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!
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