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.

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

Goodbye, Giuliani

Rudy Giuliani has dropped out of the presidential race and, like the Munchkins who showed up after Dorothy's house came in for a landing, I feel it's safe to emerge from the hole I've been hiding in since he announced he was running over a year ago, and air it out about this guy. Actually I was going to write this post whether he won or lost in Florida, but the fact that I no longer have to worry that Giuliani is going to be our next president does make me feel a bit more comfortable at my keyboard, I must admit.

I have an unique perspective about Giuliani, one that you wouldn't hear from the usual political commentators. I can write about him from the point of view of a taxi driver who was directly affected by him for the eight years he was in office, from 1994 - 2001. When you're a taxi driver in New York, although you're deemed an "independent contractor", in reality the conditions of your working life are very strongly influenced by the government agency called the Taxi and Limousine Commission, which is headed by its own Chairman. This person is appointed by the mayor and, if the mayor is a strong-willed, hands-on guy like Giuliani, he pretty much does whatever the mayor says he should do.

So in a sense a taxi driver is only two steps down from having the mayor as his boss. Therefore, to that extent, I know Giuliani.

For the first four years, I liked him. The changes I noticed about New York were that the "squeegee" guys disappeared and the numbers of hustlers and destitute on the streets were greatly reduced. This was attributed to his policies. But then, from the moment he was re-elected in 1997 (and could not be elected again due to the term limit law), it was as if an acorn had dropped on his head and he just went wild in taking New York from being not merely a safer place than it had been before, but to what many were saying was a similarity to a police state.

The first sign of trouble I noticed was this: only a couple of weeks into his new term in 1998, a man got in my cab who was in a state of agitation and apparently needed to tell anyone who would listen what had happened to his brother the previous night. His brother, he said, owned a bar on the Upper East Side. A man and a woman whom he'd never seen before entered the bar, put a quarter in the juke box, and started to dance. This dancing was witnessed by two people sitting at the bar who turned out to be undercover cops. They promptly got up and wrote his brother a summons for $2,000 for allowing dancing in his bar when he does not possess a cabaret license. 

It turned out this was a law that had been sitting on the books for a hundred years and up until then had rarely, if ever, been enforced. And it was not an isolated incident. I heard numerous similar stories as time went on and concluded that this was part of a citywide sweep that could only have come from the mayor himself, as no police commissioner in his right mind would ever dream of sending his cops out to do such mean-spirited and absurd enforcement. It has been conjectured, and I believe it, that the two "dancers" were themselves cops, which would have made this operation nothing better than a set-up.

 
One thing is not conjecture, however. If you go into any bar in New York City today and look around at the walls, you will find a sign that states quite clearly for all to read: NO DANCING PERMITTED.

It turned out this no-dancing-in-bars action was a harbinger of things to come, particularly for taxi drivers. Within weeks we were hit with a bolt from the blue. The mayor announced new rules for taxi drivers and taxi owners. Using statistics about increasing traffic accidents (which turned out to be false) as his justification, these were some of the conditions we suddenly had to contend with:

1) If a taxi driver was being ticketed for a moving violation, he would receive not one, but two summonses. One from NY State, like always, and an additional one from the Taxi and Limousine Commission. One offense, two tickets. (Many months later, this was struck down by the courts.)

2) If a taxi driver accumulated six points on his driver's license within 18 months he would automatically have his hack license suspended for one month. Six points is normally the equivalent of two moving violations. This rule applied not only if you were ticketed while you were driving your taxi, but also if you were driving your own personal car. Thus a taxi driver could make an illegal turn in Wyoming and lose his job for a month in New York City. (This rule still stands, except it's been reduced to 15 months.)

3) Owners of taxi medallions were required to submit a list of all their personal assets to the government.
Following this decree from Giuliani, resistance, previously non-existent, began to build. A group formed calling itself the Taxi Workers Alliance and made attempts to protect the rights of taxi drivers. Using nothing but word of mouth and flyers distributed by hand, they called for a one-day strike in May, 1998. Amazingly, the word spread like fire and on that particular day it was impossible to find a yellow cab in the city.

 
I considered this to be a labor miracle. I had been saying for 20 years that the biggest problem of the taxi industry in New York was that there was no union. Drivers were powerless to stand up to the whims and injustices perpetuated against them by the powers-that-be and yet here, at last, was at least a real attempt to correct that situation. I was exhilarated.

Giuliani went on television that night and with a crooked smile on his face made this sarcastic comment:

"You know, the streets were nice and empty today. It was nice. They should do it more often."

 

He then stonewalled the people who were trying to represent the drivers. He wouldn't even speak with them.

 
However, he did do this: he sent his police force out to ticket taxi drivers for any imaginable offense for the next two years. There was no question, if you were a taxi driver from 1998 through 2000, that "the heat" was always on. Even if you were not pulled over yourself, on any given day you could observe in disturbing numbers the other cabbies who had been. Plus there were the endless stories you heard from these drivers and even from passengers about the harrassment taxi drivers were being subjected to.

I heard stories of drivers being ticketed because the receipt paper sticking out of the meter from the previous ride had not been torn off. Or an entry was missing from their trip sheets. Or a driver was wearing a shirt with no collar. Or he was wearing sandals. A friend of mine who had been a taxi driver for 25 years was pulled over by one of the TLC patrol cars and written up for several such tickets. Rather than sacrifice his own sense of dignity by paying them, he instead mailed his hack license in to the TLC, quitting the business.

It was abundantly clear to me that taxi drivers as a group had been singled out by Giuliani as targets for punishment. But whenever the subject came up in my cab (and it was a daily topic of conversation), the question I always heard was, "Why?"

 
What did Giuliani have against taxi drivers, anyway?

 
I never had an answer for that question.

 
Not until a passenger in my cab volunteered some information in the year 2000 that made sense to me. He was a middle-aged man going on a long ride up to the North Bronx and in the course of conversation mentioned that he was a police officer who worked "in the mayor's office". This interesting statement of course led to an in-depth conversation about Giuliani and eventually this man asked me a rhetorical question: "Why do you suppose," he asked, "the mayor has been so tough on three groups - the taxi drivers, the food vendors, and the video store operators?"

I didn't know the answer yet but I did know that aside from my own group, these other two industries, particularly the food vendors, had often been under attack during Giuliani's reign. The answer then given to me by my passenger was this: 

"These groups currently all have within them large numbers of Muslims. The mayor sees Muslims as being terrorists."

I don't repeat this comment as if it were a matter of fact or anything that Giuliani ever said in public. It can easily be dismissed as hearsay. I'm just saying that, given everything I knew about how Giuliani conducted himself, this statement was the only explanation I ever heard that made sense to me. It fit, in my opinion.

 
Of course, this conversation took place well before 9-11 and in hindsight some people might say Giuliani was right. But obviously it is fundamentally wrong - and dangerous - to lump entire groups of people together and make them targets for attacks from government agencies because some of them may be criminals. That's how genocides get started.

So I was deeply concerned that this man could possibly get his hands on the United States military and the nuclear arsenal. And even more concerned when he was actually leading in the polls. I had serious questions about the ability of the voters to see through a person like this.

But I was wrong. Rudy put all his resources into the Florida primary and came away with only 13 percent of the vote and one delegate to the convention. And then he quit. The voters had more sense than I had given them credit for, and it has rehabilitated my confidence in the democratic process.

So in that sense, now that he's lost, I'm actually glad he ran.

 
The "streets" of political thugs are much emptier now.

It's nice.

Maybe he should do it more often.

Then again, maybe not.

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But one thing anyone should seriously consider doing more often is clicking here for Pictures From A Taxi.

The Three Strikes And You're Out System

Quite often, after a passenger learns that I've been driving a cab in New York City for thirty years, they will ask me if I've ever been held up.

"You mean tonight?" is my usual wiseass reply.

"Noooo... ever!"

"How many times would you guess?" I ask.

They think about it for a minute, doing some kind of math based on a thirty-year time span.

"Ten?"

"Nope."

"Twenty?"

Wrong again. Sorry to disappoint anyone who's hoping to get a juicy tale out of me, but the answer is actually ZERO. Throughout all those years in the '70s and '80s when New York had such a high crime rate, I was driving cabs that had no partitions to protect me from passengers and I was taking people to the worst neighborhoods in the city almost every night, yet I have never been the victim of a robbery. I've had people rip me off by not paying the fare, sure, and once a kid on the street tried unsuccessfully to grab the money that was in my shirt pocket, but I've never had a passenger pull out a weapon or in any way attempt to separate me from my money. Never.

When I tell people this, what I usually hear is, "Knock on wood."

Like hell I will. If I thought it was luck, then I would also think that any day now my luck is about to run out. It isn't luck.

I have a system...

Many years ago - I think it was in 1978 - I had a conversation with a passenger in my cab which may have saved my life. The passenger was a woman who was an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn. Our conversation had to do with violent crime, a subject that was on everybody's mind in the city in those days. She told me she had prosecuted hundreds of violent criminals and had come to this conclusion: the one you think it is, it is.

"The one you think it is, it is." Those words remained in my consciousness, big time, and it led to the development of my taxi driver's anti-crime system. What she meant was that people who commit stupid, violent crimes look the part. And holding up a cab at gunpoint or knife point in the hope of getting, what? - a couple of hundred dollars? - is a really stupid crime because the idiot is risking years in jail in order to get so little.

The beauty of it, if you want to call it that, is that someone who is that stupid is also not smart enough to dress up in a three-piece suit in order to fool the cab driver. Because if he was smart enough to do that, he wouldn't commit the crime in the first place. He'd commit a different kind of crime, like stealing pocketbooks in restaurants, instead.

After you drive a cab for six months or so you begin to become quite familiar with the various types of passengers you tend to get on any given day. Generally speaking, your customers are people who can afford to pay the fare and fit into certain categories, like business travelers, tourists, working New Yorkers, etc. So the odd person who does not fit into one of these categories stands out like a sore toenail and that is the person you pay careful attention to.

And that is where my system begins.

STRIKE ONE: the passenger looks like Godzilla and I would have driven right past him without stopping, but somehow this guy (it's never an unaccompanied female) made it into my cab anyway. Maybe I was stopped at a red light and he got in or maybe he got in before the previous, departing passenger could close the door, but one way or the other, there he is in my cab. I am stuck with him.

When I say he "looks like Godzilla" what I mean is that he looks like a thug. This is a guy who, to my eye, looks conceivably like someone who is low-life enough to think it would be worthwhile to stick up a taxi driver. It is a judgement call by me based on years of experience. I do not compromise my own reality.

However, this is only Strike One. I do not make any attempt to get him out of my cab or give him a hard time. I merely ask him where he wants to go and start driving in that direction. If the place he wants to go is a well-populated street in a decent part of town, I have no problem with it. Even a stupid criminal is smart enough not to try to stick you up in the middle of Herald Square. But if he wants to go to the South Bronx at two in the morning, then it's...

STRIKE TWO: he's taking me to a bad part of the city at a time of the night when I don't feel safe going there. If the guy is planning on holding me up, this is where he wants me to be. He could direct me to drive into a dark, deserted street in an area where he feels safe and commit the crime there.

When a passenger has two strikes, I have a distinctly uneasy feeling about him. The fare seems wrong. My instincts tell me I am heading into trouble. This is the critical time for a cab driver. The incorrect thing to do is to "hope". You don't want to find yourself in that dark, deserted street with this guy. On the other hand, it would also be wrong to refuse to drive him there. Maybe he's okay. But you don't know that yet, and what must be done at this point is to find out.

I emphasize "must be done". Finding out if this guy is intending to hold you up is the difference between being at Cause or being at Effect, possibly even between life and death. And you must remain at Cause in this situation. How can that be done?

I do it by forcing myself to have a conversation with him. I will just start talking to this guy about ANYTHING. It could be sports, politics, the weather, the economy, traffic, giraffes, people passing by on the street, the color of my true love's eyes, if Burger King's fries are really better than McDonald's... ANYTHING. As I am talking to him, I am carefully watching his reaction to my communication in the mirror. I am trying to determine, by his response or lack of response, what is going on in his mind. I am trying to get a "feel" for the guy.

Interestingly, 99 percent of the time he turns out to be okay. I can see by the way he talks that he does not have an evil intention. I continue on with the ride and he pays the fare. But what about that one percent? What if the guy speaks with some hostility, is sarcastic, or won't communicate at all? What if, after forcing myself to converse with him, I still have a bad feeling about the guy? Then it's...

STRIKE THREE: he is out. I must get this guy out of my cab and I must do it in a busy place where there are lots of people around. How to get rid of him? There are three basic ways:

A) Overtly. You pull up next to a police car and announce to the passenger that you don't like the feeling of this ride and you're not continuing on with it. You don't charge the guy for the ride but if he has a problem, there's the police officer. Or, if there's no cop around, shut the partition and lock it and order him out of the cab. Again, no charge. Make sure you stop in a place where you can pull away the moment his foot touches the pavement.

The overt method is not recommended. It could lead to a confrontation or a ticket for a refusal from the Taxi and Limousine Commission. Better than that are the other two methods, the sneaky methods, both of which require a little acting skill...

B) Covertly, Part 1. There is something wrong with the car. Years ago, when I owned my own cab, I had a cut-off switch installed in the taxi. Whenever I hit the switch, the engine would stop running and wouldn't start up again. It was (and still is) illegal, of course, as it could be easily abused to refuse fares you don't feel like taking. But that was the perfect tool. However, if you can't get a cut-off switch installed, there is another way.

Press your foot lightly on the emergency brake to the point where the red "brake" light appears on the dashboard. It will not affect the movement of the car if the pressure of your foot is very slight, but the red light will come on nevertheless. Then announce to the passenger that the brake light just came on and the brake pedal is going all the way down to the floorboard when you step on it, so you're going to have to end the ride and call a tow truck. Don't charge him for the ride as he leaves the premises. Then lock the doors, put your off-duty light on, and drive away.

C) Covertly, Part 2. There's something wrong with you. One way of doing this is the fake cell phone call. You pull out your cell phone and pretend that you're having a conversation with a family member. There has been a terrible accident and a relative has been taken to the hospital. You must get there at once. Sorry, but you're going to have to drop him off right now. No charge.

And then there is the most drastic, yet effective, way of all: "Very sorry, it's really embarrassing to say this, but I have diarrhea." No need to elaborate! Just remember to do this only in a busy place with lots of people around.

So there it is. If you are a cab driver yourself, I urge you to study and practice the Three Strikes And You're Out System even if you have a two-way radio in your cab. (In New York, we don't have radios - all our business comes right off the street.) And if you know someone who is a cab driver, please print out this post and put it in his or her hands. You never know, you might be saving a life.

Celebrity Stories From My Passengers

There are certain subjects that are common grounds for conversation in a taxicab - the weather, traffic, sports, politics, whatever's in the news, things that you see on the street. Dogs. And celebrities.

New York is a celebrity town. Nonchalant New Yorkers may not gawk at or bother the celebrities they encounter around the city, but just about every New Yorker has a personal list of celebrities they've spotted. And I have found that asking a passenger if they've ever seen a celebrity on the street is an almost foolproof method of starting a conversation with that passenger.

As a taxi driver for many years, I have a very long list of celebrities I've either had in my cab or seen walking around. And I've posted a couple of these stories already. But I've never written about a celebrity story that was told to me by a passenger. In the last couple of weeks, though, I've heard two stories that I thought were exceptional enough to pass them along. So here goes...

A few days before Christmas I was taking a forty-something man across town when the song "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" came floating out of my radio. I mentioned to my passenger that about 25 years ago I had the man who wrote that song in my cab (J. Fred Coots) and I told him about the ride. I like telling that story because it's so exotic. I mean, the celebrities you might expect to see or meet would usually be movie stars, musicians, or TV talking heads. Who would ever expect to run into the author of a popular Christmas song? It was a very unusual category of celebrity.

My passenger, not to be outdone, told me a story of his own. He said he works in the New York Public Library and one day a few years ago a woman came up to his desk who wanted to apply for a library card. She looked familiar, but he wasn't sure who she was until she filled in a form and he read her name.

It was Monica Lewinsky.

Other people in the library had already spotted her and were kind of staring at her through the corners of their eyes, he said, and then she suddenly turned around and addressed them. "Yes," she exclaimed, "it's me!"

Monica Lewinsky - now that is an exotic celebrity sighting. Ms. Lewinsky is the sole occupant of her own particular category of celebrity.

And then last Saturday night there was another one. I picked up a middle-aged man and a younger woman in Midtown and drove them down to Soho. The lady got on her cell phone with her mother and excitedly told her that she'd just come from a restaurant called Cipriani's and had made a celebrity sighting - Tony Bennett. When that conversation ended I mentioned to her that I'd once had Tony Bennett in my cab and told her about what that was like. I then asked her if she'd ever spotted any other celebrities and she thought about it and said, "Well... there was O.J. Simpson..."

There's another celebrity who has a category all to himself. But my passenger hadn't merely spotted him. She actually had an interesting story to tell.

She said she used to be a nanny for a couple of children whose parents lived just down the street from O.J. Simpson's house in Los Angeles. Yes, that house. In fact, she said, the children she was caring for often played with the Simpson's children. And she would see Nicole and O.J. frequently at things like soccer games. And then she said that she had actually seen O.J. Simpson and Nicole Simpson on the night of the murder. Both he and Nicole had attended, separately, a ballet recital that their daughter was participating in. And my passenger had been at that recital.

It reminded me of another story I'd been told by a passenger years ago. He said as a teenager in Dallas, Texas, he had seen John F. Kennedy drive by in his motorcade just minutes before he was assassinated.

Only in retrospect do we realize that the person who had been standing next to you on the street was Fate.




However, no retrospect is needed to click here for Pictures From A Taxi. You could just do it right now.

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.