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 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.
