Johnny Liddell, Fictional Private Detective, Rides Cabs In New York City, Cira 1963 & If You Can Avoid It, Do Not Vote For Bruce Harrell & Uber Enters the French Language

Pages 51, 52, from the potboiler novel "Johnny Come Lately" by Frank Lane

I found this "DELL First Edition 40 cents" paperback in a rubbish pile.  Not something I normally read but I found the cover amusing.  Under the title on the cover is the description: "She was just a country girl---but she knew how to use her assets," with an illustration displaying the woman's favorable physical features.  This was the kind of book I would find my parents reading back in the early 1960s, when we were living in that aluminum and sheet metal ghetto known as Todd's Trailer Court located on the poverty edges of the eastern Colorado prairie in unincorporated Adams County. Also there were stacks of pulp paperback westerns next to my parent's bedside.  I didn't like them.

They, my mother and father,  then were voracious but lowbrow readers, Sinclair Lewis, Steinbeck or Faulkner not for them but I know they would have enjoyed Pearl Buck's novels if they had been aware of her.  The first adult novel I ever read was one of their paperbacks, Robert Ruark's "Something of Value" when I was ten, a fictional account about Kenya's Mau Mau rebellion against the British colonists.  How it ended up in our home I had no idea. 

Is the Frank Lane book any good?  Perhaps yes, perhaps no but what I enjoyed reading was Johnny Liddell taking lots of cab rides, which is why I include one of Lane's description of a typical New York cabbie.  Stereotyping yes but entertaining nonetheless. 

And before the Lane quote I want to tell you that I found another paperback weathering in the brutal New Mexico sun, an Erle Stanley Gardner "Perry Mason" novel, "The Case of the Drowsy Mosquito," originally published in 1943, this edition from 1950.  Its cover also featured a woman---a red lipsticked pretty brunette wide-eyed with terror.  Just like today, sex sells, however soft or hard the intonation, or is it invitation.

The Mason book is well written, better than the Lane novel but I only mention it due to Perry Mason's famous secretary, Della Street, and the shortcut route up from Seattle's MLK Jr Way S. to Beacon Hill and the VA Hospital via South Della Street. Either driving up or down Della Street, which I have done thousands of repetitive times, I was always instantly brought back to my childhood days, watching Perry Mason win yet another entertaining court case on our huge black and white screened Westinghouse TV, bought mere days after I was born in 1953.  Yes, I am a "Golden Age of Television" child, born and bred. 

 In the novel Mason actually asks Miss Street to marry him but is rebuffed, Della not wanting to disturb their professional relationship. If there is irony here, the actor who made the TV role famous, Raymond Burr, was a gay man clearly hiding in the Hollywood closet. But of course all these characters are fictional, reality mattering little, Liddell and Mason always winning in the end despite all the harrowing circumstances involved, paperback heroes to the rescue. 

"Outside the Dispatch, Liddell waved down a south-bound cab, gave the address of Metropolitan Hospital, settled back against the cushions.  The cabby threaded the car in and out of traffic with ease born of long experience.

"Take it easy," Liddell told him.  "I'm not going to have a baby on you.  And I'd just as soon get there in this heap as in one of their delivery trucks."

The cabby glanced up at Liddell's reflection in the rear-view mirror, grinned around the toothpick he was macerating in the side of his mouth. "You think this is bad? You ought to see these streets comes around 5:30."  He spun the cab around a slow-moving truck, almost took the fender off a cab coming in the opposite direction.  The drivers exchanged screamed compliments as they whizzed by each other.  He squeezed back into the line in front of the truck, whose driver expressed his annoyance with a deafening toot of his horn. "I don't know how some of these characters they get a license to drive," the cabby complained.  

"Yeah.  They ought to give them a license for a gun instead. It's quicker and cleaner," Liddell grunted.

The cabby glanced up into the rear-view mirror with a puzzled frown. He rolled the toothpick to the other side of his mouth, shook his head.  Pushing a hack like this you run into all kinds of whacks, he consoled himself.

At the hospital, he swung the cab out of the slow-moving stream of traffic with such violence that it banged a wheel against the curb, skidded to a stop.  Liddell got out, pushed a bill through the window, waved away the change."

I can recognize myself in this, at least with the driving.  Every veteran cabbie is a low-speed  performance driver, the city streets our racetrack.  If you think it's easy, try it folks!  And as to the baby reference, one afternoon on a clogged south-bound I-5, yes I had a woman in labor on her way to Swedish Hospital.  It was damn close but I made it before I had the time honored tradition of delivering an infant in a cab.  I called ahead and a team of nurses were waiting our arrival. 

Don't Vote for that clown Bruce Harrell!

Boot his ass out!  Kick him down the road.  I haven't liked this guy like forever, and to further demonstrate my affection for the asshole I am reprising an excerpt from a 2018 post that was included in Craig Leisy's 2019 examination of taxi and Uber, "Transportation Network Companies And Taxis---The Case of Seattle," Routledge Books.  

Did you know that he is a millionaire lawyer, a professional kiss ass that doesn't care about you cabbies? He voted to lift the cap off of Uber and Lyft.  Know it!  Believe it!  Vote for Katie Wilson.  Leisy's opinion and my blog excerpt can found on page 220 in the chapter entitled "Pending Issues." 

 Leisy has expressed that he thought taxi would disappear from America's cities but so far, no.  Now the industry is threatened by Waymo in San Francisco and other cities.  Soon Waymo will be in New York City.  The world Lane described in his novel is rapidly disappearing.  And it is a profane reality politicians like Harrell and others have no interest in changing.  

Unlike the brave striking cabbies in France, our industry rolled over, capitulating in 2014.  As I have written in these posts, I was willing to fight but the suck-asses running BYG (Seattle Yellow Cab) weren't willing to do anything but acquiesce to madness.  As I have recently pointed out, it was VP Biden in January 2017, at the Davos Economic Forum where in a speech, lauded Uber, this after a private meeting with Uber founder, Travis Kalanick. With that kind of support, and big money backing, you had to be tough like the fictional cabbies described by Lane.  They weren't taking any crap from any body, F_ _ K You! their usual operational philosophy.  Too bad it was only a fictional defiance.  

From Craig Leisy's book, page 220:

"Joe Blondo, a long-time taxicab driver who writes a blog, expressed the exasperation of many drivers in the taxicab industry in a recent blog. He clearly believes that Seattle City Council President Bruce Harrell, and other members of the Council, are now attempting to fix the mess they made when they admitted an unlimited number of TNC drivers into the market in 2014.  But the damage has been done and it might be a case of too little, too late.

Monday, April 9, 2018

An open letter to the current City Council President Bruce Harrell, April 9th, 2018

Dear City Council President Bruce Harrell,

   With great interest I have been following the city council's proposals and deliberations concerning the well-being of Seattle's Uber and Lyft operators (owner-drivers), the council supporting efforts to not only unionize but also increase the Uber minimum rate from $1.35 to $2.40. Clearly there has been much discourse as to why they are not making enough money to survive, yet I find it interesting that you and your fellow council members are searching for solutions created solely by your own actions, voting, as I am sure you remember, to toss out the city council bill capping all ride-share companies at 250 vehicles each.  The real reason ride-share drivers can't make a living is due to there being 57,000 of them competing in a very small market that is Seattle. Yes, Uber might be immoral but that isn't why their market is saturated. Again, the core reason all this is occurring is because the city council decided to open the ride share industry to unfettered expansion, minus any real enforceable regulation and oversight." ________________

Note that Leisy included a correction in the chapter notes, stating that the actual number of TNC operators at that time in Seattle and King County was 37,103.  Uber only admitted to having 15,000 operators.  I did get my figure from something I read back then but can't remember where.  What is true is that now there are about 44,000 TNC drivers in Seattle and King County, with, according to friends, more being added daily.  At its height, Seattle and King County had about 1500 operational cabs. We wanted more but were denied.  Right now, including the airport, there are about 800 or so cabs now working Seattle and King County.  Another feature to all this is that KC is raking in the fees.  Each for hire costs the applicant $75.00, or at least I think that's what it is these days.  Even if I am wrong, $75.00 times 44,000 is a lot of money. 

I will remind everyone that I was sitting in the City Council chambers when they threw out their TNC cap.  Mr Harrell was sitting directly in front of me, about 30 feet away.  He was grinning as he cast his yes vote.  All this was prompted by then Seattle Mayor Ed Murray's decision to embrace Uber, this after campaigning against them.  I always thought money was involved, the slippery mayor eventually leaving office in a forced resignation in September of 2017.  

All this is why I urge everyone, in the upcoming Seattle primary, to vote for Katie Wilson.   At this time, Harrell is trailing in the polls,  Let's keep it that way.  

A New French Word

It is "Uberiser."  In the French lexicon, it means in general the digital conquest of services.  I subscribe to this French (in English) news website, called "The Local."  Though I have been in France many times now, the longest period being in late summer, early fall of 1984, I hope to navigate there for a full year sometime soon.  Probably Paris but who knows where fate will land me? 

A Taxi Poem

Given my continuing lack to how to do much on the computer, if you want to read this, you might find a magnifying glass.  Whether this is good poetry is very debatable but like the one I included last month, it does capture what driving a cab is really like.  And what do you know!? I just made the print a bit larger! Hurray.  

And maybe there isn't much about taxi that is poetic.  Pathetic yes but poetic? Taxi is Yellow, Taxi is Blue,

when I sit beneath the toplight I cry boo hoo hoo!  What can a poor cabbie do?

 

Greetings From Richmond, California: May 19th Paris Taxi Strike (Taxi En Greve) & Important Information Concerning City Of Seattle Taxi Medallions

Hello from the San Francisco's East Bay:

I am here eating Chinese and East Indian with that sometimes personage gracing these pages, "she-who-can't-be-named." This afternoon, while sitting waiting for a bus in North Beach neighborhood (adjacent to Chinatown), she refused to take a taxi up to Coit Tower.  Sacrilegious of course but there was no arguing with her.  Though many might remember that it was upon her suggestion I begin this blog 13 years or so ago, she now hates taxi, saying "don't mention that word!"  I am happy to report, opposite of what I reported last time I was here, that there were a number occupied cabs. Today, this being a Saturday, San Francisco was hopping, people and events everywhere.  San Francisco is one "alive" city.  What is Seattle?  Do I have to say it? 

TAXI STRIKE! in Paris, Pau, Montpellier, Amiens and other French cities Monday May 19th, 2025

By the time many of you reads this, the strike will be old news but not the implications. The following announcement was made by the "Federation Nationale du Taxi(FNDT): "On Monday, May 19th, France's cabs are mobilizing at the call of the unions against the pricing model and the impunity enjoyed by digital VTC platforms." The Union's demands: 1) Immediate freeze of the new Medical Transport Convention; 2) Retention of the locally set metered fares; 3) Enforcement of sector rules. 

The VTC (Video Teleconferencing) platforms they are referencing are Uber and others.  Cabs have formed roadblocks on the Boulevard Raspail.  At least 5000 cabs are expected to go on strike in Paris alone. It is all about the national government's decision, in a cost saving measure, to reduce taxi medical patient transport rates by one quarter, or 25 percent. The rate changes are scheduled for October 1st, 2025. 

Currently, federally subsidized medical transportation by taxis costs France about 3 billion euros annually.  To put this figure in perspective, France has been spending annually about 70 billion euros on defense, with an expected rise of another 30 billion, making for an estimated 100 billion euros in defense expenditures.  It just goes to show government priorities, the potential killing of people versus the enhancing of life, of assisting the ill and disabled. 

As I have mentioned in an earlier post this year, I was surprised at some app collaboration between Uber and Paris cabs.  Parisian cabbies hate Uber.  Firecrackers and other small explosives have been set off on Rue du Raspail, further irritating responding police.  Tires and wooden pallets have been set ablaze. At least 64 cabbies have been arrested so far, with nationwide protest continuing into the week. The latest development announced on Friday, May 23rd, is that the French Prime Minister, Francois Bayrou, with be meeting with representatives of the striking cabbies.

One thing everyone might notice is that France has a nationwide taxi union.  If the USA had had a similar union back in 2012, Uber's story might be very different at this point in time.  USA taxi was then, and remains, disjointed and disorganized. (Note: Two paragraphs that are part of this original section somehow jumped ahead on the digital page as I was writing the piece about my longtime taxi colleague and friend Jerry.  You might want to skip ahead before returning to Jerry.)

A Telephone Conversation with former longtime Yellow Cab Superintendent Jerry Defoi

Jerry, who is now living in Cumberland, Maryland, is someone I consider as a kind of Seattle taxicab industry historian, having first started driving way back in the mid-1970s.  I called him to ask what he remembered about that period of rate deregulation back in the early 1980s, a time when associations and individual independent cabs were allowed to set their own rates.  Chaos ensued, and by the time I started driving cab in September 1987, rational rate regulation had returned.  A new version of that is now returning to Seattle and King County, with associations receiving permission to set new permissible, competing meter rates.  What Jerry remembers is that all hell broke loose.  That is what I have also been told over the years from various sources.  One piece of history I didn't know is that what was originally Farwest Taxi were a group of disgruntled Yellow Cab owners who decided to break away, feeling an all-owner run association was better than what they had been dealing with.  What impressed me is that they made sure everyone involved, other than the cashiers, had to work some taxi shifts, wanting employees to fully comprehend taxi reality as it is, minus theory.  In other words, no General Managers like the late Frank Dogwilla, who thought Yellow Cab was a kind of aircraft carrier! It is a mandate I would have implemented if I had been a taxi general manager.  I still remember, when I drove for Farwest between 1988-91, at my surprise seeing Greg W., the lead superintendent, in a cab. "That's different!" I thought.

More Thoughts On the French Taxi Strike and How it relates to my experience--Continued (Note: Somehow, these 2 paragraphs jumped ahead of the Jerry Defoi piece, and I don't know how to reverse the process)

While I was too busy to really think about it, the Evergreen State Taxi Association, a taxi business group, never once invited me to their meetings even though it was widely known that back in 2011/2012, through my personal intervention with the State of WA L&I Department, statewide I saved the industry tens of millions of dollars.  Somehow my leadership and insight wasn't important.  And what did ESTA achieve in its years of existence?  Nothing as far as I know, the Seattle and King County taxi industry now a mere shadow of itself. 

This isn't a complaint as much as an observation: the taxi industry in the USA has been dysfunctional, and plainly dumb, for a very long time.  And is it now its final death throes?   Very possibly true, is my gloomy assessment.  If I was managing a taxi association now, I tell you my voice would be heard nationally.  I would do everything I could to kick some Uber and Lyft ass.  And their political helpers too!  

Unlike the Paris cab drivers, who are willing to actually physically fight for their rights, their American counterparts sit on their hands, allowing themselves to be abused out of existence.  And when the going gets tough, where do the majority of USA cabbies turn to, and do?  To drive Uber, of course. 

Another update: Entering the week of May 26th, 2025, the French taxicab strike and action continues with slowdowns around the country, including targeting the area around the upcoming French Open tennis matches.  So far, despite a meeting with unhappy cabbies, the Prime Minister remains adamant that the rate reduction scheduled for October will be enacted. That's to be seen, is my judgement. 

Update May 31st:  I can't say that the taxi strike is over, with service returning to normal but from what sources I can find, the upheaval that began on the 19th has simmered down to an uneasy truce.  Anyone traveling to Paris (and France in general) should expect sudden flareups where taxi is concerned, as French cabbies not pleased having been recently treated as Uber's stepchild.  I expect this agitated conversation to continue into the summer.  There are some interesting current comments that can be found on Rick Steve's travel forum.

PS June 6th: Strike actions will continue into the new week.  This quote says it all, "We're being taken for fools by the government advisors.  They have no intention of changing their methods or the rates they impose on us." Bernard Crebassa, the head of the National Federation of Taxi Drivers. 

PS Update June 10th: Now Both Taxi & VTC (ride-share)

Further protest actions are occurring this week. Taxis on June 10th outside the French Finance Ministry. June 11th renewed blockades of Paris CDG and Orly airports.

VTC protests against Uber, Bolt, Heetch June 10th.  Rallies in Paris, Lyon, Nice, Montpellier, Nantes, Bordeaux.  Asking for caps on driver number due to surplus and calling for an increase in minimum fare scales. 

Seattle Taxi Medallion Fee Waivers and Notice of Medallion Retirement Updates

For those considering reactivating their City of Seattle taxi medallions, the good news is that all past due fees will be waived.  Only current and future fees will need to be paid.   

There has also been some confusion about just when you need to make that medallion active on a real live physical taxicab.  On 09/01/2025, inactive City of Medallion owners will be issued a "Notice of Retirement," which serves as a kind of warning or wakeup call to get your butt in gear.  Two months later, if the medallion isn't active on a cab, then on 11/01/2025, an "Order of Retirement" will be issued, meaning your medallion is gone, it has been taken away.  

In other words, to make it clear to all those still confused, you have to the end of October 2025 to put that cab on. If not, on that Halloween's Eve, you will turn into a taxi pumpkin.

Any further questions should be addressed to:

cregan.newhouse2@seattle.gov

_____________________________________________________

A Taxi Poem:  Working the Extra Board

You never knew, and picking up the cab

at four in the morning, good luck if your

cab was a death trap but you needed the

money otherwise why would you be on 

the extra board, knowing that, along with a

junker cab, the keys might be missing

or the cab short-tanked or no spare

tire or could it be the heater is out, all

this part of the extra board fun and games

you are paying for, no one really 

caring because no one did, it all pretense

as you drove off the lot in the dark

morning air, hoping for that early airport

run, and damn, is that an exhaust leak

I am smelling? 

___________________________________

This poem, guys and dolls, really does capture the taxi experience as I know and lived it.  And as usual, the double spacing is my computer's idea, and not mine but I think it adds a kind of clarity.  And for all you numbskulls out there who are asking, "Who wrote it?" who the hell do you think is writing this blog? In the past, I've had fools pose that very question, one dumbbell woman somehow not believing I wrote a poem that took me about five minutes to jot down.  She wanted to reprint somewhere but it never happened since I wouldn't tell her who wrote it.  Just like the countless passengers who couldn't believe I knew a quicker and faster route than them.  "No, I just got into the damn cab five minutes ago and you are my very first customer ever!"  Yeah right!

Another something I will never understand when Seattle Yellow Cab (BYG) was King or Queen of all Western taxi associations was not providing a key to the shop after 6:00 PM where there was a big wall board holding all the extra taxi keys.  As the poem states, sometimes the wall board in the superintendent's office didn't have the have the key for the cab you were assigned.  But peering through the crack in the garage door, there was the key, just hanging there.  Also, if you needed a spare tire due to the day driver having a flat, the tire track remaining locked until the first mechanic arrived at 7:00 AM or so.   All this was true due to Taki, the BIG BOSS mechanic, who ran the shop like his personal fiefdom.  Taki was great but to treat him like a kind of royalty, a princely Duke in charge of his royal garage estates was both a mistake and dumb.  As I will always say to my last breath, welcome to taxi as I know, love and hate it!

Two Can't Miss Restaurants 

Enjoy Vegetarian Restaurant, 839 Kearny Street, San Francisco, CA----Chinese

Udupi Palace, 1903 University Ave, Berkeley, CA---East Indian 

Too Many Empty Cruising Cabs in San Francisco & Finally, A Verdict In The Murder Case of Cab Driver Nicholas Hokema

Vacant Cabs  

During my first week in April visit to San Francisco, I saw many, too many vacant cabs plying downtown streets.  With every passing cab I looked to see if it was occupied.  It was distressing, maybe 5 % of the cabs carrying passengers.  Not that I think it was the entire story, as one cabbie I talked to in the Deep Mission told me, in complaining fashion, that he only rolled $100.00 since noon and it was now almost 3:30 PM.  I thought that was pretty good, concerning the circumstances but the disgruntled cabbie, clearly a veteran of many years, longed for the days of "taxi wine and roses" and all that easy money.  

But from what I viewed, fleets of Waymo autonomous taxis were seemingly everywhere, along with the more or less 40 thousand Uber and Lyfts operating daily in San Francisco, one had to be either insane or a blind optimist to think your taxi day would be easy.   

Having flown in and out of Phoenix, that city too dominated by Waymo, depressing to see them converging on the airport.   Five years ago I remember arguing with fellow cabbies sitting at Amtrak/King Street station, saying "no way!" would these robot cabs make inroads into our business. It wasn't possible, I said.  Boy was I dead wrong.  No fun driving hour after hour with no customers.   And you wonder why most urban cabbies are ill-tempered?  That San Francisco cabbie's face was the epitome of disgust.  It was almost funny. Almost. 

US Army Private Jonathan Kang Lee Pleads Guilty to the Murder of Nicholas Hokema

Regular readers of this blog have been kept appraised of this case since it happened on January 15th, 2024, at 4:00 AM, when Redicab cabbie Nick Hokema's body was found dumped in a Southcenter shopping center, Tukwila parking lot, stabbed to death over a fare dispute.  His murderer, as it had been known almost immediately, was Lee, who had fled Fort Lewis when facing trail for child sex crimes. 

On April 23rd, 2025, over 15 months later, Lee pled guilty to the murder, saying he was sorry.  During the court marital, he is quoted to have said, "There was a lot of blood.  I didn't think he would live."   Though he was sentenced to life in prison, that along with a 64-year-long sentence for the sex crimes previously given, reports say he is eligible for parole in 2045.  A child rapist and murderer could somehow regain his freedom?  That doesn't sound at all reasonable. 

Now I hope comes the second phase, which is when the US Army is sued for their mishandling of a dangerous Lee, allowing him to escape Fort Lewis and murder Hokema.  Lee had been allowed to live on base minus custody, though it was known he was facing what was essentially a life sentence for molesting his two step-children, ages 4 and 8.  The US Army needs to pay Hokema's survivors.  I can only hope the award is in the tens of millions of dollars.  The US Army must experience some real accountability.  

Despite this tragedy, there could be lessons here for all taxicab drivers, and since the service is essentially the same, for TNC (Uber/Lyft) operators too.  In the "Stars and Stripes" article concerning Lee's sentencing, it describes a physical altercation between Lee and Hokema.  From my experience in the cab, getting into a physical fight over a fare is something that should never happen.  Fare run-outs and no-pays are part of what happens in the cab.  If you have any strong concerns, ask for money upfront. Given that it was 4 in the morning, a better option than fighting would have been to let Lee out of the cab, then calling 911.  While there is no guarantee that Tukwila Police would have responded quickly, if they had, they would have easily found Lee wandering the parking lot.  There is also a good chance that a bulletin for his arrest had been issued by the US Army, thus ending this whole story before it began. 

Though it has never been said exactly where Lee was picked up by Hokema,  it was at least a half hour or more from Southcenter, more than enough time for Hokema to assess Lee as a passenger in the back seat.  Hokema had been driving for a number of years, more than enough on the job training experience to be fully aware of who is there on you back seat. That is part of the mystery here.  How did Hokema not realize he was in danger? It is imperative that you know when trouble enters your cab. Someone who is facing a potential life sentence for child rape qualifies as trouble. And given the early morning hour, you must be alert to every possibility.  Too many people are simply nuts.  To think otherwise is naive. 

Every veteran cabbie knows you must instantly assess all who enter your cab.  It is an essential survival skill. My response to trouble entering the cab was to directly inform trouble that I understood the potential, and any false move meant the ride was over, "get out and stay out !"  There was no game playing.  The ride was over. 

When the passenger did refuse to leave, as has happened, I have pulled into the middle of an intersection, throwing open all the doors, and suddenly the person in question is gone, out the door.  The taxi credo all should remember is that YOU are in control of your cab, NOT the passenger.  

There was never any "hijacking" allowed in my cab.  The passenger either followed my instructions or the ride was over. When they said "I am paying for the cab!" I either replied, Fine.  The ride is over." or "I don't want your money. The ride is now free," 

In these cases, when the passenger insisted on paying, I threw the money out the window.  That folks, is how you stay in control of your cab.  No bullshit allowed, smiling as I watched the money blow down the street.  "Screw your money, asshole!

Post Script: RIP Craig Sailor 1963-05/01/2025

Craig Sailor, a longtime reporter for the Tacoma News Tribune, died on Thursday, May 1st at age 61.  I had a number of email exchanges with Craig concerning the Hokema murder case.  He was very attentive and responsive.  A great reporter and writer.  Sad to know that his byline will no longer be part of my morning perusal of Northwest news.

Again, Waymos Everywhere

During my recent time in both Phoenix and San Francisco, Waymo Autonomous taxis were everywhere, especially in San Francisco.  They are also in Austin, Texas, where a Waymo came to a complete stop on a freeway, trapping the passengers inside.  Another incident had a Waymo driving in concentric circles, again with a trapped passenger.  Someone is going to get killed.  You can quote me.

I Just had a Long Telephone Conversation with Carl

It isn't that I miss driving a cab because I don't but it was fun talking taxi with a long time "beneath the toplight" colleague, Carl P., exchanging war stories like the veterans we are.  Most everyone is truly clueless concerning the taxi experience, unlike any other occupation on this spinning planet.  So it is always a pleasure talking to someone who knows it like I do.  Thanks, Carl.  I enjoyed sharing all those memories!

___________________________________

Recent Taxi Poems: Ya Git the Idea! 

Analysis And Examination Of A Sordid And Sorry History: The Backstory To The New York City Court Judgement Awarding 19,000 Cabbies $140 Million Dollars

But First, A Sad Announcement: The permanent closure of the Highliner Public House, 3909 18th Ave. West in Magnolia's Fishermen's Terminal, another part of "Old Time" Seattle disappears into the mist.

The Highliner was a Alaska fisherman's hangout, those daring folks venturing out onto the ever dangerous Bering Strait.   It was located on a pier and not simple to find.  I've been belled into the joint countless times.  Often they were great trips, a guy having one last beer before heading off to Sea-Tac and home.  Though never having eaten there, I appreciated what it was then, and now, what it will never be again, part of Seattle's seafaring community.  What many are failing to understand is that Seattle's transformation into something sterile and soulless is an uncorrectable tragedy, a unique culture diluted and washed away, a kind of unfortunate real live, non-fictional reenactment of "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers," similar to the 1978 remake set in San Francisco.  Things on the surface might look the same but no, they are indelibly altered. Goodbye Highliner! Goodbye Seattle! 

And Another Aside: Taxis in Paris

If you are in Paris, France, and don't see a cab in sight, and of course have a functional smart phone connection in France, you can use either the official Paris taxi app---TaxisG7 or, somewhat unusual, schedule your cab through the Uber app. This has been possible for a few years but what has changed is that you will be shown the exact fare to the penny from your starting point to your final destination.  Given the past violence directed toward Uber from Parian cabbies, I find this arrangement very interesting.  It's been six years since I've taken a cab in Paris.  There was some kind of transit strike and the scene was wild.  My very first Paris cab ride was in October 1984, as we were moving from my wife's student housing to a temporary hotel in a distant arrondissement. All very exciting. That hotel had the best service, leaving us a tray in the morning with fresh croissants and coffee outside our door.  I wish I was there right now. 

A Recommended New York Times Article: "They Were Deactivated From Delivering. Their Finances Were Devastated," reported by Nick Keppler. March 29, 2025

The article shows how Uber and Lyft don't know what they are doing.  And how it severely impacts innocent people's lives. 

Cabdrivers: A Convenient Target

A mid-March 2025 court decision ended a eighteen-year-long class-action law suit brought against the City of New York and its New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC), this by lawyers (and the  New York Taxi Workers Alliance) representing over 19,000 NYC cabbies. The lawsuit, begun in 2006, was very focused, ending the suspensions for arrests unrelated to driving a taxi.  Similar to what Uber and Lyft is currently practicing across the nation, deactivating operators without fair hearings, in nearly all of the 19,000 cases, the vast majority of the cabbies were denied due-process, never allowed to either appeal or protest their suspension.  

The NYC rule regarding these kinds of suspensions gave a blind eye to the type of arrest or conviction, meaning simply if a cabbie was arrested, say for littering, that was it, your ability to drive a cab disappeared.  That most of the suspended cabbies were black or people of color immigrants should not be surprising, as New York City has been openly victimizing immigrant cabbies for years, manipulating taxi medallions up to a mythical one million dollars plus in value, saddling individual owners with unsustainable monthly payments.  

A court settlement a few years back helped remedy that injustice to some degree but this kind of insult kept repeating, the City of New York caring little about long-term impact, knowing that, this time, by admitting its constitutional error, it would have to pay up.  The TLC finally changed its rules in 2022 regarding their arrest policy but obviously, the case still dragged on for three more years, NYC not wanting to pay out that money.

But before I examine the details of the cabbie's victory, I think providing some history is necessary to how it came to be, because the attitude displayed is not isolated to New York City.  As I can personally attest, during the era when I entered the industry back in September 1987, the American taxi industry and its drivers were viewed with a suspicious and jaundiced eye.  I found it a remarkable transition, that on any given Friday afternoon, in my role as a psychiatric case-manager, I would find myself treated deferentially. But come Saturday morning, now sitting in a cab, suddenly descending down the caste escalator, instantly now transformed into something despicable, an untrustworthy cipher, a societal zero undeserving of commonplace justice and treatment.  

If that seems an exaggeration, I'll provide what happened one afternoon when renewing my taxi for-hire license down at the King County Licensing office on 4th Avenue, a building I have entered multiple times over four-decades.  It was during a time when the City of Seattle and King County were, unlike these days, conducting thorough background checks, including fingerprinting.  

On this particular day I asked the humorless, disinterested county clerk just as to why King County was once again requiring me to be fingerprinted, since my fingertips were already on file.  "Mister Blondo, you must understand, we make this request due to the fact that your fingerprints change yearly."  

I think I laughed out loud at his bizarre explanation but I informed him that what he just said defied anatomical reality.  The end result was that, not only did I not get fingerprinted again, it ended the redundant practice altogether, fingerprinting of applicants once and once only becoming the new protocol.  When filing my complaint to the taxi regulators, I asked whether they really thought that cabbies were chemically altering their fingertips for the wonderful privilege of driving a taxi? 

Of course they didn't, though this excessive fingerprinting displayed a nationwide attitude that cabbies were not merely suspect, they were indeed little more than criminals.  Unfortunately, part of this was based in reality, a reality that is still sometimes reenacted in tourist cities like Las Vegas, where minor vice is part of the general conversation.  Every cabbie is every city is asked "Where can I find.......?" with the wise cabbie responding, "I have no idea" 

The history of all this, this kind of "free-form" and "ad-libbed" behavior stems from very beginning of motorized taxi services.  Even earlier, it probably began with the horse-drawn Hansom Cabs in in early 18th Century London, even then the making of money the industry's prime objective.  Especially when big taxi fleets and associations became commonplace in America in the early 20th Century, profit became tantamount to other priorities, opening the gates to anyone interested in making the "fast buck," something readily done from my long experience.  

This kind of atmosphere attracted the kind of character often seen as the prototypical or archetypal cabbie: a cigar-chomping usually white, grumpy middle-aged man quite willing to do most anything to make a dollar, whether that meant taking an unaware customer around the block or procuring a hooker or a bottle of hootch.  And because many early cabbies fit this description, everyone, including myself, were colored by this same ancient brush.  

All this brings me back to the original subject, as to why the 19,000 plus cabbies were assumed guilty, and worse, not deserving of a chance to prove their innocence. Without legal intervention, all of them would have remained permanently tarred as societal outcasts warranting whatever plight and hardship they encountered.  

This is why I used the term caste, and not, class earlier, because this isn't simply about being in lower-economic stasis.  It is far more insidious, classifying, placing the taxi driver into an inferior cultural subgrouping, as is the case in India, cab drivers in NYC and elsewhere in America having become a new kind of dalit, or untouchable, someone not deserving of legal and commonplace courtesies accorded to the more civilized.  

And is this $140,000,000 class-action payment really the balm to a grievous wound as it is being presented in the various media outlets?   It truly depends on how you look at it.  While granted, taxi earning prowess has diminished since the Uber and Lyft takeover but still, the professional cabbie, as I experienced in Seattle, could still earn what he/she did before 2012.  

The maximum any of the wronged NYC cabbies will receive is $36,000.  Remember, for some, this is compensation for over 18 years of lost income.  For many taxi pros, they make that $36,000 in 3-5 months.  Merely using an annual estimated figure of $100,000 as an easy case example, if a NYC cabbie making that figure had worked the full 18 years instead of being suspended, his/her total earnings would have been 1,800,000.  

So as everyone can readily see, this $140,000,000 judgement isn't that impressive, clearly not making up for the driver's real loss of income.  In a real sense then, though the cabbie's won, in real terms they kept losing, never able to retrieve all that stolen money, because NYC illegally stole from them their ability to work.  

All this unequivocally supports what I know to be true: the life of the cabbie is a hard life.  Yes, if you know what you are doing and work hard, you will make that $100,000 plus every year but the wear and tear upon body, mind and soul is terrible.  

I also should add that driving for Uber and Lyft isn't much fun either, as two of my taxi buddies have been deactivated, one from Uber, the other from Lyft.  What were their alleged crimes?  One passenger said her driver was "touching" himself.  The Lyft passenger said the offense was being asked out for. a date.  Both of these nice fellows are very dark-skinned black African immigrants, just like the vast majority of the suspended NYC cabbies.  Folks, there is a pervasive pattern here.  To keep allowing these kinds of complaints to proceed unchallenged is immoral.  

Back at Yellow I was accused by passengers (always over the telephone) of every conceivable crime---theft to physical assault to rape.  Why were they calling?  Because somehow I had angered them, usually by not putting up with any of their bullshit.  

In all my taxi years, I think I received three formal complaints, none of which were sustained, and not once did I get to face my accuser.  What was one of my BIG violations?  A Hopelink passenger (getting a free ride) objected that I took a route around the University of Washington instead of going directly north down Montlake Blvd.  Why the detour?  Because the entire length of that stretch of Montlake was closed due to construction!  Yes, I was the big horrible criminal.  Making it worse, I told the fool why the change in routing.  All I can say, this kind of hatred is breathtaking.  

When I talk to people about taxi here in very rural Southwest New Mexico, I often mention that I averaged daily at least one road-rage incident directed at my cab.  While most were fleeting, lasting a few seconds, many were not, and some were extremely dangerous, exemplified by a crazed fool weaving and  stopping in front of me on north-bound  Highway 509.  The driver fled before the police arrived.  

This kind of stress is commonplace for the average Big City cabbie.  If the cabbie moans, "Everyone hates me!" they wouldn't be far from wrong.  That's why that NYC statute was more than unfair, it fully embraced the mythology that the typical cabbie is not man but beast, someone to be feared and loathed.  

I have no idea how strict the New York City cops are with the cabs but god knows the cabbies deserve some leniency.  They have kept that city moving for decades and will continue to ply those tricky and dangerous streets far into the future.  Embrace the brave and fearless urban cabbie.  They warrant  affection, not your wrath.  

A Taxi Poem

What this poem states is something I have keep experiencing: taxi haunting me in my dreams.  Similar to too many dreams concerning my ex-wife, and those unfortunately have been reoccurring over the past 38 years.  I want all these dreams to stop harassing me, akin to the Cheap Trick song, "Dream Police."  Will they?  Very doubtful is the answer, my marriage and taxi deep beneath my skin.   They are related because I began driving cab during my divorce, now both in theory long concluded.  I can only wish.  I first used taxi as a kind of therapy, shock therapy that is!  Strap me in.  Here I go!

Must It Always Be Taxi

Forever I find myself in 

a cab arriving to where

did I ever want to go?

Recent nights my dreams

confirming, yes, this is

where you will forever

be;

now

regretting having said far too often

"once a cabbie, always a cabbie"

but no, thirty-five years more

than enough, having sold

my car, my medallion,

though nightly I keep renewing

my for-hire, my distressed

countenance affirming

a nightmarish legacy driving

me down those too familiar 

roadways meandering through

my afflicted 

brain.

_____________________

The spacing is not intentional.  Once again, the disobedient computer.  But I kind of like the formatting, air between the lines. 

Not A Taxi Angel---The Reverse Of Cabbie Professionalism

 The Opposite of What Should Be

While February was a celebration of the best of cab driving, March, I am sad to say, is an expression of the worse.  Of course I have always been always been aware of the nefarious side of taxi, how many use it as an opportunity to victimize the unaware.  I saw it way back in September 1987 when I was in a training ride with Rick P., the owner of the three-car cab company, Classic Cab, finding myself appalled as he drove the tourist "the long way" to the Greyhound Bus Station, not caring for moment that I was watching.  He even made a point of expressing "this is how you do it."  What it really said was, that despite over 20 years in the cab business, Rick still didn't know anything about the true nature of driving cab, which is, and always will be, customer service.  While celebrating part of cab's noble legacy by operating Checker Marathons, his dishonesty distorted it.  I really enjoyed driving the Checker.  It made for a great cab. 

Not that Rick was the only one, the only taxi desperado out there. That crazy crew that were the Greeks during that era took full advantage any time they could, charging $50.00 to the airport during a snow storm when $21.00 was the average fare.  I could go on but I out earned all these clowns, even as a raw rookie simply because I was honest and simply knowing the streets and the hotels.  I dislike feral taxi.  We cabbies must remain civilized despite our worst anti-social inclinations, smiling when not wanting to.  When it comes to cab, honesty is the best policy. 

This intro brings me to a cabbie we tried to use in Mexico.  I found his glossy "Taxi Pro" business card at a local "French" bakery catering to gringos.  He gave his name as Angel H_ _ _ C_ _ _ __, operating his cab from 4 AM to 23 PM.  Long hours but not uncommon.  But it turns out he was being deceptive, operating as a kind of taxi dispatch, sending friends to do his pickups.  

Angel did speak English and all he needed to do was state how he operated.  After setting up our ride back to the airport for Feb 3rd, we decided we wanted a ride to a local trail head.  A cab did arrive on time but not Angel.  And the fellow's cab didn't have seat belts. A couple of days later I called Angel, and told him how we were displeased, wanting to know if he  himself would be taking us to the airport. Si, Senor, he said, and his cab was new,  equipped with seatbelts.  No problem, he said. 

But his dishonestly, and deception had no end as I received a call from Angel at 10:48 AM on Feb 2nd saying "Your taxi has arrived," though obviously it being the wrong day and time; and clearly it wasn't the famous Angel who was waiting for us.  

I had told him earlier that he was dealing with a fellow cabbie but that didn't seem to make any impression upon him.  Why?  Because the cynical bastard has been dealing with compliant, dumbbell gringos, manipulating the hell out of them, not caring a moment for the kind of taxi  professionalism I find necessary and essential.  

I later called him back and told him we found another way to the airport, which we did, getting a ride from someone working at our local favorite restaurant, Ol-Lin Vegan, located next to the plaza in San Antonio Tlayacapan.  We gave the guy 800 pesos total.  

As for Angel, he is another bad example of someone working the tourist trade, not truly caring a moment for his passengers or their well-being.  He is not alone.  They are in Seattle too.  They give the industry a bad name.  And they don't give a damn one way or the other. 

Mourning the Death of Eleanor Maguire, age 54, the Researcher who Discovered the Secret Behind the London "Black Cab" Cabbie's "The Knowledge""

It was Dr. Maguire, she of the University College London Queen Square Institute of Neurology, who after watching the 1979 British made for television movie, "The Knowledge," was inspired to find out as just to how London "Black Cab" cabbies (and all professional cabbies around the world) could retain all this address and street routing information in their heads (brains).  This led her to focus on the specific region of the brain that plays a key role in spatial navigation, the hippocampus.  Her studies and research found that, year after year, the London cabbie's hippocampus actually grows larger as they learn more and more concerning greater London's streets and businesses.  We in the cab business owe Eleanor Maguire much gratitude for enhancing the reputation of our maligned industry.  Thank you very much is all I can say.

I watched the movie over the internet.  I love the theme song, and if I ever form my much long thought of rock and roll band, you can believe I will be covering that song.  It does in a true sense convey real taxi as all of us know it.  The movie itself does a reasonable job showing the reality of folks trying to learn the London streets.  When the fictional script doesn't get too involved in the presentation, it does show you London's taxi reality.  While the character of the instructor/tester Mister Burgess is truly "over-the-top," a cruel character known as "the vampire," a scene toward the end of the film captures the essence of the cabbie experience with his melodramatic explanation of the passenger dynamic, of the human condition living and breathing behind you in the backseat.  For me, that's worth the entire one hour and thirty minutes because it really hits home as to how it  truly is.  While all of us "love" our passengers, some of them are simply hard to take, wishing for a jettison button propelling them out of the cab and onto the sidewalk.

I also enjoyed seeing 1979 London, a great time-machine journey back to when I was in my early 20s and still somewhat innocent.  I was first in London in mid-August 1984 on my way to Paris, where my wife was studying at the Sorbonne.  My first London Black Cab ride was later that year in mid-November when my wife and I took a cab to hear the London Symphony at the Barbican Centre.  

My most memorable London Black Cab ride had to be back in early March 2000, when I took a cab from a train station first to Chinatown, had him wait as I picked up take-out, then taking me on to my hotel.  The guy was a true veteran, and damn did he know the streets.  I was impressed then and remain impressed.  That guy was one SUPER cabbie!

Two "Taxi" Excerpts from the Feburary 16th Edition of the NY TIMES Metropolitan Diary

I always like sharing taxi stories from the Metro Diary because they always display taxi as it really is.  On the letter entitled "Two Stops" I must make note because it is clear that neither the writer nor the New York Times understood the cabbie's comment.  Countless times I have been requested to stop short of a destination by a passenger.  Why?  Because passengers, especially women, did not want the cabbie to see and know where they were entering, a kind of protective safety measure.  I never took it personally because I understood and respected their motivation.  And yes, as the letter points out, the first passenger was just being efficient, which I have also experienced countless times.  

Most don't understand the language and culture of taxi, as I, my friends, know it all too well, from up and down and all around.  There are no surprises though sometimes I have been disappointed.  "Did you have to be that stupid?"  I have thought concerning many a passenger.  And I suppose the unfortunate answer has to be "yes," the unavoidable human condition affecting all of us daily. 

Two Stops

It was a drizzly June night in 2001.  I was a young magazine editor and had just enjoyed a very blissful second date---dinner, drinks, fabulous conversation---with our technology consultant at a restaurant in Manhattan. 

I lived in Williamsburg at the time, and date lived near Murray Hill, so we grabbed a cab and headed south on Second Avenue.

"Just let me out here," my date said to the cabby at the corner of 25th Street.

We said our goodbyes, quick and shy, knowing that we would see each other at work the next day.  I was giddy and probably grinning with happiness and hope.

"Oh boy," the cabby said, shaking his head as we drove toward Brooklyn.  "Very bad."

"What do you mean?" I asked in horror.

"He doesn't want you to know exactly where he lives, " the cabby said.  "Not a good sign."

I spent the rest of the cab ride in shock, revisiting every moment of the date.

Happily, it turned out that my instinct about it being a great date was right, and the cabby was wrong.  Twenty-four years later, my date that night is my husband, and I know that if your stop is first, it's polite to get out so the cab can continue in a straight line to the next stop.

Ingrid Spencer

__________________________________________

I was laughing while typing this, all of it so typical of taxi as I know it.  Note that the cabbie was paying attention to what was going on in the back seat.  Not intrusive, just attentive.  In this case, the cabbie was being protective, caring about his female passenger, wanting to send her a potential warning due to his long experience of witnessing hearts broken.  If he guessed wrong, hell! that not at mattering, he the ever watchful guard dog ready to growl in an instantaneous moment.

Geography Lesson

Dear  Diary,

When I was a freshman at Bernard College, my parents visited me from Indianapolis because my father, a radiologist, was attending a medical meeting in New York City.

One of his colleagues took us to dinner.  Riding in a cab afterward, my father and the cabdriver were bantering when my father's colleague interjected jokingly.

"Please show some respect for Dr. Campbell," he said.  "He is from the Midwest.  Do you know where that is?"

"Yes," the cabby replied.  "Between Fifth and Sixth." 

Nancy Duff Campbell

______________________

The veteran cabbie is always ready with a sharp and witty retort.  It is an occupational requirement. 

And this from the Feb 23th Metro Diary: "Fare Competition"

Dear Diary,

In 1979, my girlfriend at the time (now my wife of 40 years) moved to New York City to pursue her goal of becoming an actress.  She enrolled at HB Studio, and I drove a yellow taxi overnight.

In the wee hours of one Sunday night, I was driving back into Manhattan from Kennedy Airport on a mostly deserted Queens Boulevard when I spotted a fare far down the street holding up her arm.

In my rearview mirror, I noticed another yellow taxi accelerating behind me.  Clearly, the driver wanted the fare, too.  

I sped up and the other cab did too.  We raced toward the fare side-by-side, with my taxi in the right lane.  The other cab couldn't pass, and I soon pulled over triumphantly.

The fare turned out to be a friendly woman.

"You would think I was going to Ithaca," she said as she got in. 

Billy McLean

_________________________________-

For those interested, Ithaca, New York is 228 miles from the "Big Apple."  For those of us cabbies, this kind of competition is nothing new.  When I was a rookie, BB, someone I knew very well, for nearly 10 years at that point, stole my fare.  And he didn't apologize.  Taxi can be a cutthroat world.  The stress can sometimes, and often does, drive a cabbie crazy.  Truly no excuse for reckless and unkind behavior but hey! welcome to taxi.  

If you do watch "The Knowledge," in the very last scene, the "star," having achieved his "green badge," has a fare stolen by another successful "Knowledge" classmate.  It is meant to be funny but in real taxi life, not so much.  You never truly know where someone is going.  It indeed could be Ithaca. Or Manchester. 

A few years ago, picking up at the "new" Greyhound station, I had the passenger I was belled in for inside the cab when another guy walked up, wanting to go to Blaine, Washington on the Canadian border, a wonderfully long fare. But since I had already committed to this older passenger, someone tired from an over 1000 mile bus ride, to get him back home to Kent, a "nothing to sniff at" $50.00 plus fare, I felt obligated to take him.  I called up my buddy James and gave him the Blaine fare, a ride worth something like $350.00 plus.  Sometimes there is morality in the cab world.  Perhaps rare but it does occur.  And what did I request from James?  A $10.00 burrito.  He paid up. 

The Alienated Cabbie

I am writing this due to some recent online interactions and exchanges with some taxi buddies.   Never truly shocked by what they and my taxi friends and acquaintances do and say, I do always find myself wishing for something different, even for an unexpected sanity but most often I come away disappointed,  having been in long communion with that rough and tumble, alienated fraternity known as cab drivers. 

I will repeat something I have said often over the years, that the American taxi industry has long been the moral and actual equivalent of the French Foreign Legion, enlisting the depraved, the walking wounded and everyone else in-between. So it isn't surprising that many have what could be considered unconventional ideas, which isn't alway bad, as I too belonging in that category but when the opinions are not balanced by coherent and functional reality, you end up with alienated life philosophies battering commonsense, knocking commonplace rationality onto the sidewalk, bloodied and unconscious. 

But that is exactly what I have witnessed all too often in the taxi world---cabbies, cab owners, cab bosses--- all ready for the looney bin.  While I suppose deranged taxi is entertaining in word, print and film, in real time it is mostly frustrating, "Why are you acting like this?"  Why are you saying this incoherent nonsense?"  In short, the alienated mind blossoming in its full and less than colorful glory.  

That I will always love and care for my taxi friends is something that shouldn't be questioned. But in all honesty, they also at times deeply anger me, furious that garbage is their first choice.  It drives me wild!  And God knows, while being the feral cabbie I will forever be, I still prefer a tamer, domesticated self that isn't forever snarling when confronted with disagreeable reality. 

But come on everyone, isn't it time to wake up?  Where is your alarm clock, somnambulism not the safest way to drive a cab or walk down the street or spout political opinion?  You have a big hippocampus.  Would you damn well use it?!  

It often seems that many cabbies have somehow given themselves lobotomies, that surgical procedure severing the fontal cortex from the thalamus, rendering them forever disconnected from reality. Way back in 1976, when I worked at a psychiatric halfway house, I met two such individuals who had undergone that infamous procedure known as the "icepick" lobotomy. Not pretty. Not nice.  But in the instance of many cabbies, is it truly necessary to act as if you have half a brain?

My Very Short Cab Ride to the Phoenix Airport

On January 2nd, I parked my car for a month at a hotel parking lot about a good 1 1/2 miles from the airport.  Very cheap but no shuttle, which meant I was walking there my with bags, heading for the Sky Train that was about 3/4 of a mile away.  At a stop light, I saw a cabbie obviously on his way to the airport.  I stepped up, explaining that I needed a quick hop, and off we went.  I of course told him I too was a brother, and for a few minutes we talked taxi.  The previous day he had a ride to Yuma, AZ, getting $750.00, much bigger than any fare of mine, personally never topping over $525.00  on various trips to the Tri-Cities in Eastern Washington.  I gave him ten bucks for saving my legs.  

A Sobering Taxi Moment in SW New Mexico

Yesterday, when visiting a local seamstress and her husband who have been doing some sewing projects for me, a friend of theirs, Mike, made his entry to their RV.  Mike, while a good guy, is also a bit jocular, making a joking reference to "hookers."  That is when I spoke up, saying in my many taxi years I had more prostitutes in the cab that I can remember, and their lives were certainly no joke.  

This prompted Mike to say he drove a cab for a year back in 1970 in Pompano Beach, Florida, then recounting that he quit after another cabbie disappeared, only to be found dead two week later, his body left in the cab's trunk, a stark reminder of what every cabbie everywhere faces each day upon entering  their cab.  

Now Mike is not a bad guy but yet another example of the kind of person I mention in my alienated cabbie portrayal of the too typical taxi prototype.  Not dumb but then again, not particularly smart.  While caring about the fate of a fellow cabbie, Mike at the same time can be cavalier about victimized women working the streets.  Even the "high class" professionals, and I met a few, still were only valued for the pleasure generated by their vaginas.  Crass but that is their reality.  It is not funny what some people do to others.  Life and living is a serious matter.  If more people realized that, we would have more time for laughter. 

Early 1980s Seattle Taxi

My cabbie buddy, Bill, sent me a couple of emails describing all the drinking and drugging he witnessed by his fellow Yellow cabbies.  Many were driving drunk and stoned, and not just marijuana.  And not concealing it, parked in front of two favorite taverns.  

Making it worse, some were selling drugs out of their cab.  Maybe that is why, when I started back in September 1987, passengers felt free to light up "crack" pipes in the back seat.  Those were wild days, with wilder cabbies.  Welcome to the American French Foreign Legion, Seattle Yellow Cab version!

What It Truly Means To Be A Professional Cab Driver

 Simplicity is Not the Cabbie's Reality

The biggest mistake, and major erroneous miscalculation behind the rise of app ride companies like Uber and Lyft, was a general misunderstanding and non-recognition of the skill and professional expertise it takes to successfully transport passengers from A to B.  The story goes that Uber's founders could not get easily get a cab one night, placing the blame upon drivers when in reality any cabbie would have been more than happy to have picked them up.  Their ire was misplaced, for in San Francisco and other American cities, the onus for bad service lay with a screwed-up government bureaucracy incapable of regulating an industry they didn't understand.  

For instance, we in the Seattle taxi industry begged the City and County to release more medallions, a plea for more cabs on the streets ignored minus plausible explanation as to why. This kind of response typified what was usual across the country: a regulatory bureaucracy tone-deaf to the taxi industry needs.  And when did the City of Seattle release additional medallions, including one to me?  Only after there were 28,000 Uber drivers working Seattle and King County streets.  Too little, too late as the saying goes.  And nonsensical. 

Currently in NYC, over 75,000 cabs are in danger of losing their insurance coverage because of a failure in oversight over the prime insurer of all those cabs.  There is no excuse, with reality saying regardless of the reason, this kind of snafu should never happen.  It certainly is not the individual cabbie's fault. They made and keep making their monthly insurance payments.  No one can blame them for an insurer's insolvency. 

But getting back to that night when Travis Kalanick and his friend vilified the ever  hardworking cabbie, its clear that they just didn't know what they were talking about.  Given my over 35 years driving a cab, I and my cabbie kinsman around the world know exactly what it means to give our sweat, blood and dedication to getting the sometimes dumbbell passenger to where they are going.  

Just this past January 3rd, 2025, at about 3:30 in the morning, I personally witnessed the kind of professionalism proving the worth of the veteran cabdriver.  They are not replaceable.  They are indispensable.  And in many cities around the world, like at the Guadalajara, Mexico airport, taxis are the rule and not the exception. At about 2:30 AM "she-who-can't-be-named" and I needed a cab to Ajijic/San Antonio and our Airbnb townhouse.  We were lucky.  We met a professional. 

In the Early Morning Hours

Believe me, it is never advisable to arrive at an unknown destination late at night or early in the morning but sometimes, given flight schedules, it is unavoidable.  In Bucharest, Romania in 2011, I arrived late.  In late October 2023, after late night and early morning flight arrivals in both Sofia, Bulgaria and Tbilisi, Georgia, professional taxi drivers, as I experienced in Bucharest, brought me to where I would have never found on my own.  That early morning in Guadalajara we had some vague idea of where we were going but we needed a ride, we needed help and thankfully the TAXI GODS provided us with a professional.  We certainly required one.

The distance to Ajijic/San Antonio is more or less 30 miles, the rate to where we were going about $29.00 or 575 pesos.  We stood in a long line queuing up for the taxis who at that moment were inundated by many connective flight arrivals.  Everyone, including many parents with young children, patiently waited for returning cabs to pick all of us up.  Finally, a gentleman in his early fifties motioned us to his cab.  We were off.

This was my second season here, and her third but this time our destination was the smaller village of San Antonio, making our journey a bit trickier.  Complicating everything was our arriving late on different flights, she from Oakland, California, me from Phoenix, Arizona.  First we had difficulty finding each other, then hungry and tired, and somewhat cranky, we got into the cab. 

Our driver, a pleasant, quiet gentleman, was a veteran of twenty-five years Guadalajara taxi.  He knew what he was doing and and where he was going.  Unfortunately, my usually extremely organized SUPER CAPRICORN  companion got our address numbers on Ramon Corona a bit jumbled.  We first found ourselves looking for 8B Ramon Corona when it was actually 14 Ramon Corona we needed to find.  8B was our home address inside a gated community.  

Our cabbie was extremely patient while we figured it out, a circumstance I also knew well, having searched for difficult to find addresses in the dark countless times.  The cabbie was wonderful, never growling or displaying any frustration with these dumbbell gringos.  Once we realized what real street address we needed, we quickly found our destination.  I gave him a ten dollar tip, which is 200 pesos but I should have given him 20 dollars for all his trouble.  Early during our ride I had identified myself as a fellow veteran brother of the toplight, so we both fully understood the situation.  

He was great and was the clear definition of what it means to be a professional cabbie, someone essential to tired and lost tourists seeking their sunny Mexican abode.  Never a complaining word.  Never a snarl though we warranted one.  He handled everything exactly how it is supposed to be done, being extremely helpful while exhibiting the patience of a saint, the toplight a kind of taxi halo.  

It brought to my mind a ride of a few years back where I had to get my blind passenger to her apartment in this very large complex located in Rainier Valley.  The trick for me was finding the right entrance out of too many doors to choose from.  It took me a good half hour to find the correct one.  It was hellish but there was nothing to be done but to keep searching until I found it.  My passenger helped as well as she could but being sightless she caused more confusion than anything helpful.  

As I will always say, welcome to taxi as it really is.  Uber and Lyft will never be able to match the inherent professionalism that is the tried and true veteran cabbie.  It isn't possible which is why, in many parts of the world, taxi will never be replaced, cabs a permanent fixture in the transportation landscape.  Hurrah for taxi! Hurrah!  

And always remember, tip that cabbie well.  He/she deserves it.  My last big tip driving cab was $100.00.  "Are you sure," I asked.  Yes," he said, "you deserve it."  I wasn't convinced but I took that Ben Franklin and was happy for it.  Sometimes you're stiffed and sometimes you're over tipped.  Just like taxi.  Just like how it is.

Taxi Driver Memory and the Hippocampus: It Might be Preventing all of Us from Dying from Alzheimer's 

A taxi buddy sent me a link containing a talk about how it appears that us cabbies, because of the enlarged hippocampus part of our brain, are far less likely to die from Alzheimer's disease than any other sector of the USA population save ambulance drivers.  What cabbies share with them is the necessity to know the streets, hence the big hippocampus and its ability to hold directional information.  What I found sadly humorous is most cabbies were dying before age 70 from many causes other than Alzheimer's.  That I am now 71 means I am operating on "free money.'  I can live it up!  

Of course, the London cabbie's ability to know every damn street of that sprawling city and metro area is known as "the Knowledge."  As I wrote back to my friend, I more or less have the "Seattle Knowledge."  When passengers got snotty about my routing, or wanted to essentially take over, I asked them this very deadly question of, okay, you think you are so much smarter than I am, now tell me "Where is Peach Court East?"  

Of all the multiple dumbbells I posed this question to, only one knew that it is off of East Crescent, near 22nd East, on the north side of Capital Hill.  I usually only asked this question after becoming throughly irritated with the idiotic passenger.  

Now a PHD question for all you veteran Seattle cabbies out there.  If I got into your cab at King Street Station and said, "Take me to the intersection of NW Culbertson Drive and Sherwood Road NW?" would you be able to get us there minus GPS routing? I would be surprised if you could because this corner is more obscure than any address found in the Blue Ridge neighborhood bordering the Puget Sound or the westside of Queen Anne Hill. The big hint is that it is in Broadview, west of 3rd Avenue NW. When heading north on 3rd NW and you've come to my favorite small park in all of Seattle, Llandover Woods, you have gone too far, close but no cigar. 

The only cabbie I think who would have known was my late friend, Stacy Anderson, whom I dubbed the "Taxi King."  The guy had the "Seattle Knowledge," the "King County Knowledge," and  both the "Pierce and Snohomish Counties Knowledge."  And I would be amiss if I failed to mention the "City of Portland, Oregon Knowledge."  It is probably true I was a better money maker than Stacy, something he actually somewhat reluctantly acknowledged but when it came to knowing the streets, I was a trifle mouse compared to Stacy's elephant.  He was incredible.  There was no one else like him in Seattle's taxi industry.  More than King, he was Emperor.

All this is a lead up to an excerpt taken from the Jan 19th, 2025 edition of the New York Time's "Metropolitan Diary."  It is a great example of the cabbie memory, and a fun story to boot.  

Familiar Feeling

Dear Diary,

I started traveling to New York City from my hometown, Toronto, in the early 2000s.  I would visit once or twice a year, usually with my children. As they have gotten older, I've been making my annual trip solo.

On my most recent trip, in November 2024, I stayed near Lincoln Center. When it was time to leave, the hotel doorman hailed me a taxi to me to the airport.

After I got into the cab, the driver and I began chatting about the delicious smelling rice and oxtail stew his wife has just dropped off for him. He told me we had spoken previously about Indian and Senegalese food.  I must have looked confused because he then claimed that he knew me.

I had not been to New York in a year and was incredulous that this man could possibly remembered a random conversation with a passenger from 12 months ago.

Then, suddenly, I remembered him too.  He had told me the last time we spoke that he was sending one of his teenage children to live with his parents for a while so they could get to know one another.

He explained this time the child was back home and that all had gone well.

After getting out of the cab at the airport, I turned back to him.

"Thank you," I said. "See you next year!"

Patricia O'Connell

_______________________________________________

Nice story.  In Seattle over the years I had many random repeat passengers but more than usual, it was the passenger remembering me.  For all the many reasons good and bad I stood out from the usual taxi herd.  Someone in my life affectionately calls me "donkey."  Maybe I am remembered for my braying.

You Tell Them, Mister Priestley!

The following quote is taken from an essay/lecture "What About the Audience," concerning the future of live theatre in the United Kingdom, cira 1961.  It can be found in a collection of JB Priestley essays published in 1966, "The Moments and other Pieces."  How this applies to taxi and taxi regulators and regulation is how Priestley is concerned about the adverse affects of television upon live stage drama, and how it could disappear.  

Where this applies to taxi is twofold.  The first issue is having regulators devoid of ever having driven a taxi.  I have written this elsewhere but how can you assist and regulate an industry and task you know nothing about?  And secondly, because of this lack of real knowledge and expertise, it opened the floodgates to Uber and Lyft, effectively dealing the American taxicab a near deadly if not completely fatal blow.  While the most of the regulators were great people, they just didn't have the background to know everyday taxi reality.  And even when told, which I sometimes did, that they didn't know, did it change anything?   

And what about the British stage, what has happened to it since 1961?   That I can't tell but what is true is that in the USA, there is more television programming than ever but again, I can't comment on the quality since I have barely watched the medium since 1987.  I read books instead. How old fashioned!   Here is Priestley. The quote is from pages 259 and 260.  While reading this, keep in mind the context of taxi and you will see how this relates to our diminished craft of driving crazed humans to home and hospital. 

"The truth is, so long as drama is presented, in no matter what form, the Theatre remains central, the enduring core. Though writing, direction, acting, may have to be adjusted to the new media, as indeed we know, the Theatre is still at the heart of the whole matter.  Take it away and you would see a rapid deterioration in film and television drama.  We hear people say that so long as they have television sets and can pay an occasional visit to the cinema, it does not matter to them if there if there is not a single stage left in England.  But if these people expect dramatic entertainment from their screens, then they should realize that although they do nothing for the Theatre, the Theatre has already done a great deal for them. It is in the playhouse, and nowhere else, that performers come together, and writers, directors, actors, are severely tested, learning if they are wise what is essential in the presentation of drama.  I have declared before now that if I were responsible for a large film studio or a television network, and I knew that the Theatre was in danger of disappearing, I would feel it was my duty to subsidize or altogether maintain a playhouse, so that my writers, directors, actors, could face the challenge of an actual audience, coughing when it is bored, silent and intent when it is properly held. And when such writers, directors, actors, had triumphantly survived this test, they would return to their studios refreshed and heartened, feeling closer for some time to their vast invisible and remote audiences."

The regulation of the taxi industry remains upside down.  Lessons have not been learned, the nonsensical embracing the senseless.  Do I think the current regulators in Seattle and King County would suddenly resign their high paying positions and relinquish their authority and jobs to folks like me who could, if allowed repair the damage done to the industry?  As I always end when I pose this kind of question, we all know the answer.

And two "can't miss"  Priestley plays you should read or see performed:  "An Inspector Calls" and "Johnson Over Jordan." 

A Taxi Poem

The impetus, inspiration for this poem comes from another cabbie writer, Sean Singer, who plied the NYC streets for 6 years.  His book of taxi poems is "Today in the Taxi" published by Tupelo Press in 2022.  All of the poems begin with "Today in the taxi" which I found interesting, making the very personal experience that is cab driving somewhat impersonal, which it can never be, you the urban cabbie dealing with every situation and hazard known to the human species.  Hence, the poem now on this page.  I recommend Sean's book. It sells for $19.95.  Tupelo's telephone number is 413-664-9611 and their email address is contact@tupelopress.org.  

Not A, or The but My Taxi

It must be, and no other manner or way

should it have been when driving a cab 

it being my cab whether a later shift

or my medallion it was me and my cab searching

the taxi streets, a modern centaur one

body one mind bonded in purpose transporting

every possible imaginable passenger dreadful

or kind down busy highways and darkened 3 AM

in the morning streets it was me and my taxi

no other than we in partnership making that

big money, each day and night getting home

safely to a warm bed either alone or together, it

was always us me and my taxi. 

 _____________________________

My original version does not have the spacing between sentences but either way I find it captures in short form the experience of driving a cab.   Is this only my second taxi-themed poem ever?  It might be.  For me, I stayed too long in the business, instead of getting my necessary paper allowing me to set up shop as a clinical psychologist.  Not only would I have made more money though my usual average over the years was $40.00 per hour, but as I have said repeatedly, there is only so much accomplishment in getting passengers efficiently from point A to B.  I was good at it but better if I had helped folks unravel the knot of serious emotional trauma.  From my first professional psych job back in 1974, I found, for whatever reason, that I had the ability to speak to and reach the very chronically mentally ill.  Of course that skill matched the requirement of taxi, where the human condition in all of its forms stepped into the back seat, the cabbie's version of the psychiatric couch. 

Regrets?  When one is aging, yes, certain decisions can come back to haunt.  I still have time to recoup what I lost but certainly wished I hadn't backed myself into this corner.  Some will say, and have said, that I was one of the greatest cabbies to ever work beneath the taxi toplight in Seattle or perhaps anywhere.  

The problem with that honor tough is simply financial.  In America these days, if you are the GOAT in any area, you are making millions of dollars.  Instead, a taxi "GOAT" is regarded little more than an farmyard animal, an actual goat munching grass or straw in the pasture.  That's the issue.  That's the problem.  

As I mentioned earlier my friend Stacy Anderson, who I nominated and crowned as the TAXI KING, was one of the best at what he did in any taxi city or country. What was Stacy's ruling empire?  I am sorry to say nothing but a very large dunghill that smelled to high heaven. So it was and so it is, that's the sad story concerning this taxi biz.  Gee whiz!

Only Once a Month at Best

This blog is winding down, soon there will only silence, no motor sound, no more speaking and writing about that NW Seattle town.  To other tasks I am bound.  And besides, life is a circus and why be bored reading the ravings of a aging taxi clown? who no longer smiles, displaying a perpetual frown. 

New Year's 2025 Taxi Comments: Big Taxi Lunkhead Hits the "Pickled Pepper Big Time"

Happy New Year!  Pour the Local Beer!

Yes, it's the new year but what does it mean for Seattle and USA taxi?  Is taxi a mere after thought, faded to disappear like the carrier pigeon, extinct and forgotten?   Probably not, at least not in the bigger cities, though taxi much diminished but surviving.  The real serious issue facing taxicab in 2025 are much higher insurance rates.  State of Washington insurance rates for every kind of of insurance increased on average by almost 23 %.  My last annual taxi insurance was more or less $5000.00.  If I was still driving, I would be looking at about a $1,200,00 increase.  In terms of taxi hours, that translates into 40 hours averaging $30.00 per hour; or 30 hours averaging $40.00 per hour.  I use these figures as they were my usual take, depending on the day and business climate.  As any honest cabbie will tell you, regardless of how much money they are making, good or bad, the grind, the wear and tear on the body catches up to you, which means higher insurance is a further economic burden.  If insurance costs weren't so dire, I would consider starting a taxi company here in SW New Mexico, because one is needed but I would be paying the same rates as if I were owning cabs in Seattle or Chicago or New York.  That isn't logical but does Progressive care? Of course not. 

When You Are Not A Great Cabbie, You're In A Pickle, And for Howard Lev, That Was His Solution

Back in the early 1990s, I knew I a big lunkhead of a cabbie, Howard Lev.  He was the typical case example of the dopy, alienated white American male attracted to America's Grand Marginal Industry, cab driving.  But Howard, braggart Howard had a plan that was much smarter than Bigheaded Cabbies like me.  He had a recipe for pickling Hungarian peppers and, wouldn't you know it, his "Mama Lil's Peppers" have overtaken the condiment world.  They are on grocery shelves everywhere.  In the Dec 12th, 2024 issue of the Seattle Times' Pacific magazine, there was the goofy Howard happy as a pickled pepper.  Good for him.  And call me a Big Sour Cucumber Pickle, jealous as a spicy pepper in a jar, looking on enviously from afar. 

The Great Ford Crown Victoria 

Taxi buddy Bill sent me link about a NYC Yellow Cab Crown Vic retired at 575,000 miles.  The video showed that the car was in incredible shape.  My last Crown Vic, starting at 103,000 miles, brought me up to over 450,000 miles before I retired it and sold it to a neighbor.  I assume it is still running.  It was burning a bit of oil on the original engine but still, on the highway I was still getting 20 miles per gallon.

Gasoline Prices for the New Year

Anyone in Seattle won't believe it but 2 days ago I filled up for $2.39 per gallon.  Recently, the national average was just under $3.00.  Despite GOP rhetoric, during Biden's last year in office, America's oil industry produced and sold more oil than ever before.  Don't believe me?  Look it up.  

I Never Liked MV

MV took over the billing of King County's Metro account, which once was an incredible money producing account but MV destroyed it.  In my last taxi months, I dropped it.  And now recently, they have been months behind in paying accounts served.  But the real culprit is KC Executive Dow Constantine, the great LIberal-I-Love-Everyone as long as everyone thinks I do.  Where do these people come from? Ron Sims, Mr. Constantine?  Heaven help the hard working cabbie!

New Year's Day First Ride Over the Mountains

A goal of every Seattle cabbie was to get that long ride east over the Cascades.  Driving Farwest Taxi, my first one came on Jan 1st, 1989, taking a BN train crew over to Wenatchee, WA.  Good fare.  Over $200.00.  I got caught in a blizzard coming back.  Best part was the story the crew told about their last cabbie.  He was such a bad driver they put him in the back seat and drove the cab themselves to Wenatchee.  That was funny.

The Passing of a Once Chicago Cabbie

Most probably don't know but my friend Marty (Martin Crafts Campbell), who died this morning at 5:33 AM in Las Cruces, NM, at age 78, drove cab for a few months way back when in Chicago, something like 1968.  He had a gun pulled on him.  Rough place to drive a cab, Chicago.  RIP Marty beneath that Toplight in the Sky.