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Who’ll kill the electric cab?

Nissan LEAF - West Side

Nissan Leaf – West Side

“Nice Taxi you have here!”

“Thanks, but it’s not mine. I just keep it clean as possible.”

“It runs so quiet, it must be an electric or hybrid vehicle.”

“No it’s not. The engines are nowhere as big as those in the Crown Vic’s, although this does run on gasoline. Some of the SUV’s and the Prius Taxi’s are hybrids but we don’t have anymore of the former at the garage I work out of.”

“What about the Taxi of Tomorrow? Isn’t that supposed to run on electric power?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

Now that we’re down to T minus 70 days and counting until the Taxi of Tomorrow hits the streets of the Big Apple, there’s been a lot more talk about it’s rollout, both in the news and by my passengers. As I wrote in an earlier post, many people incorrectly think that the Ford Transit Connect is the Taxi of Tomorrow but even though some of those have been on the streets for nearly two years now, none will be active as a yellow cab at the end of the decade should the full implementation of the Nissan NV-200 take place. It did lose out to it in the competition to be the exclusive yellow cab for the City of New York, but since the Crown Victoria is no longer being made by Ford, other models have taken the place of those that have reached the end of their life cycle, and the Transit Connect happens to be one of the more popular choices to replace the cars that have hit retirement age.

Come October, that all changes as the first of the NV-200’s will roll out. New Yorkers will have a custom-built Taxi designed for comfort, safety, stability, and durability (or so we’ve been told) that has been thoroughly tested and ready for the daily wear and tear that the streets will inevitably put on them. Since no one in the general public had been inside of one and none of the drivers currently employed in New York has driven one, the jury is out on whether the grandiose promises that the TLC and the Mayor have made about this new Taxi will be kept. One aspect about them remains in flux however:

What will they run on?

One of the questions I get the most by my passengers is how the cost of fuel is borne at the end of the shift. Many incorrectly think that the garage pays for whatever we use while we’re on-duty, but if you’ve kept up with my musings on here, you know better than that. Just like a rental car, the Taxis we drive have to be returned in the condition we took them out in – clean, ding-free, and full.

Of gas, that is.

Thankfully, my garage has a home station nearby that also serves as a de facto AAA emergency roadside service. The tow trucks that will take us back in case we break down are not based near my garage but in case of a flat tire, a dead battery, or other small problems that arise from time to time, one of the guys who works at the station will take the old taxi that’s been converted to a Saint Bernard on wheels and help us out. It’s a lifesaver since getting towed is time-consuming and as anyone is well aware of, time is money. To take that a step further, time lost during a shift is money lost.

The day drivers have it rough when it comes to getting gas since getting in and out of the Station at rush hour is one knock-’em, sock-’em game of musical chairs with everyone else who is trying to get in and out at the same time. At 4:50 in the morning, the streets are empty and the only thing I can count on is that I’ll see the same 5 or 10 guys out of my garage who are finishing their shift at the same time. We almost always agree on how good or bad it was out on the streets that night and we’ll trade barbs on what we went through during the previous 12 hours. In a field where it’s pretty much every driver for him or herself, it’s the only time where I feel like I can bond with those that put in the same hours and working conditions that I do.

Could all of this change in the near future? A few months back, Nissan helped launch 6 electric LEAF Taxis to join the 13,000+ gasoline and hybrid vehicles that currently make up the fleet in New York. All of them look like the one pictured above and have the same fare structure as the other Taxis. The real reason for their usage however, is to see whether they can pass muster and handle the day-to-day grind that will take its toll on them. Eventually, the city wants 1/3 of the fleet to be electric by the end of the decade.

Of course, that will have to coincide with the NV-200 being the exclusive model of Taxi by that time, even though none of the ones set to hit the street this year are slated to run via a charger and battery.

This brings up a host of problems that will have to be addressed. For starters, there are only a limited number of charging stations currently in the 5 Boroughs. Garages are expected to have the stations first before they become more widely available but for now, an app is needed to locate them.

Then there’s the time factor. Most of the Taxis in the overall fleet are on the road at least 20 hours a day, nearly every day of the week. Steady cars get traded off between partners and the others are dispatched out to the daily or nightly drivers. It’s not uncommon for a Taxi to rack up well over 300,000 miles during its 6-year lifespan on the streets before it hits retirement age and is decommissioned. Charging, for all the advances made in it in the last few years, still takes a while and has to be done on vehicles that are not on the road for two shifts a day. Once the time to fully recharge a battery drops, this can change and then can an electric cab can be on-duty for nearly the entire day (or night).

Last but not least, there’s the issue of the battery. Ask anyone who’s had to pay for a new one in a hybrid vehicle and you’ll probably get sighs and groans as a response. They’re not cheap and their replacement can easily wipe out the savings in gas in a heartbeat. The cars currently on the road haven’t had to go through that yet but eventually, they will and the cost will have to be borne by someone in order to keep them running. Their range between charges isn’t terribly far either and for someone like me who drives nearly the entire time in a 12-hour shift, 140-150 miles will be the minimum needed to ensure a safe and stress-free night at work.

No one ever seems to mention that for all the gas that an electric Taxi will save, it will still need an energy source. A plug may not give off carbon dioxide but the source of the power that feeds into it probably will. Given that Indian Point’s days are numbered and that a majority of the power that New York consumes today is from fossil fuels, how much greenhouse gases are electric vehicles really keeping out of the atmosphere? To me, it’s a shell game that everyone is in favor of without thinking everything through from start to finish.

Ultimately, the big issue that this will come down to is going to be the same one that affects so much of what New York’s future depends on, which is infrastructure. Charging stations will have to be widespread, do the job quickly, and be built to last. If 1/3 of the 13,000+ yellow cabs (which could number nearly 15,000 by decade’s end) are to be electric, they will have to withstand the wear and tear that the job will place on them, as well as repeated charges on a near-daily basis. There’s nothing wrong with pushing the edge of what’s technologically possible as a means of efficiency and to help provide better environment for all but when it comes down to nuts and bolts, what matters is whether the person on the street hailing a cab will get into an electric one over a model that’s more familiar and reliable.

Usage will dictate what ultimately fails and succeeds. The Second Avenue Subway will cost billions to construct but after years of delays, it will be worth it when tens of thousands of passengers patronize the line once it’s finally open for revenue service. Water Tunnel #3 will be in near-constant use when it comes online in the next few years and any of the new parks along the East and Hudson Rivers will be worth the cost once the attendance numbers and rise in surrounding real estate values are taken into consideration. If the new cabs are up and running at decades end and the average passenger can’t discern between those that run via the pump versus those that run via the charge, than the plan will be a success and New York will be looked at as a leader in alternative energy for the vehicles that service the riding public.

Until then, we can only hope that the vast amount of time and money spent on this new technology will not be seen as a wasted opportunity, unlike the ill-fated Chevy Volt. The taxpayers and Taxi riders of Gotham do not deserve a boondoggle, repeated on such a massive scale.

iPhone26 056Charging station – New Jersey

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The Big Apples

Original home run apple - Citi Field

Original home run apple – Citi Field

“So why is New York called the Big Apple anyways?”

“Beats me, but I can’t imagine any other nickname appropriate for this place.”

Two and half weeks ago, the 84th Major League Baseball All-Star game was played in Citi Field out in Flushing, Queens. For months, I did what I could to get a ticket to an event that will probably not take place again in New York for at least 20 years. The Mets website was the first place I looked back when there was still snow on the ground, but they wanted anyone who was interested in attending the Midsummer Classic to also buy season tickets for the Amazin’s 2013 campaign. No one in my Taxi was able to hook me up and even though I knew someone who worked the Fanfest at the Javits Center, there was still no word of a $600 or $800 chance to take off for a night and ride the #7 train out that night to see Baseball’s best slug it out. I ended up not working that night but thankfully, was able to come home and watch Mariano shut down the side and earned a well-deserved MVP in his final All-Star appearance.

All-Star apple and train - Citi Field

All-Star apple and train – Citi Field

Once in a while, I get that question posted at the top of this entry tossed at me. As I’ve alluded to many times, my passengers love to ask me question after question after question after…well, you get it. It’s bad enough that it’s usually the same variations of what I’ve already answered that night (Do you own this Taxi? How late are you out here? Anyone ever get it on back here? etc…) but the one up top is one of the few that I haven’t gotten around to looking up the answer to yet. Time and time again, I’ve referred to the city that I work in by its nickname, even though I don’t hear or see it as much as when I was growing up. Like graffiti, down-on-their luck starving artists, the Broadway font, and Milton Glaser’s I Love New York ad campaign being sung in the background, The Big Apple seemed to be depicted a lot more in the waning decades of the 20th Century. Heck, even the ball in Times Square was an apple for a period during the 1980’s, before returning back to it’s more familiar form. Yet throughout all of this, the nickname for New York has stuck.

But why not The Big banana, or even enchilada?

There isn’t one answer but whether it’s because of horses, jazz clubs, or even a brothel, there isn’t a soul that sets foot in the 5 Boroughs today that doesn’t know the link between apples and the City that has adopted them as an official moniker. The bond has become so synonymous that in 1980, the Mets even came up with a way to use the apple for themselves. Milwaukee may have Bernie Brewer taking a slide into a vat of beer and the south side of Chicago had an exploding scoreboard but after every home run hit by a Met, a giant Apple would pop out of a hat on the other side of the outfield wall. It was with that in mind that Major League Baseball decided to celebrate this year’s All-Star game by putting – what else – apples, all over the city. Lots of ’em, with the logos of the 30 Major League clubs and a few other designs tossed in for good measure. Why am I even putting this in here?

Because yours truly tracked all 35 of them down the week before the big game.

Mets apple and Taxi - Midtown

Mets apple and Taxi – Midtown

5 years ago, something similar was done for the Yankees. The House that Ruth Built up in the Bronx was hosting the All-Star game that year and during (the first) Yankee Stadium’s 86th and final season. As part of the festivities leading up to that 15-inning classic, a bunch of Statues of Liberty were put on parade around the City, as well as on Ellis and Liberty Islands. Being such a rabid baseball fan, I hunted every single one of these down, snapped a picture of it, and posted them all up online before I took off for the Summer to watch a bunch of Minor-League games on the road. I didn’t have a chance to buy any tickets for the game in the Bronx, but I’ll never forget turning on the radio in my Mustang and listening to the latter innings on AM radio in the wee hours of the morning, underneath the stars.

Washington Nationals apple - West Side

Washington Nationals apple – West Side

That was not the case this year but thankfully, I was able to visit firsthand all of the apples that were spread out and about. I had seen a few while driving around during my shift and on my off days, I took out the map that was printed in the paper and proceeded to find every one and cross it off, before pounding the pavement and moving onto the next. The hardest part was getting a nice shot of one without any distractions and given that so many were placed in high-traffic areas, that was easier said than done.

White Sox apple - Times Square

White Sox apple – Times Square

Most people would wonder what would lead someone to do such a crazy thing. Yes, I’m a huge fan of our national pastime and, yes, I probably had better things to do during my off days than to chase a bunch of fiberglass apples around New York during the heat of Summer. For me, it was part scavenger hunt, part checklist, and part walking tour. Some of them were in areas that I hadn’t been on foot in in quite a long time and they allowed me to get reacquainted with parts of the City that I was only familiar with from behind the dash. The All-Star apple was out at Citi Field and since I went out to see it when the Mets were away from town, I found the old Shea base paths in the parking lot and re-enacted the last out of the ’06 NLCS.

Shea's home plate - Citi Field lot

Shea’s home plate – Citi Field lot

A few others were on the far East and West Sides of Manhattan, which are practically no-man’s lands for pedestrians unless they’re on the way to somewhere specific in those parts of town. The Houston Astros Apple was in front of the Helmsley on 42 Street, which is where I dropped off National League All-Star closer Craig Kimbrel the night before the game. Several were down in Lower Manhattan, which sadly did not look much different than when I was down there in ’08 (except for 1 WTC being nearly complete the second time around). A big part of the allure of the whole parade was chasing them down on foot, which is how I learned my way around New York for years before I took the current job that I still hold.

Rangers Apple - Financial District

Rangers Apple – Financial District

I’m sure some people reading this will wonder why a 36 year-old Cabdriver even cares this much about a kids game played by overpaid drug addicts and egomaniacs and yes, I’ve often wondered the same thing myself. Given that I’ve seen cops ride on sidewalks, a video being filmed in the middle of 8 Ave. during rush hour traffic, and several fights and arrests while waiting at red lights during my last full week on the job, I realize that sports and recreation is one my ways of escaping the madness that so many of us who drive around New York have to put up with on a daily basis. No, they don’t solve problems, win wars, cure diseases, or make a difference in our day-to-day lives but sports are a big business in this country today and are a diversion during a time where so many of us have so much weighing us down. A nation’s lonely eyes once turned to Joltin’ Joe and for me my eyes will turn to many images, texts, people, and yes, activities when the nights grow long and the outlets are few for me to reach out to.

Time cover - 9/17/90

Time cover – 9/17/90

A little over 20 years ago, Time magazine did a cover story on “The Rotting Apple”. I was in 8th grade and read this issues in the Middle School Library when this came out – murders were at 2,000 a year, the Budget looked like it wouldn’t be balanced, people were once again fleeing for greener, suburban pastures, and race riots dotted many inner-city neighborhoods. Newly-elected major David Dinkins had his hands full and it looked like New York’s best days were in the rear-view mirror once again. Thankfully, that did not turn out to be the case but it took a massive infusion of capital, resources, a political shift in the City’s electorate, and a renewed questioning of New York’s role with the rest of America after 9/11 to bring Gotham back to prominence. No, it’s not a perfect place and much work has to be done to make New York the leader in innovation and immigration in the 21st Century but landing two All-Star games and having a unique form of public art on hand this Summer to make the steamy nights a bit easier for me to handle was another visible sign that the place that I call home during my working hours was on the right track and in much better shape than it was a generation ago.

Orioles apple - Meatpacking District
Orioles apple – Meatpacking District

Of course, the apples are gone now. I’ll still have youtube clips such at this “Big Apple Movie” (the bumper is at 1:50) to remind me of why I fell in love with New York in the pre-internet days, when TV was the only way I found out about the great city to the east of me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4-fkcQiruc

It seems like so long ago and maybe when the next All-Star game is held in New York again in the 2030’s or 2040’s, someone will take out all of the apples out of mothballs and introduce them to a new generation of visitors, many of whom will find it hard to believe that the Big Apple was on the brink of insolvency and irrelevancy during the lifetime of some of its inhabitants.

Another reminder - Midtown

Another reminder – Midtown

by

Wired

Man on Wire

Man on Wire

“You sure must drink a lot of coffee.”

“I haven’t had a drop since I started this job.”

“Wow. How do you do it, then?”

“I’ve never fit in and staying up all night is easy for me. May as well get paid for it.”

I knew from a young age that I never fit in with the other kids. Not only did I sit down in front of Sesame Street but I’d also watch the evening news and The Nightly Business Report when I got a chance. When I was in the library in elementary school, I’d grab whatever reference book or Encyclopedia struck my fancy and go through it until I found something that stood out to me. When my parents got  lost behind the wheel, I was the one who knew where we were and which directions would get us back on track. I was intellectually hungry to know how, where, when, why, and what made people tick. Much of that curiosity was satisfied when I went to New York alone for the first time in early ’94 and drove out to California alone a little over two years later. There were no words to describe what it was like to see the words, pictures, and stories in books and depicted on television come to life right in front of me, as I got to use my knowledge and take my learning to another level by experiencing new places firsthand.

One of the moments I’ll never forget was the first time I drove out at night alone. I had just gotten my license and a pair of wheels (not much else functioned properly on that vehicle) but on a night not much unlike tonight, I took her out for a spin here in town. It may not have seen like much to anyone else but to be out alone with the buildings illuminated by artificial light, with hardly a soul to be seen, and with the top down on a room-temperature night was something that struck me as totally new and totally comforting at the same time. Most of all, I wasn’t tired like so many people were when they had to be out late for work or socializing. I begged to stay up past my bedtime when I was little to watch Sha-na-na or Dance Fever and even though they had been off the air for years by that point, the little boy that resented going to bed early finally got his due and loved every minute of it.

Looking back, it was easy to see why I loved that night and so many others like it since. Every job where I’ve had to be up during the day had been a struggle for me – from getting out of bed, staying awake and alert for the full 8 hours, and conforming to an office environment that never felt quite right, even on the best of days. One thing I learned during the struggles of a daytime vocation was that I had to keep myself stimulated in order to feel alive. No, it didn’t involve illicit substances or death-defying juvenile antics, but I had to read, write, learn, listen, and respond to as much as I could and add it to my base of knowledge, so I could find new fields that explore on my own time.

Even with all the books I have here at the house, all the pages bookmarked on my computer, and all the places I’ve been lucky enough to visit in the other 46 States that I don’t regularly get to, there’s so much more out there that I haven’t been able to have my senses come into contact with. The older I get, the more I realize that what I’ve learned will probably pale in comparison with what still currently remains unknown to me. For example, there’s the World Trade Center and a chapter of its history that I only recently started to inquire about further.

Several times in the 1980’s, I had the chance to go to the observation decks on the 107th and 110 floors. I remember the absolutely massive escalators leading up from the PATH terminus, the elevators having “Welcome” written in several languages for the tourists, photographs of each of the 4 views with the major buildings highlighted for the sightseers, the electric fence around the edge of the outdoor observation deck to thwart jumpers, and an autograph on the northwest corner of the South Tower, with a simple marking on it. Later on, I realized that someone had crossed between the Towers on wire around the time my parents got married, but I never read any further into it.

Three months before I graduated from Columbia, I stumbled into the auditorium at the Student Center where I had reviewed notes for class during many a lazy afternoon. That day, they were screening Man on Wire with a Q and A afterwards with one of the deans. It was free and open to all and even though I missed the first 15 or so minutes of it, I put my books away, sat down, and stayed until the end of the discussion.

I would tell everyone out there reading this to go rent it on DVD and watch it straight through, but that’s not why I’m writing this entry today. For starters, this isn’t a blog about movie recommendations and furthermore, I hadn’t been to a theater in years before watching that documentary; so therefore, I have almost nothing to use as a frame of reference. Most people I know have seen so many movies that they know what they like and don’t like and what they think of the most popular films in recent years. I’m the exact opposite as I have little use for Hollywood right now and spend my free time pursuing other forms of mental stimulation.

All of that is besides my point, however. Like so much else in life, it wasn’t the crossing that was amazing as much as the story behind it. It’s impossible to envision someone being able to freely walk into the construction site down at Ground Zero today once night sets in but Philippe Petit and his assistants did just that when the original World Trade Center was under construction in the 1970’s. The whole operation was so meticulously planned that the details behind the “artistic crime of the century” were nearly amazing as the actual act itself. Mastering the art of tightrope walking, gaining access to the construction site, learning the layout of the towers, and accessing the roof seem difficult enough, not to mention having to breach whatever passed for security back in those days. It may seem like a lot of preparation for an event that may never have happened, but when asked about it afterwards, he had this to say in his defense:

“When I see three oranges, I juggle; when I see two towers, I walk!”

And so he did.

It’s so difficult for me to look at those pictures nearly 40 years later. It’s not because the towers aren’t there anymore, or because the landscape of Lower Manhattan has changed, or the color resolution has changed 1000% for the better, or even because the air of today’s postindustrial Gotham has become cleaner than clean itself. It’s because I keep thinking that he’s absolutely, totally insane for what he did.

But there’s no doubt that he isn’t.

Sitting on the physical edge of 110-story towers as if it was a simple ledge is something that no one else would ever want to do, but he wanted to do it. He had a goal, a way to attain it, and the patience to follow through. Who am I to criticize him? There was a time when picturing machines heavier than air gliding effortlessly around the world, or messages being sent to anyone, anywhere, anytime at the click of the button, or even diseases invisible to the naked eye being wiped off the face of the Earth would have seen eternally impossible but someone had the courage to challenge the status quo and push the boundaries past the known realm to see these ideas become reality.

No matter how preposterous it seemed or how much effort was required to carry out the dream.

From what I have read, some have criticized Petit for what they perceive as his enormous ego. I never thought it was big at all and unless one completely clouds out friends, family, and spirituality, it’s almost impossible to have one’s Freudian impulses out of whack. It was ego that sent explorers across the Atlantic in search of riches, new lands to conquer and ultimately, a new home away from crowded, feudal Europe. Ego led to the writing of a document that separated us from a country intent on plundering our wealth of resources instead of treating us as equals under the law. Years later, ego led to the laying out of the “greatest grid” of streets in the greatest city in the republic which had the courage and daring to break away from the largest colonial power the world had ever seen. A few generations later, ego after ego took part in the greatest race for height of the 20th century, which ended in the construction of two massive towers that were over 95% full on the day they were destroyed at the dawn of the 21st century. Each age of individual gain involved less and less physical space that had to be conquered than the one before it but involved more mental blocks that had to be overcome, as the World became smaller over that time but the contents of it became larger and more complex, and therefore, presented more challenges for those that wish to rise over them.

All of this came to a head on August 8, 1974 as millions watched mesmerized during Petit’s 8 walks back and forth between the towers over a 45 minute span. One Police Officer who watched knew that he’d never see anything like it again but little did he know how utterly prophetic his words were. It was apparent that day that no one would ever string a wire between the towers and use them as a means of crossing the 1,300-plus foot height of their rooflines again. What was not obvious that day was that we’d never push a boundary like that on U.S. soil in anyone’s lifetime.

Sure, new companies have been formed and new inventions have come along that have revolutionized the workplace, the standard of living, and the way people interact with one another, but so much has changed in this country that it’s increasingly hard for one big idea or one big person to come along and challenge the conventional wisdom of the day. Groupthink, conformity, increased domestic surveillance, and a security state have all led to a dearth of creativity that will hurt America for generations to come; assuming that the Republic even survives in its current state for that long. Toss in another fiscal collapse similar to what happened 5 years ago and it could be the end our way of life forever.

A few weeks ago, I went into Bryant Park after a night out at work which saw me interact with the usual cast of characters that I come across during a typical shift. None of them measured up to the person I had gone to see in the reading room that day. Vivacious, humorous, and uplifting, the 63 year-old that spoke that sunny afternoon was there to promote his latest book, which dealt with knots. Seems like a simple premise until you realized that the person had been tying and retying knots for decades and that that person was none other than Philippe Petit himself.

It was one of those days that stuck with me for a long time after I paid for Why Knot? and To Reach the Clouds. Once again, something that I had only seem in film and print had come to life before my eyes, much as the places in New York and America had for me during my jaunts away from my cozy suburban abode. The crowd that grew was much larger than anyone had anticipated as those walking by through the park or on their way back to the office after lunch realized who was speaking and how he had everyone’s attention who was in attendance. Most striking of all were how many people that were in the park that day were *not* aware of the speaker at all but rather, were on their phone/Blackberry or idling the time away in the midst of a presentation by one of the most engaging personalities ever to set foot in the Big Apple.

When it came time for me to have the books autographed by him, I mentioned that I was surprised that he wasn’t left-handed. Not only is yours truly sinister in the way my brain is wired, but nearly all of the women that I’ve most admired and have been attracted to over the years and many of the notables that I’ve emulated were in the minority when it came to which hand they’d place a writing utensil in. Philippe mentioned that he was indeed right handed but thought of himself as more ambidextrous than just about anyone else.

Surely, who would argue with that?

Before I left to shoot my first rounds of Petanque in weeks, I told him wholeheartedly that he was beloved in New York. While I’m sure he’s been told that more times than I could count, I’m sure it’s something that one would never get tired of hearing. Personally, it would be something I’d want have someone  tell me, though I wouldn’t be sure for exactly what I had done with my life and my God-given talents.

And that’s where the problem lies.

The old Chinese saying is that a journey of a thousand miles begins with single step and for me, the problem is figuring out what direction that, and the thousands of others that come past it, would be in. Years of reading, writing, and schooling have shown me that for all that I know and have codified, that there’s much out there that I have yet to learn and accomplish. Every time I think about how hard it is, I pull up the picture of the view down from the South Tower of the World Trade Center as Petit took his first step and danced among the clouds on that Summer morning decades ago.

I’d give anything to experience that feeling for myself someday.

Man off Wire

Man off Wire

by

From the Home Office in West Caldwell, New Jersey

Apologies to Letterman

Apologies to Letterman

Sure enough, it’s been a year since I finished watching all 114 Episodes of Taxi. With the exception of Frasier, I had never gone through an entire run of a TV show on DVD from start to finish, to see how many story arcs there were and how they were wrapped up. While Taxi didn’t have a final installment worthy of the show that won 18 Emmy Awards, there were enough episodes and moments that were worth remembering, especially to this driver. While work has been relatively routine since my return from the Grand Canyon State, I thought that it was time for a Top 10 list of the best episodes of that landmark series and although I won’t be writing for any late-night talk shows anytime in the near future, I thought that this site would be an appropriate place for it in the midst of court orders, meetings, and crimes against yellow cab drivers making their way into the news once again.

So without any further ado, here are the Top 10 episodes of Taxi, with their original air date where applicable:

10) Who Will Be Miss Taxi?

Elaine (Marilu Henner) is totally shocked one day to find out that the guys in the garage have seen her enter a contest run by a New York Tabloid to become the next “Miss Taxi”. How could she be pictured in the paper when she never entered the contest? Simple. Louie (Danny DeVito) entered her into it and thought that the ensuing publicity would be good for the garage. Of course, Elaine advances in the contest even though she vows to stand up and speak about how the whole process objectifies women and is nothing more than a sexist, shallow contest, but when she has the chance, she cannot stand up for her convictions. Even upon winning the award, the City never knows how she feels and only the people in the garage find out at the end about her distaste for it, with the speech given from the hallowed turf of Louie’s cage. At that point, she’s on a roll but the ensuing passengers that come and go from her Taxi don’t care as she rambles on about her opinion regarding the process, as the words become drivel that fills their lives.

Don’t remember this episode? There’s a good reason why:

It never aired.

According to Taxi – The Official Fan’s Guide  by Frank Lovece and Jules Franco, this was a story outline for an episode that was never filmed. It later became the basis for the “Who Will Become Miss Barmaid?” for Cheers, which is where many of the writers and producers moved on to once Taxi went off the air in 1983. This episode could have been a classic for so many reasons – Elaine mentions on a New York morning show that she thinks one of the drivers “is pretty cute” but never states who, the tension of Elaine blowing the whistle on the entire contest only comes to head to those at the Sunshine Cab Company, and the ending where Elaine turns out to be the only one who cares about the superficiality of everything. While there was never a “Miss Taxi” contest in New York, old time residents of the City will fondly recall the “Miss Subways” promo that ran underground for years before becoming discontinued in the 1970’s. It’s hard to imagine anything like that now happening given how few women dive a Taxi and proliferation of eye-candy rating sites on the internet but this was a homage to the contests and pageants that were so important to American pop culture in the 20th century.

9) Tony’s Sister and Jim – 11/26/80

Tony (Tony Danza) has a plan to set up his sister Monica (Julie Kavner) with Alex (Judd Hirsch) since she’s visiting from Spokane and he thinks they’d hit it off together. Unfortunately, a little something gets in the way, which turns out to be none other the resident burnout Jim (Christopher Lloyd). Jim and Monica hit it off in the garage while Alex steps away to get ready. Harvard-dropout Jim’s refined side comes through for the first time as we see him talk classical music and have a normal conversation with the divorced-Monica. Although we don’t see his instrumental talent come out as we do later in Elegant Iggy, he holds his own at the French restaurant they later eat at and at her apartment when the couple are spending time together. Naturally, this upsets Tony since he can’t see what they have in common and still thinks that the more level-headed Alex would be better for his sister. After a nice demonstration of his muscles when he picks up Jim and nearly tosses him out, Monica restores order to the ordeal as all is right in the world and the two guys chime in on bottles to Monica’s flute playing as the episode ends.

The highlight of the episode is seeing a post-Rhoda and pre-Simpsons Julie Kavner in a simple role and a potential love interest for Reverend Jim. Throughout the series, Jim is seen as a misunderstood loner who means well and sees the world through a quite-unfiltered lens but underneath, has a soft side and an odd sense of refinement. This is really the first time it comes out and even though Tony’s lack of intellect makes itself known here, it’s apparent that he has not been hit in the head too many times as a boxer since he backs from protecting Monica and gives in to her desires, even if he still doesn’t see eye-to-eye with Jim. It’s a tender moment that shows that Jim is one of the gang, although he never fully acclimates himself with the others during the duration of the show.

Two more of your average cabdrivers in 2012

Two more of your average cabdrivers in 2012

8) A Grand Gesture – 5/25/83

As we earlier see in Jim’s Inheritance, Jim has quite a bit of money to his name now that his father has passed on. After giving a homeless person that wandered into the garage $1,000, Jim repeats the favor to the other drivers on the condition that they don’t hold onto the money but instead, give it to someone who could make good use of it. Alex hands it off to an elderly passenger in his Taxi, Elaine sits with one of her children and debates how to best split it up, Tony buys a color T.V. for an old friend of his who’s homebound, and Louie has the hardest time giving it away since his assistant Jeff (J. Alan Thomas) can’t grasp that Louie would ever care for anybody but himself. After much arguing, Jeff finally takes the money as they hug and Jim leans in and smiles from the background.

There are so many reasons why this deserves to be on any Taxi fan’s short list of great episodes. As I alluded to earlier, Taxi was cancelled twice on two different networks and the second time around was relatively abrupt, with a true final episode never being written. None of the proverbial loose ends were ever tied up and instead, we’re left with this. The notion behind Jim’s generosity would later be seen in the “Pay it forward” idea that Oprah Winfrey espoused but here, we get a deep grasp into the essence of each character. All of them followed Jim’s advice with different results. Tony finds an old friend and spent it all on a T.V. that today, looks hopeless outdated. This could possibly be in allusion to the conclusion of Zen and The Art of Cabdriving as the strongest message that Taxi sent during it’s 5-season run. Seeing the tears run down Walt’s (Scatman Crothers) face as he’s taken back by the generosity stood as one of the most dramatic moments on the show…until Louie attempts to get rid of his $1,000 allotment a little bit later on.

Jeff was always seen as a reluctant yes-man to Louie’s overblown dispatcher and de facto boss at the Sunshine Cab Company. It seemed like he spoke more here than during all of his other appearances over the years and to see him stand up for his principles was quite touching. What brought it to the next level was that this moment of confidence came at a time where Louie actually let his guard down and actually thought of someone else for a change.

7) Alex’s Old Buddy – 1/29/83

Alex brings a dog into the garage that has been living with his sister for years, but the 19-year old canine is on his last legs and is going everywhere with Alex before he moves onto the boneyard in the sky. Simka (Carol Kane) even comes by to give the dog a blessing from the old country but the good wishes are to little avail: Buddy is dying and Alex’s attempt to show that he’s alright backfires when the dog fails to perform the trick that he’s most known for. Alex brings him to the Vet to find out the bad news out but only uses that as a reason to let Buddy take over his life. He stays home with the dog as his date mistakes his food for that of humans and in a another funny scene afterwards, Buddy has become Alex’s resident-in-cab. At the garage, Louie suggests that it may be time to humanely end it for the canine but Jim interjects and offers a test. If he can do the trick, it’s not time for him to go. In one of the most dramatic and tension-filled moments on Taxi, Alex “shoots” Buddy so he can play dead and as all the drivers look on in silence, the dog slowly performs as he rolls over. The joy is short-lived however as the last scene in this episode shows Alex crying alone after putting having Buddy put down, even with Louie unable to help out his top performing-cabdriver and closest friend.

This episode is so different from that of so many other sitcoms that it’s almost impossible to know where to begin. Usually, new characters are brought in when ratings go into the tank but this was during Taxi’s final season on NBC and Buddy is only shown here. The tried-and-true formula of a problem being overcome here doesn’t apply either, as grief quietly takes over Alex before the credits roll. For all the joy, the plot possibilities, and the humor that a canine could have brought onto the set, it’s the image of Alex crying alone that resonated with viewers when all was said and don. The girlfriend he has and the passenger in his cab that meets Buddy are forgotten but the theme of him being a consummate, lonely cabdriver held the most true when he ends the episode on his own, as ultimately turned out to be the case when the show came to a close a few months later. Most protagonists get the girl, the promotion, and live happily ever after as all the loose ends are sewn up but the only loose end in this episode was the leash that would never be used again by his best friend. Had the series ended on this note, it would have been fitting given that Alex held the same occupation and marital status as when it all began.

6) Elaine’s Strange Triangle – 12/10/80

Another recurring theme on the show was the revolving door of men that Elaine went through during the series’ run, and this episode may have taken the cake for why she remained single throughout it. Over drinks at Mario’s, Tony sets Elaine up with a nice-looking gentlemanly patron that the others think would be good for her. Kirk (John David Carson) and Elaine seem like two people who are made for each other but later on, Kirk admits to Tony that he has a problem:

He’s not attracted to her.

No big deal, right? It wouldn’t be if Kirk wasn’t bi…

…and he wasn’t hot for Tony.

Tony has a hard time admitting this and an even harder time getting it settled so as usual, Alex has to step in to sort things out. He’s the only one that feels that Elaine needs to know the truth and since he wants to get down to the bottom of it, he ends up going with Tony down to the bar that Kirk frequents in order to get him to set the record straight. Sounds relatively straightforward until Alex gets pulled onto the dance floor by a “bear” and hilarity ensues. Tony walks in stunned and stereotypes gets shattered, all in late 1970’s I’m-coming-out vibe softened by a strong dose of comic relief.

This show was the popular at the same time as Soap, which was the first primetime series that featured an openly gay character. It’s a bit of a misnomer that Elaine was in the episode’s title given that she’s not shown at all during the scene that had the audience in stitches but as far as the writers were concerned, it was the men who were the focal points here. Kirk comes across but normal but isn’t, Tony appears to be macho but can’t face the truth when Kirk admits it to him, and once again, Alex tries to be the hero but ends up being a goat in the metaphorical sense. The situation he found himself in doesn’t define him as much as it catches him off-guard and his attempt at humor ends up backfiring, as the men end up liking him more as he tries to stands out from the gay bar attendees. There wasn’t anything uneasy or offending about this episode, but the joke had to be on the main character in order for the taboo to be lifted, which it was as programs and sitcoms in the following years dealt with gay characters much more comfortably.

5) Elaine and the Monk – 12/2/82

Simka brings in her cousin to the garage, a Monk (Mark Blankfield) that is visiting New York on his vacation. He belongs to a monastic order that has taken a vow of silence but since he is away from his monastery, he can talk while on his break. Unfortunately, he only has a week to enjoy the sights and sounds of the big city. Who better to show him the Big Apple than the charming, female cabbie in the garage? Elaine is more than up to it and in a scene that only features the two of them in the garage, they start dancing with each other to an old song as if they were in a 1930’s big-band era film.

The antics go on as they describe at the garage the places that they’ve seen around town. A what’s-what of New York is listed, including the World Trade Center and 5 Ave, but with only descriptions that leave the viewer wondering how much of them they saw as opposed to each other. Alex, on-and-off again with Elaine over the course of the series is jealous of Zifka’s encroachment on his confidant, as she responds that he’s jealous that he doesn’t have anyone in his life. Zifka leaves, stating that he’ll be over her place for dinner during his last night of freedom. At her apartment, we see the two of them getting along while being on the clock the entire time. Because he was late, they didn’t have time for a full meal together and as he’s about to fully express how he feels to her, the alarm sounds and he has to put his robe back on. The episode finishes in silence as they continue off from the dance in the garage and he heads out, back to the old country to continue the vows of his order.

This was Danny Devito’s directorial debut and it showed here, from the overhead camera shot of the dance sequence to his diminished role as Louie. Not that the cast and crew weren’t comfortable with the other directors, but they were so accustomed to working with him that the looseness of the humor and introduction of the new character were apparent to those watching. Zifka and Elaine had real chemistry and instead of the other guys vying for her attention, Zifka lets Elaine take on the reigns and show him the ropes, as his talent for dancing won her over effortlessly. Marilu Henner was a star on Broadway before hitting it big on the small screen and along with her turn in Fantasy Borough, she got to show what she learned on the Great White Way here. DeVito showcases her brilliantly while effortlessly weaving the singing and dancing into the plot and pulling the Cinderella-esque ending, with a glass of champagne substituting for the glass slipper. The silence lets the viewer contemplate what could have been between Elaine and Zifka, as the potential love of her life got away before her feelings for him ran their course.

4) Jim’s Inheritance – 10/7/82

Louie gets a call at the garage and it’s not good – Jim’s father has passed on. Louie tries to break the news as gently as possible to Jim but when told that his father has gone on to a better place, Jim thinks that it’s “Palm Beach” and not the afterlife. Jim goes on to work his shift to take his mind off of what happened and few days later, an Attorney for Jim (Dick Sargent from Bewitched) enters the garage to inform him that his father reinstated Jim into his will. The bad news is that Jim’s brother and sister want him to not have a part of it and instead, want to have him receive part the money through a conservatorship. Jim vows to fight but it’s an uphill battle as the drivers and his Lawyer fail to win the judge over and the money is held back from him. All that he’s given from his Dad is a heavy trunk with a few of his old belongings.  Even though Elaine finds it outside of his apartment on her way to see him, Jim wants to open it alone and the interplay between the two polar opposites comes to a head here as Jim takes a serious turn in his mood and is met on by Elaine’s attempt to stand by him through thick and thin. She grants his wish that he’s alone when discovering the contents which happens immediately after she leaves. Jim takes out his overweight Dad’s old suit and puts it on a chair in his apartment, as it quietly falls back on its own. A tape recorder pulled out afterwards is played, which belts out “You are the Sunshine of my Life” by Stevie Wonder, followed by an ending in a fade-out.

“Reverend” Jim Ignatowski stole the show from the moment he joined the cast full-time but this was one of the few times where we got to see the dramatic side of Christopher Lloyd shine through. Like Jeff Conaway and Marilu Henner, Lloyd started out on Broadway (actually, Off-Broadway) and later moved on to film and television. It was a testament to the show’s writers that they were able to show the seriousness that his character required here and have it measure up to the burnt-out persona that he was best-known for on the show. It made Latka’s (Andy Kaufman) wedding in Paper Marriage that much better when he performed the wedding in straightface, even though his denim outfit and lack of official title only made the farce that much greater. In Jim’s Inheritance, he has a hard time coming to grips with the loss of his Dad, even though he was estranged from him for much of his life. His family followed in the old man’s footsteps by succeeding in life while Jim couldn’t let go of the 1960’s, both in mind and lifestyle. He may not have ended up with the money, but his good heart won his Father over and because of that, he was left with a gift that money couldn’t buy, his Dad’s prized possessions. Even though the tape recorder looks like an anachronism today, the song and message that it sent were both as strong as anything else that Jim’s Dad could have recorded for his son to hold on to forever.

3) Zen and the Art of Cabdriving – 3/19/81

Jim picks up two passengers at JFK who discuss a self-help theory, which Jim later adopts. That night, he pulls in more than any cabdriver and later becomes Louie’s favorite as his totals outgross that of anyone else at the Sunshine Cab Company. Being the best cabdriver becomes an obsession to him and after working a bunch of shifts in close proximity to each other, he ends up leaving it all behind. He’s announced to the other drivers that that he’s reached his target and has achieved his goal, and that he wants them all to come to his apartment to see what he’s worked towards.

One night, they take him up on it and come into his quasi-illegal loft to see what this big goal was. Was it the start of a new commune? A drug den of sorts? A way to take his enlightened mind to the masses? Jim pulls back the cover over the windows to reveal that the goal he’s been working toward was…

…televison.

Lots of them, actually. On all day. Watching a myriad of programs. Classical music? Check. A movie? Check. A forerunner of C-Span showing whether people of Delaware want to be called Delawarians or Delawarites? Check. The gang laughs and feels like they wasted a night since they’re been letdown more than they could have ever imagined and proceed to head out, but once they leave his apartment, they have a change of heart. Sure, they could stay for a bit and what’s the harm of watching a bit of TV before they head home? Before they know it, each one is watching something on a different screen and getting into it and in case they missed anything, there are VCR’s there to record what’s on for later viewing.

This is such a groundbreaking episode for a sitcom as the information revolution is still a full decade off but forewarned here by the most prophetic, Christ-like figure in the garage. Jim has probably achieved that state several times over the years beginning with his time at Harvard and subsequent dropping out of there but in this instance, it’s not a substance that allows him to “see the light” but rather, a method that most other people would have immediately brushed off. For Jim, it allows him to sing Sinatra with ease as the cab makes it’s way through Midtown (something I’ve repeated in jest on the same streets during some hellacious nights) and to make the presentation of his goal unabashedly. Just like the tape recorder in Jim’s Inheritance, the TV’s and VCR’s shown look hopelessly outdated but it only serves to show how powerful the message is. In in era of cable boxes and 36 channels available to subscribers, the gang is enchanted with the new technology and the niches that it appealed to. Had this aired today, what would they be seeing? The internet, DVR’s, and satellites allow for hundreds of options and viewing at any moment, which would be enough to pull nearly everyone in to *something*, at will. We can laugh at the limited options available to people in the early 80’s but I remember when we had a cable box with a wire going to the TV, with a few dozen options at any given time and of course, I always found something on when I needed to veg out. It’ s a reminder that for all the snickering that may have gone on after the “big announcement”, Jim was onto something that most people ended up catching on to, for better or for worse.

2) Reverend Jim: A Space Odyssey – 9/25/79

This was the episode that put Taxi and Christopher Lloyd on the proverbial primetime map. The first season had some odd plot lines, like Alex going to Florida to see his long-lost daughter, John (Randall Carver) marrying a woman that he hardly knew, and the first of Bobby’s many struggles in the acting business. Less than a month into the second season, Taxi found it’s focal point and character that could relate well to anyone, in Christopher Lloyd’s “Reverend” Jim Ignatowski. He was seen briefly when he officiated Latka’s sham marriage to a call girl n order to keep him in the country, but it wasn’t until he took his driving test that America fell in love with the burnout stuck in a time warp. No writing could do justice to the “Yellow light” question that had Jim taking Bobby’s (Jeff Conaway) advice *too* literally, and slowing down every time he repeated the question. No one on TV has ever seen anyone so out of it, before or since, and the writers took Jim’s obliviousness to the extreme, even making it obvious to everyone else but him that he should be a cabdriver as he downed his sorrows in another beer at Mario’s one night.

It’s the sequence where he took his driving test that made this episode stand out but like the Fonz on Happy Days, the introduction of Jim to Taxi was what set this show apart from its peers and helped it to take off over the remainder of its run. I can personally vouch that although the TLC test to become a licensed hack wasn’t that hard, I needed to keep this sequence in the back of my mind as I took the test and watched the minutes idle away in the room at cabdriver’s school No, not just anyone can walk in and pass with flying colors and being a driver that enjoys the job is something reserved for a distinctive and slightly odd few. The bare walls and open plan of the testing room depicted here was probably nothing like the way things were back then, but the innocence and naivete shown in that scene was a reflection of the bohemian drivers like Jim that can no longer be found driving the Taxis on the streets of the Big Apple.

1) Elegant Iggy – 3/18/82

This episode started off so innocently enough – Jim ends up with two tickets to see the violinist Itzhak Perlman and has to choose between Elaine and Alex to accompany him. After having a wonderful evening together, Jim is riding the elevator with Elaine when one of the most important patrons of the gallery that Elaine works at gets in as well. One thing leads to another, and Elaine and Jim are invited to an event that she’s holding that weekend. Elaine is naturally nervous that Jim will embarrass her at this and blow her chances of advancing in the world of art sales and exhibition. She attempts to get out of it but Jim’s reaction to her initial rejection at the garage makes her have a change of heart, without a full change in attitude. The day of the event, Jim shows up in proper attire but has not fully convinced her that he’s ready to mingle with the highbrow set. A woman that converses with Jim at the affair is from another crust entirely but Jim just manages to laugh her small talk off and move on. The pianist scheduled to perform that night also calls out, leading the host to ask if anyone could fill in. Sure enough, Jim volunteers as a horrified Elaine looks on. After performing his “water cooler” trick with a bottle and playing “London Bridge is Falling Down”, Jim turns it up and out of nowhere, plays a classical piece. The audience is delighted, Elaine avoids permanent ridicule, and Jim walks out a happy man, even if he can’t quite figure out what just happened.

This episode is so brilliant on so many levels. Jim tries to woo Elaine with a Yoda puppet, which was all the rage back in the early 80’s. His appearance in full formal attire was a change from the denim-clad outfits he almost always wore on the show and the chemistry and affection that he felt for Miss Nardo-O’Connor in Elaine’s Secret Admirer continued here as he plays the perfect foil for her nervous self. We never find out over the course of the show whether she succeeded in running her own gallery and getting out of the garage but for one night, her attempts at making inroads with the highbrow set are met with success as Jim’s impromptu performance on the piano wins her over with the crowd she is rubbing elbows with. Everything in this episode had set up for an epic failure on his part but the 180 that he pulled out of thin air was a nice touch during a final season that saw a lot of heartbreak, tough issues, and unresolved storylines come to the forefront, as the certainly of the show’s future was in doubt on yet another network.

It should come as no coincidence that 5 of these episodes aired during the turbulent final season of Taxi and nearly all of the same 5 featured Reverend Jim as the character central to that particular episode’s plot. Andy Kaufman as Latka Gravas may have garnered his fair share of yuks and Randall Carver’s golly-gee John Burns was never featured after the first season but once Reverend Jim took his drivers test, the show went in a completely new and uncharted direction. Higher ratings, multitudes of awards, and a chance to have everyone else play off of a burnout with a heart of gold should have been enough to place Taxi on the same level as All in the Family, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and Seinfeld on the Mount Rushmore of sitcoms.

But it wasn’t meant to be. Shows today would have killed for ratings, writing, and an ensemble like the one that Jim Brooks, Dave Davis, Ed Weinberger, and Stan Daniels put together in 1978. For all the outdated aspects of the show – the Checker cabs,  the primitive-looking set, the archaic dispatching, cheap apartments in Manhattan, and celebrities walking into the garage for cameos, the interplay between the characters and the pathos expressed when viewing them today is just as powerful as when it first aired.

To top it off, it was as much as many people would see when it came into peering into the lives of the typical Big Apple cabbie of the era. While not as lighthearted as the show would present and not as apocalyptic as the seedy underworld portrayed in 1975’s Taxi Driver, the world of the hack of bankruptcy-era New York was one that needed to be preserved for future generations to look back upon as the rebuilding of the city would leave those memories in the dust in a matter of decades. Today, one can’t watch the show and not laugh at Tony’s miscues, Elaine’s attempt to balance her family and work lives, and to see if Bobby would hit it big and move out to the West Coast. The real shame of Taxi was that it was graduating from a sitcom to sound-stage set play with laughs when it went off the air in 1983. What was lost in humor was made up for in issues, conflicts, and resolutions that stuck with the viewer long after the TV set was turned off for the night. One could only cry at how good the writing would have progressed had it run to the late 80’s and each driver came to the realization that the ironically-named Sunshine Cab Company would have been his or her permanent, and final place of steady employment; especially as shows with increasingly watered-down plot lines, inexperienced casts, and inferior writing took to the air in the years following its second cancellation.

Taxi deserved to be the last great sitcom and as I alluded to above and in an earlier post, many of the writers later moved on to Cheers, which gave birth to Frasier right after it went off in 1993. Those latter two shows both ran 11 seasons and never had the deterioration in writing after the 4th or 5th season, which has been the downfall of so many sitcoms guilty of creative complacency and networks desperate to hang on to shows long past their prime. To be fair, all of the plot lines were not not happily resolved but it was easy to reminisce about how much everyone and everything had changed since they were first brought together from disparate origins. Looking back was just as easy as looking forward and the only hard feelings were felt towards those who could not be there before the big break-up that sent those who remained on their way to left’s next big adventure.

After nearly two years at this occupation, I don’t know how long I’ll have my job for but one thing I’m aware of is like every other vocation I’ve had, there will be a last day. I’ll pull into the Gas Station at about 4:50 in the morning, fill up, toss my receipt scraps out, gather my belongings together, cash out, tip the dispatcher, and quietly head off into the night. There won’t be a rush home and into bed to get ready for the beginning of my next day in 5 or 6 hours. A few weeks later from then I’ll take my deposit back from the garage and head out from there for one last time. Most importantly, I’ll leave on my own terms after my time behind the wheel as a hack will have finally run its course.

It’s a tragedy that the show I love and compare some of my experiences with was not allowed the dignity of ending the same way.

This one's for you, Angela

Goodnight, Mr. Walters

by

Meet the Met

Dressed to the nines

Dressed to the nines

As many New Yorkers were well aware of, the Metropolitan Museum’s annual gala was held this past Monday. Of course, yours truly worked that night, as has been the case nearly every Monday night for the last year and three-quarters. Given how slow New York tends to be on the first workday of the week, it was a notable event for me since one of my fares needed to get up Madison Ave. at 6:30 that night. Sure enough, I never got my passenger to her destination as the combination of black cars, taxis, buses, and flashing lights combined to bring the thoroughfare to a halt. The person I had in my cab understood the circumstances, asked me to turn down 72 St, and quietly paid her fare.

Once that ended, I was on with my night. It ran like any other Monday with the exception of my way back down 5 Ave. after dropping off a few fares off in the 90’s off of Park. I didn’t know what to expect since I did not work that night of last year’s gala and I wasn’t sure how many black cars would be idling in the street.

Of course, that turned out to be an insanely high number.

Readers of this blog already know of my disdain for the for-higher-vehicles that match the color of night and tend to fly like it as well. Yes, they have an important role in the transportation economy of the City, as any corporate hotshot or celeb will tell you but for the rest of us, they can be hell on wheels. Rarely do I see one get pulled over for a driving infraction or an illegal street hail and even more rare than that will be a ticket issued to one for idling in the street too long and double-parking. There was lots of both of those as I snaked my way downtown and made my way past New York’s premiere social event of the year.

Given how nightlife and society have changed over the years, the Met Gala is arguably the last annual event that draws a red-carpet ambiance to the Big Apple. Awards shows and ceremonies like the Tony’s draw a niche crowd while larger events like the Grammy’s rotate between venues every year. Film premieres will showcase those starring in them as well as other flash-in-the-pan types that are hot at the moment and none of the ones that I drive past or read about in the paper seem to have the pizazz of those during the heyday of the Hollywood Studio system. What we’re left with is a museum hosting the only event left of its kind in New York, but even that has changed over the years.

As the above link succinctly states, the event was originally known as the Metropolitan Museum Fashion Ball. Yes, that’s right – fashion. Not shamu’s begging to attend and showing up in couch retreads, but an actual event attended by society’s elite in gowns that were part of the Museum collection. Patrons were rewarded for their financial generosity and the list of attendees read like a Who’s Who of elite in New York. Most of them were not known by the general public and the event had the appearance of debutante balls and “coming out” events that helped to characterize the gilded age.

And then Anna Wintour entered the picture.

What fun would it be to have the largely-unknown constituents of the upper crust attend the event each year when celebrities that people could identify with more would be a bigger draw and hence, make the event more newsworthy? Just as she changed who appeared on a coveted magazine cover each month, she used her sway to determine who would get one of the exclusive invites each year. Not since Studio 54’s short but brilliant reign as the center of Gotham’s nightlife were socialites, models, designers, singers, dancers, actresses, the affluent, and just plain popular able to come together in one place at one time. I couldn’t help but notice the similarities between the two as I saw throngs of those wearing Halston and Diane Von Furstenberg screaming to get into Rubell’s and Schrager’s haven of hedonism on youtube videos, just as throngs of spectators stood behind metal barricades on Monday night. Some twisted part of me wishes they were rooting me on as I made my way down what is still regarded as New York’s most glamorous avenue, but reality sunk in as yet another vehicle stopped in front of me and threw its flashers on. Those who were waiting for hours outside for a glimpse of those who could care less about them would never see the folly of their ways.

One could also make the argument that those they were screaming for were also fools in their own right, as the cost of admittance to the invitation only event was rumored to begin at $5,000. While the cost of admittance was never cheap, it was originally borne by those who had a stake in the Museum and the exhibits that were shown there. The theme of this year’s event was “Punk: Chaos to Culture” , which was perfectly fitting given that the embrace of the grungy, industrial chic that punk espoused has come full circle nearly 30 years after it’s original heyday. Those who actually dressed up in punk outifts for the gala probably weren’t alive in the late 70’s and early 80’s. just as they’re unlikely to visit the museum and see the accompanying exhibit that ties in to the event. That’s not an issue since it’s prestige and fundraising that came first and not the chance to renew ties with those responsible for the exhibits that are curated there.

A few of the yellows that were in crawling in line with me picked up passengers leaving the event but it was a big o-for for me. About 10 blocks down, I picked up someone nicely dressed who was loosely tied to the night’s festivities:

“Hey there, where to?”

“Park and 22nd.”

“Sure thing.”

Once she was off the phone, I chimed in as appropriately as I could:

“I bet you had something to do with that soiree back at the Met.”

“Yeah (laughing), I did. I work for one of the hotels near there and it’s been crazy today. I had to make sure that everything went off without a hitch for J. Lo. Tomorrow begins the real work as I have to write all the press releases for those staying at our hotel. The work never ends…”

Maybe their life isn’t so different from mine, after all.

by

Pulse

Racing Taxis - Meatpacking District

Whizzing Taxis – Meatpacking District

“Sorry for the delay, “I’m going to turn off of 7 Ave. South and get away from this Holland Tunnel traffic.”

“It’s all good. I still don’t know what we’d do without you guys. You’re the lifeblood of the City.”

“I know most of us don’t see it that way, but thank you for the kind words.”

Ever take your own pulse? I mean, *really* take it? It’s not that easy for someone who hasn’t been trained. Yeah, I suppose I could check my wrist, count the number of beats in 15 seconds and multiply it by 4. Heck, I don’t even know if it’s the right way to do it but it makes sense to me and should give me an approximation of where I stand. Thankfully, I give blood every 3 months or so and I get a reading of that, my iron, and my cholesterol thrown in for good measure before they stick me and draw some red stuff out for the bank. It’s more than a donation for me, it’s a way to get a small physical of sorts and to figure out where I stand, and what I may need to work on.

Now take 8 million blood-carriers and throw in some tourists, visitors, and undocumenteds for good measure and it’s a much bigger trick. Some people would go straight to the census data from 2010, others would read Crain’s or the New York Times for a week and maybe the superficial would check out the number of derricks in the sky and empty storefronts on the major avenues. The neat thing about my job is that I get to do all of those in a given day for one of the inevitable questions that I’ll get while out at night:

“So how’s business?”

Every winter, there’s a slowdown. How do I know? Because I’ve worked in retail, restaurants, offices, sporting facilities, and the occasional odd job and yes, each one of them saw a downturn after the holidays were over and the champagne bottles were put away. On the street, there are two dead giveaways that you’re in a slow period as a cabdriver, without even having to look at the receipt that I print out at the end of the night:

1) Over night = night’s over

2) Plastic planet

The reason that all of us love to work the weekends is because of the overnight hours and the difference from the same time period during the week. In the midst of all of the app debates that the TLC is dealing with is whether a city as big, as busy, and as street-hail oriented as New York needs a radical change in the way that people find their next ride across town. Rush hours are easy as the amount of traffic on the street and the mad dash of people heading home lead to a 5 or 6 hour period of near-nonstop hails with ability to flip fares easily, just like my tables back from my waiting days. Every night, there’s the time that I call “the wall” where I drop someone off, round a corner, and take a good look up or down one of the major avenues…

…and can see the street again.

The later that point, the better the night for us. Weekends are a different beast, however. There’s a slight lull around 8 or so as New Yorkers are busy home getting ready for the night’s adventures that lie ahead. After that – all bets are off. Last Friday was a perfect example as usual madness was amplified by the first warm day in this area this calendar year. It made for a faster shift since I had everything from interior designers to a bagpiper (yes, he played for me) keep me company and the extra vehicles kept me on my toes as well, filling in nicely for a 3 A.M. snack break.

Going back to the apps, the rationale for their existence is that they would help during slow times, when many of us are cruising the same streets in the same bar districts looking for the same 5 fares. Once in a while, I will turn down a street that looks dead as a doornail, only to find someone standing all by his or herself waiting for a knight in yellow armor to take him or her home safely. While those moments are full of joy and some of my best stories, they’re few and far between.

With an app, that all changes. It becomes much easier to see who’s out there and there they are and would even save us the trouble of waiting in line for people to leave popular establishments and firms that work them to the bone. Most drivers during the week make the exodus out of Manhattan around 1 or so but since I can’t get back to Jersey via mass transit overnight, that’s never an option for me. Knowing where to find people becomes a reality once the City that never sleeps proves that axiom to be partially wrong.

Then there are the payments. Aside from the plethora of late-night holiday parties, the month before Christmas is so beloved by us because people are in a giving mood and aren’t afraid to share the wealth. Of course, they show it to us in the best way possible:

By paying in cash.

I understand that so much has changed when it comes to money in the last few years but one thing that hasn’t is how we wish to receive our fares. Cash is, cold, hard, and instantly usable. If I didn’t have to pay for my own gas and could charge all my expenses and tips on a credit card, I certainly would. After the last fare hike 7 months ago, the percentage of fares that were paid on credit shot up from 50% to well over 60% on most nights, as people couldn’t quite stomach the first across-the-board raise for us in well over 5 years. Once the new year began, that ratio went even higher.

The hangover that many of my passengers had immediately after New Year’s was nothing like the one that they endured in the following months. Some nights, I was lucky to receive 6 or 7 fares in cash out of 25 or 30 total, which barely was enough to pay for my gas and any other expenses. While I always bring change, I never plan on depleting it at the end of the night but I came close a few times. It was obvious that even in a city as affluent as New York, that many locals had stretched their budgets thin and were working hard to cover the difference in their personal finances.

Thankfully, that’s over with now. The ratio has evened out a bit and the amount of vitality in the City late at night has started to pick up again. Even the vital signs are good, as construction, air traffic, Broadway attendance, and hotel occupancy are all healthy levels right now. While there isn’t a direct correlation between those and how much I take home in a given week, any upbeat sign is sure to trickle down to us to some extent.

One way that my health and the health of the City are not inversely related however is something that I’ve mused about time and time again, however:

Clogged arteries.

The last few times I donated blood, my “bad” cholesterol was over 200. Numerous attempts to change my diet, walk more, and get off my butt on off days haven’t made a difference and while it’s not enough to cause me problems, it bears watching as I get older and am more likely to be affected by the buildup. For the City though, clogged arteries are a good sign, as odd as that may sound.

While sitting in traffic may not be fun, seeing it is firsthand proof that things are looking up. Proof that people are out. Proof that people have somewhere to go, Proof that people have money to spend.

And most importantly, proof that New York is moving in the right direction.

Ask anyone in Detroit or Providence how traffic is there and they’ll probably laugh. They’d sign up for New York’s problems in a heartbeat. Traffic, infrastructure that’s bursting at the seams, and high apartment prices are not fun problems to be solved but they’re problems that are the result of a tragedy of the commons, on a different scale. Too many people want to be in New York but there’s not enough room for everyone. Who stays? Who goes? Who gets help from the City?

The next Mayor will have to tackle all of that while not undoing the progress that’s been made since the end of the crack wars and graffiti crises of the 1980’s. While the usual ebb and flow of seasonal volume will continue unabated for time immortal, the body poetic of New York will need plenty of TLC by those entrusted to ethically and honestly watch over the people and finances that they pay into the system. Given recent events that indicate that the opposite has taken place far too often lately, I still believe that the Big Apple is poised for a prosperous and healthy future, bearing that the mistakes of the recent past are not repeated by a new administration next year.

Most people don’t see it this way, but it’s obvious that the vehicle that I drive to earn my living is the lifeblood of Gotham itself. One could argue for the Subway as well but with more lines suffering through shutdowns because of maintenance issues and lack of service in several neighborhoods, the yellow cabs are increasingly the 24-hour option for those who work a nontraditional schedule and are relegated to living far from where they earn their paycheck. Anyone who doesn’t believe me can observe the vehicles making their way across the Queensboro and Williamsburg Bridges every day around 4:30, as the old, tired blood makes its way back to the heart, in exchange for some “oxygen-rich” blood that’s ready to serve the masses until the next changeover.

As odd as it sounds, those yellow cars seem to be in my blood as well, even if it wasn’t what I set out for when I went back to school.

Waiting for the changeover - Greenpont

Waiting for the changeover – Greenpoint

by

14,600 Ave

Home again, if only for a week - Tempe Diablo Stadium

Home again, if only for a week – Tempe Diablo Stadium

“One, for the cheapest seat in the house.”

Four summers ago, I uttered those words, nearly 100 times. At Minor League parks in 35 states, yours truly was crazy enough to take a whole summer off and watch a bunch of games surrounded by solitude, strangers, and starry skies. A lot happened in the years leading up until March of this year, including a grueling end to my career at Columbia, a renewed love for New Jersey’s finest, and the odyssey behind the wheel that I decided to indulge myself in on a daily basis in the Big Apple. All of that threatened to consume me, leaving a soulless shell in it’s wake. Thankfully, I hit the pause button earlier this month.

As some of you were aware of, I put my hack license away a few weeks back and headed out west. 6 days – all alone – in the Valley of the Sun. Most people just call all of it Phoenix but in actuality, it also encompassed Tempe, Glendale, Mesa, Goodyear, Chandler, Scottsdale, and a few other points in between.

I had it it planned for a while, since the World Baseball Classic and Spring Training were in full swing during this time. In past years, it was the Summer when I decided to leave everything back east behind and set sail for greener pastures and open spaces in the direction of the setting sun. It had been 3 1/2 years since those days were a part of my life and if only for a fleeting glimpse, I decided to pick up where I last left off, which was watching fireworks post-game for the Hudson Valley Renegades at the end of a 1oo-day, 100-game baseball trip in 2009.

Most people reading this can’t see how this would relate to my current profession but the seeds of it were sown during my first runs out of state years ago, when I fell in love in driving and thankfully, I felt that connection again when I was behind the wheel of my rental car leaving Sky Harbor Airport, even if I wasn’t able to put the top down on it this time around.

I knew it wasn’t going to be fully possible to fully escape the East Coast. If not by proximity, than certainly by the indelible traits that cabdriving and urban living had left upon me. As the old saying goes, “You can take the boy out of “X” but you can’t take the “X” out of the boy”, and unlike past years, I made it out to the Mountain Time Zone in a matter of hours, and not days spent on back roads. If that wasn’t odd enough, the events of the first day were.

Every first day seems to go haywire for me. In nearly every job, I’ve had to hit the ground running. Ditto for my time at Columbia since I transferred into G.S. with most of my introductory courses out of the way beforehand. Even in New York, I saw an accident and had runs to 3 Outer Boroughs on my first night, along with a ton of well-wishes from my English-speaking passengers. Nearly every road trip that I took during the summer saw my original plans get chucked out the window due to weather, traffic, and the nearest empty hotel room being 30 miles away from where I planned on retiring for the night.

And once again, things weren’t any different on a March Friday in Arizona.

Ever take the middle seat on a train? I didn’t think so and I nearly did on my flight out until the person to my left offered to switch with me to be next to his friend. It was all for the better as my one piece of luggage was stowed underneath since all of the overhead compartments were full. At least I didn’t have to worry about it falling out during take-off after the 40-minute long de-icing was finished, as my magazine was enough to keep me busy once up in the air. The problem with that arose once I landed and made my way over to the carousel to pick up my bag and head towards the rental car area.

“You have no idea where it is?”

“None.”

“Mind checking for me again?”

A few minutes later, no sign of it.

“Fill this out and we’ll let you know if it turns up.”

And so I did.

My flight left out of J.F.K. at around 8 so you can only imagine how I felt given that that was the average time when I went to bed on most nights…er, days. One less than 4 hours sleep, I picked up my breadbox on wheels and made my way towards Tempe Diablo Stadium.

Hail - Tempe Diablo Stadium

Hail – Tempe Diablo Stadium

That facility was notable since it was the only stadium in greater Phoenix where I witnessed a game back on ’09. I had a few others on my itinerary but an errant check engine light and a broken fuel pump (don’t ever break down in Tuscon in July) put an end to my baseball plans in the Grand Canyon State that Summer. This time around, I planned on picking up where I left off. I had a World Baseball Classic, Coyotes, and Suns game, on the agenda as well as 8 spring training games on the slate and nothing was going to stop me, even if all I had was the shirt on my back. Absolutely nothing, not even a freak hailstorm.

Which is exactly what came during the third inning of the Angels game.

It may never rain in Southern California and it’s sunny 300 days a year in Arizona but sure enough, it was 50 degrees and hailing the day I landed. A few attempts to pull the tarp on and off the field was enough to frustrate the grounds crew as they gave up for good once the storm hit. It doesn’t get more bizarre than watching something frozen fall on a cactus but I had the pleasure of witnessing it firsthand within a few hours after touching down.

That night was the only game of the World Baseball Classic that I saw without getting kicked out of Chase Field and it didn’t go much better. R. A. Dickey finally met his match and so did anyone cheering on the red, white, and blue, as both were clearly outplayed and outdone by anyone wearing red, white, and green. I didn’t have the problem with my home team losing, I had just wished that the people cheering on the team they lost to moved here legally and didn’t get rottenly piss drunk during the game. There weren’t any fights that broke out (unlike their game against Canada the next day) but ask anyone in Arizona why the border has a 50 foot-high barbed wire wall along it and they’ll give you the straight dope on immigration there.

Sombrero - Chase Field

Sombrero – Chase Field

Slowly but surely, the weather improved over the next 5 days. Heck, it even started to feel like the summer. No yelling at passengers, grumbling over the latest run down Bushwick Ave., or griping about the $100 bill someone gave me on a $10 fare out there. Instead, it was tan lines on my feet, learning where the nearest Walmart and QT’s were, and scrambling across town to make the first pitch for the game that evening. I even had my old Ron Cey glove with me that I was given as a kid, as a reminder of the old man and how my family introduced me to the game that I couldn’t get away from. Like my skin, it was starting to look cracked, discolored in spots, and indicative of the years, but certainly felt as comfortable and reassuring as ever. There was nothing like watching the sun come out and give me something to look forward to, while taking me back to more innocent times.

I lost count of the instances in New York where someone asked me how I went to school and ended up schlepping them across town for a living. I would always give the usual spiel about the economy, my loans, and doing something that I loved to get me through the onslaught of factors that conspired to do me in. In reality, it was much more complex than that. Growing up in the shadow of the Big Apple made me yearn for something that I wanted to be a part of but didn’t have in my everyday life. Wanting to see the republic that the Greatest City in the World called home led me to drive across it numerous times, in my feeble attempt to be a modern-day Lewis and Clark or Kuralt.

And cabdriving fit both of those bills nicely.

New York City has over 6,000 miles of streets but over the course of my year and a half on the job as a hack, I’ve probably covered 10% of those. Because Manhattan is the primary turf for yellow cabs, much of the city remains as a frontier to me, even to this day. Just as anything west of the Delaware River was foreign to me until the mid-90’s, the City north of the Harlem River or east of the B.Q.E. still remains a wonderland to me, waiting to be explored and learned one fare at a time. The rest of America is still on that level for me as well, even though I’ve had my feet touch the Pacific Ocean more than once. Going through an area may open it up to my common knowledge but it takes a few repeat visits to get it down front and back and nowhere was that more apparent than when I made my way out west to watch my games.

Like New York, greater Phoenix is laid out on a grid…except that the one out there is more in tune with Southern California’s than the more famous one back east. Each major street was one mile away from the next one, resulting in a checkerboard pattern that still threatens to encompass everything in the valley out to Goodyear, Surprise, and Chandler. High gas prices and a housing market that still is drying off from its underwater sojourn were no match for the dynamo that has now made Phoenix America’s 5th-largest city, which was evident from the stakes in the ground on the outskirts of the valley.

In past years, I was only in one part of the country for a few days before leaving town on the edge of a given day and hurling myself to my next destination. This time around, it was different. I had one central point that I returned to every night and had to base everything off of it, which was not that much different than what my current job entailed. While no one would ever mistake downtown Phoenix for Midtown or the Financial District, there was something on the roads that reminded me of home.

Taxis.

Not one of them that I saw out there was yellow but they had a lot in common with the ones that I called home during working hours. Meters, sedans, and ubiquity were all found in the valley of the sun and even though I never had to hail one, I wasn’t too far from them either. That’s probably because I spent my free time at sporting events and late night spots, which is where they were to be found in a decentralized metropolis. I had no idea what the rates were but between them and the new light rail line that was put in, it was refreshing to see a city vastly different than New York take a cue from it in order to handle transportation for the working masses.

“Need a ride home?”

“No, thank you.”

“Have a nice day.”

Sunset - Scottsdale Stadium

Sunset – Scottsdale Stadium

That turned out to be my only contact with an on-duty Taxi driver, during my night in Scottsdale. Most of the restaurants had stopped serving food once the Giants game let out for the night but that didn’t stop me from taking a walk through the downtown and soaking one on of the few pedestrian-friendly enclaves near the Cactus League parks. Most of them were set in relatively anonymous locales, near a major intersection marked by Gas Stations, chain drugstores, strip malls, and taco outlets. The only thing more bizarre than seeing these on the drags near the ballpark was passing the same 5 or 10 places on every major corner on the way home, with the occasional cab racing by me for good measure. On One the last full night I was in town, I chatted with a few cabbies that were in the line pictured below. I told them what I did and they responded by saying that they liked their jobs, knew where to go for fares, and also were able to take street hails and pre-arranged rides in their Taxis (something we need to solve back east). The Prius hybrids were good on gas too, which was a bonus given that prices were higher out west and the amount of distance covered in a shift could be quite cumbersome at times. As I made my way to my rental car after the Diamondback’s game, I took a little time to myself before calling it a night and packing to head home.

Loop 101 was right by the park and for anyone familiar with the Valley of the Sun, it’s the recently constructed highway that serves as the beltway for Phoenix. Parts of it went right through areas recently developed in anticipation of the highway but there were still pockets along it that went through sparsely developed blocks that hadn’t yet met the whirl and din of jackhammers and cranes. It was relatively close to the ballpark where I took my wheels and found one of these spots, parking the vehicle and going out for a stroll in the eerie calmness of a warm Arizona night. For a few minutes, I was able to see the stars, hear myself think, and resist the tide of overdevelopment that threatened to engulf everything in the middle of the state, right up to the edge of the mountains. It was at this time where I felt at peace with my current place in life, the trip I took, and what I had my life when it came to what I earned and who I had on my side. While it was only fleeting, it was something that I could always hold onto once I departed from the sunny days and disposition that I had enjoyed out west.

Especially when I had to trudge out to J.F.K. in the snow during my first shift after returning home.

Taxi queue - Salt Rive Flats

Taxi queue – Salt River Flats

by

How’d He Do?

For Hizzoner

For Hizzoner

When the 105th Mayor of New York City passed away earlier this month, it marked the end of an era. The New York of the late 20th Century was a city hemorrhaging jobs, prestige, and most of all, Capital. What had built up over the course of 300 years was nearly destroyed within a generation, due to suburbanization, concessions to unions, the expanding largesse of government, and corruption on all levels. All of it was not for naught, as it led to a rebirth of Gotham and it’s role relative to the rest of the United States and there was only one person who could spearhead this revival of the Big Apple.

Ed Koch.

Everyone has people that they admire in life and growing up, one of the ones that I looked up to was a sharp-witted man who rose up from his Greenwich Village Congressional District to run for Mayor 4 times, winning 3 of those contests with relative ease. For a kid reared in the suburbs who didn’t venture into New York much, it was part Oz, part Gotham, and part disaster area, and all of it a dynamic work-in-progress whose effects are still being analyzed and studied to this day.

Many baby boomers would say that John Lindsay was the best Mayor of their generation, since his election in 1965 marked the end of the Tammany Hall Political Machine’s stronghold on New York’s politics and the ushering in of a Progressive mindset that altered City Government and brought new ideas to the table. For sure, the City did change. Transit fares skyrocketed, Teachers went on strike in Ocean Hill and Brownsville, Social Programs escalated with backing from The Great Society, Crime went through the roof, Unions strengthened their hold, and whole neighborhoods were remade in a generation. What little progress was made with the redistribution and reallocation of wealth was more than offset by deferred maintenance, crumbling infrastructure, unplowed streets, and increased borrowing to meet fiscal needs. All of that came to an abrupt end in 1975 when President Ford effectively told the city to drop dead.

Thankfully, it didn’t.

Two years later, it hit rock bottom. Large parts of Brooklyn were decimated during the blackout that year, Son of Sam kept everyone in at night, and Howard Cosell told everyone watching the Yankees in the World Series that indeed, “The Bronx was burning.” What people couldn’t see then was that New Yorkers had had enough of higher taxes, worsening services, a hollowing out of the business cores, and disdain from the outside world at what had once been the World’s Greatest City. All of this led was borne on the shoulders of one man, who took on the Herculean task of bringing New York back from the Brink.

To be fair, it wasn’t easy. Taxes didn’t drop off overnight, the West Side Highway and East River Bridges took years to rebuild, much of the city’s housing stock had to be razed, handed over to private developers, and rebuilt, and there were problems such as the Crack Epidemic, and still-esclating murder rate to deal with. The biggest difference between those problems and those of a generation earlier came in 1980. Once again, the Transport Worker’s Union went on strike just like they did 15 years earlier but instead of the Mayor lacking a backbone when dealing with the situation, Koch stood on the Manhattan end of the Brooklyn Bridge and greeted New Yorkers who braved the elements and made the walk to work. As always, he asked them one simple question.

“How’m I doing?”

For someone who did so much to alter the course of the City’s History, he did not get a fair chance to go out on his own terms. Bess Meyerson, corruption, and the annoyance of Jesse Jackson led to his losing of the 1989 Mayoral Primary to then-Manhattan Borough President David Dinkins, who went on to become the first African-American Mayor of New York. It would have been interesting to see how Koch would have handled the riots in Crown Heights or the Police Uprising at City Hall in 1993, which along with the recession of the late-80’s and early-’90’s, ended up to Dinkins’ demise after only one term.

when I was growing up, I used to read anything that I was interested in and could get my hands on. Without an internet or a car of my own, that was how I found out about the world around me and what I wanted to see once I was able to get out onto my own. Every time I’d go to the library, I’d take out a giant stack of books and hold onto them until their due date, often paying fines because I had forgotten about them or wished that I could have them for just a little while longer. One of my favorite books was Manhattan – An Island in Focus By Jake Rajs. All of the shots in there were taken from the late-70’s to the mid-80’s and with the full color, oversized pages of it, reminded me of what the city was emerging out of what it was going to become for the generations ahead. Interwoven with the pictures was a quote from none other than Koch himself:

“New Yorkers walk faster, talk faster, and think faster. You don’t have to born here to be a New Yorker. But after six months here, you’ll be walking faster, talking faster, and thinking faster. At that point, you will have become a New Yorker.”

This, coming from a man like me who was reared in the Garden State.

As I drove around the city during my shifts in the weeks after his death, I kept asking myself what was his legacy and where could I find it. One day, it hit me – the city of today *is* his legacy. All those abandoned and condemned buildings? Torn down or rebuilt, as the city has much better housing stock today than at any time in generations? Those crumbling highways and bridges? Rebuilt, heavily used, and soon to be joined by a new water tunnel, riverfront park system, and rail extensions that will serve millions every day. The city’s finances? While taxes are still high, New York hasn’t come close to being broke since the MAC was implemented over 35 years ago. Cranes dotted the sky in the 80’s and they are again today all over the city, and not just in Manhattan.

Perhaps his greatest legacy was seen by all at his service. People of every color and nearly every corner of the World went to pay their respects for him on the East Side. Many of the Mayoral Candidates were there too, and it serves as a testament to him that the possibility of another African-American, an Asian-American, or even a woman may be running the city come next January. It was once inconceivable that someone who went to CCNY could be elected to the highest position of City Government but now, a diverse set of candidates seeks to lead New York into the future.

What it all boiled down to for most was that yes, Koch was just as known for his witty nature, his stint on The People’s Court, countering his party with his staunch support of Israel’s right to exist and defend itself, and his relentless drive to clean up Albany as he was for his work as Congressman and Mayor, because it had been over 20 years since he last served elected office. Ask anyone who knew of him or met him and although he could have been a bit abrasive at times and spoke his mind, they’d all say the same thing about him:

He did well.

iPhone22 043

Blue and orange, in memoriam

by

Brooklyn’s Finest

The Oculus - Barclays Center

The Oculus – Barclays Center

“I can’t stand it.”

As I made my way down Flatbush Ave. time and time again, I asked anyone and everyone that I was taking home to Brooklyn what they thought of the building pictured above, as it was under construction. Doctors, teachers, parents, artists, office workers, waiters – nearly all of them had an opinion on it and it wasn’t good. They were afraid of the crowds, traffic, loss of character in neighborhood, and the rise in property values. With much fanfare last fall, the Barclays Center finally opened and the long-awaited redevelopment of the Long Island Railroad yards finally had some concrete results that people could see and judge for themselves. Of course, I was one of them since I attended one of Coldplay’s concerts there right before New Year’s.

I’m not a huge fan of stadiums and arenas from an economic development standpoint. As much as I love my sports teams and the facilities they play in, it’s more of an aesthetic and design standpoint that I judge them from, and not whether they can bring a neighborhood back from a decline. As any New Yorker could attest to, the centerpiece of the greater project known as Atlantic Yards was more than just an arena for an NBA team. It was supposed to be a Frank Gehry-designed sports facility with loads of housing behind it and a skyscraper that would have been dubbed “Miss Brooklyn”, since it would have been the tallest in the Borough once completed. Most of those plans were scrapped in favor of the arena that SHoP ended up designing (to rave reviews) while the housing is still in limbo. What the final appearance of the yards will be remains anyone’s guess but the site already had a story that could be seen underneath the LED lights and exterior.

For starters, there’s been a huge re-branding of the team that formerly resided in my home state. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that their primary color was chosen to be black since it’s a timeless color that doesn’t go out of style. The concourses and seats inside were this hue as well, leading me to believe that it was a done deal long before the team announced their new name and color scheme. Along with that was a huge proclamation that professional sports had returned to New York’s most populous Borough, long after the Dodgers had bolted for the West Coast half a century earlier and left Brooklyn without its own team to root for. Unfortunately, pro sports *had* returned to the Borough a few years earlier, just not at the Major League Level.

The irony of the Nets rechristening as “Brooklyn” was the tale of the Dodgers and how they left the East Coast in the first place. Nearly everyone knows that Walter O’ Malley wanted a new Stadium for his team to replace the aging Ebbets Field. Robert Moses, who controlled nearly every City and State development agency in New York in the late 1950’s had a site ready for him…but it was in Queens. O’ Malley nixed the idea, packed up everything, and the following season, the Dodgers were playing their games in Wrigley Field (no, not that one in Chicago) before Dodger Stadium opened in 1962. Two years later, the expansion Metropolitans moved into a facility on the same Queens property that Moses had envisioned for “Dem Bums” and by then, there was a whole world of excitement next door with the World’s Fair going on in Flushing Meadows Park.

What many don’t know is that none of this would have happened had O’ Malley had his way. As hated as he remains to this day, he wanted to keep the team in Brooklyn. His goal was to have a concrete, state-of-the-art Stadium built right in the heart of the Borough, on the largest undeveloped parcel that remained in Brooklyn. The team would have only moved a little over a mile away, the Dodgers would have stayed in New York, and maybe Horace Stoneham would have sought a simliar replacement for the Polo Grounds. The new field would have been built on top of the railyards just beyond the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues…

…which is precisely where the Barclays center opened 55 years later.

This isn’t a lesson on how the blackmailing of cities over sports venues can come full circle but rather, one in urban planning. Much like the MTA yards on the West Side of Manhattan, Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn represents the aspirations of a place looking to move into the future on one of the last blank slates in its cityscape. Cultural attractions, improved mass transit connections, housing, parkland, and open space are seen as the magnets that will draw the professional and affluent residents that 21st Century Cities will need in order to survive and maintain the tax base. Naturally, someone will end up being displaced and dismayed at the whole environmental and review process, which will ultimately turn out to be the residents and drivers (including yours truly) when all it said and done. Much of the traffic patterns around the new Arena were screwed up for months during the construction of it, which had to be done on time for the Jay-Z concert that marked its opening. There still isn’t anywhere good for Yellow drop-offs and pickups, although the black cars have their own space for those functions. After all, Brooklyn is an Outer Borough!

The locals who decried the monstrosity that arose over the railyards have no choice but to live with it now, and the high rises that are planned to go on the back side of it. Even if the entire project was cancelled, the wave of development that has crept over the Lower East River Bridges and settled in Downtown and Boerum Hill has already changed the appearance of the Borough forever. Rents are closer than ever to those in Manhattan and more people are commuting within Brooklyn now for work than ever before. As evidenced by the high ticket prices and cost of concessions at the Barclays Center, it’s not the only way that Manhattan has reared its ugly head in the former “Outer Borough”.

As I’ve said before, a cabdriver told me once that when he used to drive people to Brooklyn, cops would tell him where Manhattan was and how to get back there since they thought he was lost. That’s no longer the case and as more people want to call the Borough home, the onslaught of high-end apartment towers, chain stores, and cultural amenities geared towards the rich will only continue to proliferate. Even though the Barclays Center is largely clad in weathered steel designed to invoke the surrounding industrial past, there’s no doubt that the building on the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues is from the future, and a harbinger of more change yet to come.

Barclays Center from across Flatbush Ave

Barclays Center from across Flatbush Ave

by

Raise the roof light

A typical weekend cherry-picker

A typical weekend cherry-picker

“So let me ask you something…”

“Yeah?”

“What’s the deal with the roof lights? Seems like half of the Taxis are off-duty right now but it’s Saturday night.”

“Well, not this cab. I don’t play that game and any cab driver worth his salt won’t have the off-duty lights on unless he’s legitimately going on break.”

I can’t even begin to describe how many times I’ve had this conversation or something similar to this since I started driving. One of the things we went through in Taxi school how was to go off duty, which involved three steps:

1) Lock the doors

2) Put the off-duty lights on

3) Log off and go take your break for as long as need be

Want to guess how many drivers actually do this? If I had to guess, I’d say that very few actually go by the rules like we’re supposed to. One of the perks of my job is that I can take a break whenever I wish, as long as my vehicle doesn’t have any passengers in it. It’s not something I do often but when nature or hunger pangs call, no one tells me to “get back to work” or to wait until a designated break time.

The big problem with the off-duty lights as currently construed is that it is *not* linked to the computer/gps that we have to log into before the start of a shift. What that means is that drivers can be on-duty with the off-duty lights on, with the ability to abuse the pickup of passengers via cherry-picking. Among all of the changes that the yellow cab industry will be undergoing in the next few years is an overhaul of this roof light system. In an ideal world, the lights would be gone and replaced with nice, bright LED green and red bulbs. The former would be for any cab available and the latter would cover cabs that would be occupied, off-duty, mechanically disabled, and so on.

Until then, the antiquated lights remain. For anyone unfamiliar with the way cabdrivers use them now, here’s a 101 on how to read them the next time you’re in the Big Apple:

1) Center light on, off-duty lights off: Cab is empty and read to take a fare. Hail away!

2) Center light off, off-duty lights off. Cab is occupied with a passenger.

3) Center light on, off-duty lights on: Cabdriver is most likely cherry-picking. God forbid you’re going to an outer Borough or to a place that the driver doesn’t want to take you to. You’re about to get an excuse from the driver that reeks of B.S., but you the passenger will be the one shoveling it once the Taxi speeds away.

4) Center light off, off-duty lights on: Cabdriver has taken a passenger to a spot that is more than likely within Manhattan or to a spot where the driver thinks he can “flip” (find another fare after discharging the passenger) the fare quickly.

Yes, it’s illegal to ride around cruising while keeping the off-duty lights on but if TLC got a complaint every time this happened, 311 would crash almost instantly. Keep in mind that the only time we’re supposed to ride around like in Option 3 is a half hour before the end of our shift, when the Taxi is on its way back to the garage and must be there at a designated time for the shift change. Lucky New Yorkers who live in Astoria, Long Island City, or Sunnyside can always get a ride across the Queensboro Bridge at 4:30 since hordes of yellow cabs are making their way back to their respective garages before the rush does them in.

I don’t worry about the changes coming – smartphone apps, outer Borough Taxis, the Taxi of the Future, or the new rooflights. Drivers who don’t own the medallions aren’t tied down to the vehicles and we have enough outlets to vent the problems that exist in our industry. If anything, Taxis need to change with the world around them and if it has to start with the way that passengers see and hail us, so be it. I just wish that all of these improvements would have more input from the people who actually make the system run instead of those who control the strings from above.