann a plaque in the Best Tippers Hall of Fame.)

I've got to start telling that Leonardo di Caprio story more often.

Now as great and fun a night Saturday was, it was outdone by Halloween II on Wednesday. Not because I made more money, which I didn't, but because of the Halloween Parade. This is the night when Greenwich Village, which is crazy on a normal night, really goes wild. This thing gets bigger, more surreal, more Dali-esque every year. Here are some shots...

What's that? You say you want even more pictures from NYC? Well, then, just click here for Pictures From A Taxi.

Union Busting

There was another taxi strike (actually a one-day work stoppage, not a real strike) on Monday, October 22nd. I thought I'd said all I wanted to say about politics and taxicabs in two previous posts - click here if you'd like to read my rant about the working conditions of the NYC taxi driver and here for some insight about the lies we've been told by public officials - but with this second job action going down last week, it's back to politics for at least one more post.

I gained a bit more life experience from this thing - about union busting. I thought I would share with you what happened to me personally last week as it may put a human face on what could be otherwise a somewhat abstract labor situation.

First off, I think I should say in fairness that from the information I have gathered from both the media and with my own eyes, that the strike was pretty much a flop. I had hoped that because it was just a one-day action (the strike in September was two days) and it was on a Monday, the slowest business day of the week, that more cabbies would join in and refuse to drive.

But they didn't. I drove my own private car into Manhattan that night and rode around in the traffic for a couple of hours. In every part of the city I saw lots of yellow taxis cruising the streets. It looked like a normal night to my expert eye. In fact, it actually looked like a slow night because so many of the cabs didn't have passengers in them. Nowhere did I see people on the streets desperately trying to find a taxi.

However, as with the strike in September, a tremendous amount of publicity was accomplished and the press I saw was all favorable to the drivers' cause. The mayor and the Taxi and Limousine Commission are now being portrayed as the bad guys and the drivers and the Taxi Workers Alliance as the good. And the taxi-riding public in general is well informed as to what the issues are. So it wasn't all for nothing.

So why didn't the majority of cabbies take the day off?

They were hit from two sides. One, an outright bribe from the mayor. And two, by coercion from the owners of the taxi garages.

Once again, Mayor Bloomberg and his team put into effect the "contingency plan" in the event of a strike. It divided the island of Manhattan into four zones. A ride within a zone cost the passenger a flat ten dollars. But if you crossed into another zone, an additional five dollars were charged. Plus group riding was in effect, so these zone rates applied for each person that was in the cab. Taxis can take up to four passengers at a time.

This meant cabbies (or "scabbies" as they were being called) could make a lot of money. And the passengers spent more than usual.

Now this was not new news. But for me, at least, what happened at the taxi garage was new news. Currently my usual driving days are Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday. The strike in September took place on a Wednesday and a Thursday, so it did not affect my normal working schedule. But this one occurred on a Monday, a day I normally work.

One of the advantages to driving out of a taxi garage has always been the flexibility of the schedule. If for some reason you can't drive on your usual day, you can switch it to another day. I've been operating like this for the last fifteen years. But here's what happened this time.

When I came in to get a cab on the Saturday before the strike, I noticed this sign in the garage:

The owner of the taxi garage was making it very clear to the drivers that Monday, the strike day, would be a great day to drive because you could make so much money. He was taking his cue from the mayor. However, there was no indication that if you chose to observe the strike that there would be any kind of retribution.

Yet when I called the garage early on Monday to tell them I needed to change my schedule due to the strike, I was told quite bluntly that if I didn't work that night I would, in effect, be fired.

I say "in effect" because the way the system works is that since we are all technically "independent contractors" we are not employees. So what the owner of the garage actually told me was that if I didn't work that night he would not lease me his cabs thereafter. He then hung up the phone on me. This after fifteen years of being one of his best drivers.

So I called him back. How would it be, I asked, if I paid for the shift but didn't drive? That was acceptable. So I wound up paying the owner of the garage $113 for a shift I refused to drive so I could continue operating out of his garage.

And it left me feeling that my rights had been violated.

So this was the dilemma the NYC cab driver faced. It didn't mean simply losing a day's wages. It meant going below zero and paying your own money to heartless garage owners in addition to not making any profit for yourself that day. But it was a dilemma made not so unpalatable for many due to the chocolate-covered carrot that was dangled at the end of the mayor's stick.

In a slightly more ideal world, we would have a mayor who would get up and say this:

"It has come to my attention that the taxi drivers of New York City are working in conditions that are far below the standards of American labor.

"I am ashamed to admit that I was not aware of this until just recently, even though I have been your mayor for nearly six years, that cab drivers here are working 12 hour shifts with no health care benefits, no pension plan, no overtime, no paid vacations, and no sick days. And that the cost of these benefits cannot possibly be covered by the incomes that these drivers are currently making. It is deeply disturbing to me that such conditions exist in this, one of the most affluent and important cities in the world.

"Due to the fact that they have never had a real union, they have been taken advantage of by corrupt city officials and greedy garage owners for the last thirty years.

"But I am putting an end to this. And the first thing I am going to do is sit down with the people who are trying to represent the drivers and address their grievances. I want them to know that their objections are not being met by deaf ears."

If we had a mayor who said anything even approximating this, we would know we were getting something from him that is as important to us as the more tangible issues that are being debated.

Respect.

And not an insulting bribe from a billionaire who was trying to bust a union.

American Gangster

One night in October of last year - it was October 24th to be exact - I was driving the night shift and took a break at around 9 pm to get a Starbucks tall black coffee at their place on 6th Avenue and 24th Street. What I found when I got there was a movie set taking up the whole block on 24th between 5th and 6th.

The movie is called American Gangster and it's finally being released this week. All I know about it is that it stars Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe and it's set in 1969. I hung around for awhile (didn't see any stars), took these shots, and I've been waiting a whole year to post them because I thought it would be cool to show them just when the movie came out. So if you go to see this movie and you see this scene, remember - you saw it here first!

Running The Gamut

You know, one of the truly great things about driving a cab in New York City is that on any given night you will encounter individuals who are from totally opposite ends of the social spectrum. People sort of carry their own worlds around with them, so a taxi driver has this opportunity to get up close and personal with people who are so dissimilar, one from the other, that they might as well be from different planets.

To illustrate my point, I had these two fares a few days ago in the same night...

At 11 pm I was hailed by a blonde at 64th and West End Avenue. She said she wanted to go to a building that was somewhere in the 30s on 1st Avenue, so I went up to 65th Street and we headed across the Central Park transverse to the East Side. She was talking to someone on her cell phone and I wasn't really paying too much attention to her, but then when her conversation ended she suddenly says, "Hey, could you tell me something? How do you spell 'first'?"

"You mean like, first, second, third...?"

"Yeah, is it f-r-i-s-t or f-i-r-s-t?"

"You know, I charge extra for consultations."

"Ha, ha, come on!"

"Okay. It's f-i-r-s-t."

"Thanks!"

Why she needed to know how to spell a word in the middle of a cab ride I did not know, but I liked her easygoing attitude. No airs here. Just a friendly person who was grammatically challenged. I guess she was a little embarrassed by her inability to spell a simple word because she then admitted that she wasn't the brightest starfish in the sea.

"You weren't cut out to be one of those nerdy kids in a spelling bee, huh?" I said.

"Nah, but I'll tell you something - they may know how to spell but they don't know how to fuck."

Whoa. If she didn't have it already, she now had my full attention. There are only three ways a female would ever say that to a cab driver: 1) she's with two or three other girls and she's showing off by trying to create an effect, 2) she's totally shitfaced, or 3) she's a professional. My passenger was alone and she wasn't drunk, so it had to be number 3.

I was trying to figure out a way of asking her about this, but as it turned out the answer was given to me in the most unlikely of ways. She had found out from the person she was talking to on her cell phone that the building she was going to was on the corner of 33rd and 1st and then for some reason added that this person who lived there made great chicken soup.

33rd and 1st... chicken soup... It rang a bell.

"Hey, wait a minute," I said, "I once picked up a woman coming from that building who told me she had gone there to see her friend because she was sick and her friend made great chicken soup."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, it was on New Year's Eve. "

"I wonder if I know her."

"She told me she was an adult film performer," I said, carefully glancing in the mirror to catch her reaction.

"Oh, I must know her!"

"She was in her thirties, I think, with blonde hair. She said she was going to LA to be in a film the next day and had to get better because she couldn't give blow jobs with a stuffed nose."

"Oh, I know who it was! Her name is Houston!"

When she said it, it totally clicked in my mind. That was her name. I had actually written about this person in a post. (Here.)

"So you're in the same business?" I asked.

"Well, kind of," she said with a smile. "I've done some porn but now I'm mostly working on my own."

"You mean, like, as an escort?" An "escort", of course, is another word for "hooker".

"Uh-huhhh..." she replied, the tone of her voice suggesting that now we both shared in her little secret.

Now I'm not an expert on the subject, but I have observed over the years that there seem to be two broad categories of hookers (pun intended). There are the street hookers ("hos") and there are the indoor "call girls" or "escorts". The street hookers, who have almost disappeared from the streets of New York over the last ten years, by the way, are usually drug addicts and are desperate and pathetic. But the call girls, who are frequently ex-strippers, tend to be smart, witty, and charmingly candid about what they do for a living.

So what followed with my passenger was an informative conversation about her life and her profession. She had gone to L.A. after finishing high school in Texas, with the idea of becoming an actress. She wound up working in strip clubs, then did some porno movies, and now is an escort. She travels around the country building up a list of clients using a website (eros.com) and a cell phone. A cell phone which rang several times during our ride together.

One of the calls she ignored. It was from someone she described as a "stalker". Another one was from a steady client from Argentina whom she had to sadly inform that she wasn't available tonight but that tomorrow a little after 1 pm would be good.

"I like foreign men," she confided. "They don't want to talk."

"How many calls do you get per day on the average?" I asked.

"Around seventy."

"Seventy!"

"Yeah, but when they find out how much I charge, they're usually not interested."

"How much do you charge?"

"$350 for half an hour."

Which just shows you the relative worth to society of the services I offer compared to the services she offers. Not that her business doesn't have its pitfalls. She told me that screening out crazies is a definite skill. And that there is always the possibility that someone who appears to be a client is actually a police officer. But the solution to that, she said, was to have a good lawyer. "For five thousand dollars the only thing you're found guilty of is jaywalking."

As she departed the cab on 33rd Street, I suddenly realized I had a question that she would surely know the answer to. "What does MILF stand for?" I called out to her. This was an acronym I'd seen on certain websites but I'd never had a definition for it. I knew it had something to do with "older" women.

"Mothers I'd Like to Fuck!" she called back with a smile.

So we were even. I told her how to spell "first" and she told me this. I guess we all have our own areas of expertise.


Now compare her to the passenger I picked up at 2:45 am...


He was a middle-aged man in a business suit, no tie, well-groomed, standing on the corner of 8th Avenue and 55th Street. He had the appearance of someone who is considered to be "successful" in our world. His clothing, haircut, and demeanor all would give the casual observer the impression that here was someone who was a professional at something and was doing well in life.

Now I'm not saying that to lead you into discovering that he actually was not what he seemed to be. He was quite successful, as it turned out. But he was also quite drunk. Not incoherently drunk. But rambling on and on drunk. A happy and very overly talkative drunk.

What I normally do with drunks, once I realize that that's what they are, is to patronize them. I agree with almost anything they say, listen to their tales, and acknowledge them so they know that they have actually been heard. There's no sense in arguing or originating my own ideas to them. Because they are in digression mode.

The first thing we had to handle was where he was going. Did I know the location of such and such a bar, he asked. I did not. Then, after a bit more deliberation, he decided he might as well go home. And he gave me his address, a very prestigious apartment building on Central Park South.

As I headed in that direction, he began his dissertation. It was the kind of thing in which he was going to talk half to me and half to himself or to whomever he mentally conceived might be there with him. But I was free to jump into the conversation at any time. The truth was I wasn't really paying that much attention to exactly what he was saying until he said this...

"...and the call comes through early in the morning and I'm still in my bloody pajamas and they tell me he wants me! So what the hell am I supposed to do, I've got to get up and get my ass out the door, because the man wants me!"

It aroused my curiosity. "Who wanted you?" I asked.

"The president!"

"The president of what?"

He looked at me like I should have understood. "Of the United States!"

"Bush?"

"Yes!"

"Wanted you?"

"Yes!"

"For what?"

It turned out that the inebriated gentleman in the back seat was a deputy Secretary General of the United Nations. President Bush had been in the city that day to address the General Assembly of the U.N. and apparently the protocol calls for a high-ranking official there to act as a host for visiting dignitaries. He said he had served in that capacity on one other occasion for President Bush and it turned out Bush remembered him, liked him, and requested him. So he had spent the day kind of hanging out with the President of the United States.

"So what kind of guy is President Bush?" I asked.

"He's the kind of guy you'd like to have a beer with," my passenger said, "but, you know, it's kind of like you're leading a child around."

"Yeah, I think I know what you mean," I chimed in. "I've always thought he was probably a nice guy on a personal level but that when it comes to being the president he's in way over his head."

"Yeah, now take Clinton," he said, "there's a guy who knows what he's doing."

We soon finished the short ride by arriving in front of his building on Central Park South. As he staggered out of the cab he told me what a wonderful cab driver I was, but then he had some trouble finding his money. Finally he yanked some bills out of his pocket and handed them to me and I was on my way. When I got to the traffic light and counted them I found he had neglected to give me a tip on the five dollar fare. But that was all right. It wasn't a mean or a cheap thing, it was a drunk thing.

Later on in the night I reflected on the diversity of these two memorable rides and what different worlds these two people came from. A woman who had spent the day having sex with people for money and a man who had spent the day playing host to the President of the United States.

Why, I wondered, did she get to be the lucky one?




And you can get to be the lucky one, too, by clicking here for Pictures From A Taxi.

Politics and Taxicabs

The so-called "strike" has been over for more than a week now and I've got to say that any way I look at it I'm kind of disgusted at the way the whole thing went down. I will attempt to analyze it and give you some perspective that I'm pretty sure you haven't heard anywhere else.

But first I want to thank Melissa Plaut for including an excerpt from my post, "Taxi Strike", in her own New York Hack blog last week in a post she called "Strike!". Melissa, of course, is the Queen of the Taxi Bloggers and by doing this she introduced my blog to a much wider audience, for which I am grateful. If you haven't heard, she has just had a book published which is a must-read for anyone interested in taxi drivers, New York City, or human beings. You can order it online by going to her blog and clicking where you're supposed to click. It's easy.

I attended a reading and book signing Melissa did at a Barnes & Noble in the Village on Tuesday night which was standing-room only (I stood). The whole thing was a great affair but what I liked best was observing the pride that showed on the faces of her mother and father and family members. If you're a parent, it just doesn't get any better than this.
And now, about the strike...

What It Was

It was a two-day work stoppage, which in reality is a type of protest. It shouldn't have been called a strike at all. A real strike is open-ended - it doesn't end until there's a settlement between labor and management. This was never the intention the Taxi Workers Alliance, which called for the action, nor was it within their capabilities.

How Many Cabs Were Out?

It was interesting to hear various groups and individuals give their opinions on this. The TWA was saying 90% were out. The mayor was saying the effect of the strike was minimal. The media commentators I heard were saying that the lines for taxis at train stations and airports were longer than usual, but not too bad. The truth is there is no way of knowing for sure because taxicabs are spread out all over the city, all the time. They are never in any kind of central location, so how can you count them?

Nevertheless, I have my own estimate. The only reliable information I received came from the night dispatcher at my garage who told me on the second day that only 30% of his cabs were not working. I think it would be safe to say that the owner/drivers, who will have to pay the high costs of the GPS systems themselves, were observing the work stoppage in larger numbers. So my estimate is that 50% of the drivers, at best, did not work on those two days.

So I was wrong in my post when I predicted that it would be like 1998 when a one-day stoppage was indeed observed by 90% of the cabbies and a significant impact was made on the city. I think it's sad that so many cab drivers chose to work on those two days. No, it's worse than sad. It's disgusting.

I'm sorry. I don't buy the excuse I kept hearing from drivers who were interviewed on TV that "I have a family to feed," or "I can't afford to miss any work." Bullshit. The drivers who rent cabs by the week don't work all seven days. They all take at least one day off. So taking off two days on this one particular week was too much to ask? And for the drivers who rent cabs by the day all it meant was switching their work days around on this one particular week. That is so impossible?

No. The only reason cabbies who chose to work did so was because they knew they'd have great business on those two days due to reduced competition and a lucrative pricing system that was implemented by the city. Plus they don't think of taxi driving as really being their career so there's no reason for them to make a commitment to it.

I worked the night shift on the night before the work stoppage was scheduled to begin. As I brought my cab back to the garage, I encountered a veteran cabbie whom I have known for several years and for whom I used to have respect. He was waiting to be assigned to a cab for the upcoming day shift. In other words, he was about to become a scab.

I confronted him in a firm, but nonthreatening, way. I was truly shocked that he was working and I told him so. His reply was, "There's no union!"

Now this is a guy who about eight months ago started losing his teeth. He is now almost toothless. He epitomizes for me the individuated mindset of many New York cab drivers. It doesn't occur to him that the reason he hasn't been able to replace his teeth is that he is underpaid and has no dental plan because there is no union and that a demonstration of some unity would be at least something that could be done to improve his very obvious problem. It was pathetic.

What Was Accomplished?

From what I can see the only thing that might be considered a victory for the taxi drivers is that their complaints are far better known to the general public and to the city government than they were before. The work stoppage received a lot of publicity locally.

Unfortunately the whole thing clearly showed how weak the drivers are as a group. I mean, if you can't get drivers to agree to stay home from work for two lousy days, you certainly can't get them to do more than that. So if anyone in City Hall had any serious concerns that taxi drivers had to be dealt with - or else! - well, they don't have those concerns anymore.

I contend that when the system we operate under was created in 1937 it was intentionally designed to be unorganizable. If all the city's taxicabs could be located at two, or five, or even twenty different garages, it could be done. But when you have 11,787 medallion taxis - the number in 1937 - consisting of about 5,000 individual owner/operators and the rest divided up among something like 50 different garages, I'm afraid it cannot.

So there is no clout. Taxi drivers will have to continue to depend on whatever sense of fair play the mayor and his appointees have at any particular time. Which, even if the current administration is fair and competent, doesn't mean that the next one will be, too.

What the Mayor Did

Mayor Bloomberg and his team were well-prepared for this action. A contingency plan had already been thought up and was put into motion the moment the work stoppage began. It consisted of a zone pricing system that was more lucrative for the driver than our usual metered rates, a group riding arrangement at the airports that was also more lucrative, extra buses, and the threat of allowing the outer-borough livery cars to accept street hails and do the airport business if there weren't sufficient medallion cabs on the streets.

The mayor took to the airwaves to encourage drivers to come to work and declared to the media that the work stoppage was having no effect at all on getting around in the city. He even had his picture taken sitting behind the wheel of a taxi. He would not meet with the leaders of the TWA to discuss their grievances and offered no willingness to negotiate at all.
Only one commentator that I was aware of, Ron Kuby on WABC radio (although I'm sure there were others), mentioned that the mayor was acting as a union buster and was encouraging workers to scab, something that is not considered fair play in management/labor relations. But again, it shows the weakness of the drivers. Can you imagine what a clamour would have been created if the mayor had refused to negotiate with the Transit Workers Union a year and a half ago when there was a brief subway and bus strike? That is what is meant by "clout". If you haven't got it, this is what you get.

What the Mayor Said

Because I am knowledgeable about the history of these things, I actually found it amusing to hear how the issues of requiring taxis to install expensive GPS tracking systems and passenger information monitors were being sold to the media and the public by the mayor. He said that all he was trying to do was make the taxi-riding experience better for the public. Okay, fine. He further stated that these "technology enhancements" had already been agreed to when we accepted the fare increases of May '04 and November '06, the implication being that by going on strike we were somehow backing out of a deal we had already made.

This logic was swallowed by the NY Times in an editorial in which they said that yes, the drivers may have some valid objections, but they did agree to it when they got the last fare increase, so they should honor that agreement now.

What??

The impression that the mayor seemed to be trying to give was that there is some kind of union and that the drivers all got together and voted to accept the deal. As we have already seen, nothing could be further from the truth. Obviously, there is nothing that can be called a union.

No driver ever voted or was even asked for an opinion about these "technology improvements". The only faction of the taxi industry that was consulted were the owners of the fleets. And they are getting a piece of the action (advertising revenues from the passenger information devices). And they were not in agreement with the work stoppage. In fact, they did everything they could think of to prevent drivers from participating in it.

What the Mayor Did Not Say

In order to illustrate the kind of duplicity that taxi drivers are subjected to, I am going to have to back up a few years and explain a bit of the history of the politics of fare increases. The first thing to understand is that fare increases do not just occur when the mayor or the taxi commissioner say so. They have to go through a lengthy bureaucratic procedure including public hearings and economic studies.

However, in all the years I've been watching this process, since 1977, these hearings and studies have always been merely a formality. Once an announcement is made by the Taxi and Limousine Commission that a fare increase is being considered, it is just a matter of time - within two months or so - that the increase becomes a reality.

By December of 2001 the taxi industry had gone six years since the last fare increase. We were hurting badly. The rate of fare in NYC has always been lower than almost all other major U.S. cities to begin with (in those days the rate was $1.50 per mile and 20 cents for a minute of waiting time), plus we were in the middle of the economic calamity of 9/11. The rate of inflation was about 3 to 4 per cent per year, so the value of our earnings was in the area of 20 per cent less than it had been six years prior. I myself was working four twelve-hour shifts per week (the most my body can endure) and barely had enough to pay for my extremely modest living expenses. Out of desperation I was considering leaving my chosen ( perhaps foolishly chosen) profession.

Then finally - three to four years late in my own opinion - a proposed 26 per cent fare increase was announced by the taxi commissioner, Matthew Daus, in mid-December. My spirits immediately lifted. Thankfully there would soon be relief to what had become a bleak economic scenario.

And then, in the last week of the month and in the last week of his tenure as mayor, Rudy Guiliani, who had been to the taxi drivers what Mussolini had been to Italy, responded to a reporter's question about what he thought about the taxi drivers getting a fare increase. He said he thought they should only get maybe a 10 per cent increase and that should only go to the owners of the "new" cabs.

The "new" cabs in those days were the Crown Vics that were being manufactured by Ford to have extra leg room in the back. They were just becoming available and were beginning to hit the streets with great popularity with both drivers and passengers alike.

Now let me fill you in so you will comprehend the monumental absurdity and mean-spiritedness of Guiliani's comment. If you didn't know any better this might sound like a harsh but not totally unreasonable statement for the former mayor to have made. But here's what the general public would not know. The types of vehicles that appear on the streets are mandated by the Taxi and Limousine Commission. They make the rules. We follow them. So the cab owner who purchased one of the "old" Crown Vics did so only because the TLC said that was the vehicle you must have. And, by a new rule that was adopted during Guiliani's administration, they are only permitted to be on the streets for three years, after which time they are automatically retired.

So if the former mayor's comment was to be taken seriously, owners, who had been following the city's own rules when they had purchased a new cab, say, a year ago (and now had almost zero resale value) would have to suddenly take this vehicle off the road and take out a new loan on a new car in order to get a ten per cent rate increase. And then there would be a two-tiered pricing system in effect creating a situation in which the public would never know what rate they would be paying when they hailed a cab (the Crown Vics look identical from the outside).

But Guiliani's comment was not taken seriously. It was a mean-spirited and disingenuous remark made by a lame duck official as a parting shot to the members of an industry he genuinely disliked. Why that was so could be the subject of another post. But I include it here as an example of how politics can effect an industry that has no clout. And as a lead-in to what happened next.

As annoyed as I was when I heard this comment, I knew that in another week Guiliani, thank God, would no longer be mayor and Bloomberg, who as far as I knew had no personal animosity toward taxi drivers, would take over. So I wasn't too concerned. The 26 per cent rate increase had already been proposed by the TLC and it was just a matter of a short time before it would clear the usual bureaucratic hurdles.

Bloomberg became mayor on January 1st, 2002. A month went by and nothing was heard about the rate increase. Another month went by. Nothing. And then another. I became puzzled and worried. It was taking way more time than it ever had in previous years for this proposed rate increase to be approved.

And then one day while driving my own car toward my taxi garage to start a night shift, I heard on the radio the voice of the taxi commissioner, Mr. Daus. He said that new industry data indicates that there are enough drivers at this time so a rate increase is no longer being considered.

Whaaat??!!

You did not want to be anywhere around me at this particular moment. I wound up screaming so loudly at my radio that I had a sore throat for two days.

It made no sense. He might as well have gone on the air and said that from now on taxi drivers will be required to wear their underwear on the outside of their pants. (Old Woody Allen joke from the movie Bananas.) There are enough taxi drivers at this time? Since when did that become the criterion for a rate increase? The reason for the rates to go up is supposed to be that rising costs of living and doing business warrant it. If we are to assume that a sufficient or insufficient number of people currently driving cabs is the criterion, we must also assume that the thinking is that no rate increase will be given until everyone is so poor that they are absolutely forced to quit! And how mean-spirited would that be?

I didn't believe for a minute that this was the real reason for this announcement. Beside the fact that it made no sense, if it was true the commissioner would never have said it. I knew there was some other reason, but I couldn't imagine what it could be. I started considering various conspiracy theories that might explain it. But nothing quite made sense. And months and months and months went by without that desperately needed fare increase becoming a reality.

Then, finally, in February of 2004 - two years later - the TLC announced that the same 26 per cent fare increase was again being considered. The bureaucratic process was put into motion and in early May '04 we did get that increase. (And no mention was made of there now being enough or not enough drivers.)

About a week later I had a realization that was like the proverbial bolt of lightning streaking through the darkness. I suddenly understood why the fare increase had been delayed for two years after it had appeared to be a done deal in 2001. Here's what actually happened...

A few months after Mr. Bloomberg became mayor, the TLC announced that plans were being made to add 900 additional medallions over the course of three years to the streets of New York. (A medallion is a license to own one taxicab. One medallion equals one cab.) This is an occurrence that is a rarity in NYC. It would be only the second time since 1937 that medallions had been added to the fleet, bringing the number from 12,187 to 13,087.

But, like fare increases, this cannot be accomplished by mayoral decree. Thorough environmental impact studies must be done and the whole thing must be passed on by various agencies and committees. It's a long process that would take about a year and a half. But when it does happen, it's a goldmine for the city because these medallions are auctioned off to the highest bidders. And the going price of a medallion at that time was around $250,000.

Mayor Bloomberg is a self-made billionaire who knows how to make money. He realized two things when he heard about the proposed fare increase just after he became mayor. One, that if adding more taxis to the streets could be justified, it would mean a ton of revenue for the city. And two, if the fare increase could be postponed until the new medallions were about to be auctioned, it would mean that much more money for the city because the value of the medallion would go up.

And he was right. The medallions went on auction simultaneously with the rate increase in May '04 and the value of the medallion shot up to around $350,000. And the city made a ton of money. But it was at the expense of the taxi drivers who deserved and were about to get a rate increase in 2002 but did not get one until two years later. That cost the taxi driver of NYC thousands of dollars that he needed badly just to pay for the basic expenses of living.

And that was the real reason for the delay in the rate increase. And that is what the mayor did not say.

Now you may be wondering how I can be so sure about this. Well, I'll tell you. First of all, it's completely logical. But secondly, a couple of months ago I had a passenger in my cab who, through the course of conversation, told me he works as a member of the mayor's staff. He was quite a nice guy and we had a free-flowing discussion, touching on things like how the mayor's office was organized into various functions, the congestion tax (click here for my previous post), and my thoughts about Guiliani. Just to see what he'd say, I mentioned that even though Mayor Bloomberg had intervened to delay the rate increase we were supposed to get in 2002 in order to coincide with the sale of the new medallions in 2004 - and this was something that had cost me thousands of dollars - I still liked him a lot better than Guiliani. Because with Bloomberg it was a business move, and I respect that even if it was at my expense. With Guiliani, it was personal.

And then he confirmed that what I'd just said was true - Mayor Bloomberg had indeed intervened to delay the rate increase.

So ladies and gentlemen, we have a little investigative journalism here with one completely credible witness. That may or may not be good enough for the NY Times, I don't know, but it is good enough for my blog! And as far as I know, this has never been revealed in any other media. So you can say you heard it here first.

Solution

I will say one thing favorable about Mayor Bloomberg. During his term a rule has been created that puts a cap on the leasing fee that can be charged by the garages to the drivers. And most of the money from the '04 rate increase and all of the money from the small '06 rate increase (click here to learn about that) went to the drivers. I think he felt guilty about what he'd done in '02 and wanted to make it up to us. And this shows that he's not an unfair person.

Nevertheless, the fact is that the taxi industry has no clout with City Hall and is therefore subject to the whims, chicaneries, and personal prejudices of whoever happens to be the mayor or those to whom he has delegated authority. And that is an unfair playing field.

The issue that underlies the protest about the mandated installation of the GPS tracking system is money. The city tells us what we can charge for our services, it is not enough, and then we must beg them for rate increases which are usually not forthcoming. If taxi drivers were making a good living, and the cost of the installation of the new system was being passed on to the consumer, it would not be such a big deal. So for real change to occur, the arbitraries need to be removed from the process.

I have an idea.

I think real change that could improve the substandard working conditions of the NYC taxi driver could come not from the executive branch of the city government (the mayor) but from the legislative branch (the City Council). I think a law needs to be created.

In New York City there is a system in place that is used to protect the tenants of rent-stabilized apartments from price gouging. A group called the Rent Guidelines Board studies the economics that affect landlords each year and sets a maximum percentage that rents can be raised. This is the law.

I think a similar law needs to be created regarding taxi fares. The function of examining the costs of being in the taxi business should be an ongoing affair that results in a mandatory adjustment of the rates at a specific time. Like once every two years.

This would take the politics out of the procedure.

And it would be fair and would do a great deal to stabilize the taxi industry.

And I'll tell you something else. It would be acceptable to the riding public. Everyone knows we live in an inflating economy. We accept the idea that as time goes on the prices go up a bit. But what drives passengers crazy is the huge rate increase. A moderate, predictible increase every two years would be tolerable and understandable. And fair.

I think the Taxi Workers Alliance should move its efforts away from the mayor and the TLC and focus on what allies may be found in the City Council. And make this idea the law.

And In Conclusion...

All right, I've said all I want to say about politics and taxis. Hopefully I have shed some light on what actually goes on. And who knows, maybe this idea will take root and do some good.

But in any case this blog will now return to what I have intended it to be - stories about karma vs. coincidence, traffic jams, and drunks who puke in the back seat.

Along with an occasional dog.

The World Trade Center: A Remembrance

I will have more to say about the taxi strike, but since yesterday was the 6th anniversary of 9/11 I thought it would be appropriate to observe that occasion before delving again into the politics of the taxi industry. So here goes...

It has become an annual event for me, deep in the night of Sept. 11th, to stop driving my cab for awhile and take a reverential break down at Ground Zero. I did so last night.

The area looks different than it did a year ago, and this is a good thing. Construction has finally begun for the new buildings. Numerous cranes are down in "the pit" and the streets all around the place are torn up to make way for new pipelines and God knows what. The rebuilding process is underway at last.

Due to the nature of the current construction, there's not as much space available at Ground Zero itself as there has been in the past for people to display pictures of loved ones lost in the tragedy. In fact, there were not nearly as many mementos in place as there were last year, probably because the commemoration ceremonies took place a couple of blocks south of Ground Zero at Liberty Street this year. But the ones that were there stirred deep emotions in me.

I have found that I cannot let go of 9/11. I cannot dismiss it mentally as something that just happened. The awful significance of the event is too disturbing. And I cannot forget the stories I have heard, and continue to hear, from many passengers in my cab. (To read some of them, click here.)

Also, I miss the towers themselves. I still see them in my mind whenever I drive past Ground Zero. When I get a fare to the nearby residential complex called Battery Park City I still sometimes think of heading over to the North Tower where the Windows of the World restaurant used to be to look for my next ride. I picture the driveway where I used to wait for people who had just dined up in the clouds and I remember how I never tired of stepping out of my cab and just looking up and marveling at the sheer size of the structures.

Perhaps when the new World Trade Center is built I will begin to not care so much that the old one is gone. But perhaps not. Perhaps it's more likely that anyone who had ever been to the Twin Towers will have a permanent bond to the memory of the place.

And having said that, I'd like to share with you some unadulterated nostalgia regarding the World Trade Center, if you will indulge me. It's something that happened in the spring of 1973...

I lived in those days in a dive called the Hadson Hotel on W. 31st Street. It was a less than charming place with shared bathrooms, but for $70 a month it served its purpose, which was to live cheaply, if not well. But I did have a view of Herald Square from my window, plus I knew I would never starve - there were plenty of cockroaches available. So I had no complaints.

One lovely Saturday afternoon in May my friend Judy Huelsman and I decided to take a bike ride from the Hadson down into lower Manhattan along the Hudson River. It was a great day for a ride. Not only was the weather perfect on that particular day, but the city was all but empty. There's nothing like a deserted Manhattan to give the people who didn't leave a sense of entitlement. It's as if the empty buildings belong to you. As it turned out, that would be an understatement for us that afternoon.

We pedaled along enjoying the air and the sights until, about forty minutes into our journey, we came to the area of the sparkling, new World Trade Center on the south side of Vesey Street. This was a brand new and utterly magnificent sight to us, since we lived and worked uptown and never got to the lower end of the island. So we were taking it in with the same awe that tourists would have who were seeing it for the very first time, our jaws dropping, so to speak.

At that time the North Tower had been completed and was partially occupied, but the interior of the South Tower was still under construction and was unoccupied. So since the area was partially in operation, it wasn't closed off to the public as a construction sight normally would be. Thus we were able to park our bikes and wander around without anyone kicking us out. Not that anyone was around who would kick us out. The place was deserted.

We walked along and found ourselves approaching the South Tower. We pulled on the handle of one of the doors. To our surprise, the door opened! We entered the building. We walked around the unfinished lobby. We walked up and down a flight of stairs. After a minute or two we realized that there was no one else around. Apparently we had the entire South Tower all to ourselves!

We reacted like children who had gained control of an amusement park, calling out to each other from one end of the massive lobby to the other and fooling around. And then we found the elevators. We pushed the button. The door opened! We entered and pushed 33. The door closed and... up we went! The elevators were working! What would we see when we got up there? We had no idea.

The door opened and we looked out at what at that time was the 33rd floor of the South Tower. It was bare from one side of the building to the other. The interior walls had not yet been constructed, so we could walk around the entirety of the floor without obstructions. Which we did. But, of course, the coolest thing was simply to look out the windows. Since we were able to move around from one side of the tower to the other, we could view the skyline, the harbor, and the Statue of Liberty - all of New York City - from every conceivable angle.

And when we decided we'd had enough of the 33rd floor, we went back to the elevator and went higher up to get an even better view. And that's how we spent the next hour - riding the elevators (quite a thrill by itself, as the elevators in the WTC had enormous thrust) and getting off and on at whichever floors we desired. And then finally, having other things that needed to be done that day, we rode back down to the lobby, got back on our bikes, and pedaled away.

And we never saw a soul.

For one afternoon in May of 1973, my friend and I had one of the Twin Towers all to ourselves.

It was one of the best days of my life.

And perhaps clicking here for Pictures From A Taxi will make this one of the best days of your life... well, maybe that's a bit of an overstatement...