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