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 San Francisco, me from Phoenix. 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 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.
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