New York Yellow Blues

Brazil

2010-03-29T02:36:00.002-04:00

It wasn't the lady crazy like a fox who finagled a free ride in Long Island City, or the fat woman who started bitching at me after a night of traffic jams whom I kindly let out in Columbus Circle to find another cab when there weren't many...but the black guys who threw a bottle at me then spat in my face because I wouldn't let them squeeze past me at a crowded light...that's the kind of week...has anyone ever spat a big gob directly in your eye?...imagine my delight...I actually wanted to kill the son of a bitch, but my passengers were nervous: "We don't want to get shot!"...so I went on...they had looked coked-up and the road-rage was out of proportion to the imagined offense: I had the right-of-way...the farther I went the worse torture I imagined for them...is there anything more insulting or filthy?...what if the asshole was H.I.V. positive?...wouldn't that be attempted murder or manslaughter at least?...I regretted that I hadn't taken out my handy little camera and gotten their picture and license plate...I regretted that I had not gotten out and beat the living shit out of him...he was a younger and bigger than me but my anger would have split his lips...I would have torn his ear off and squashed his balls...at least I threw the full water bottle back, missing the spitter-passenger but getting the thrower-driver square in the side of his crackhead...you think I'm a violent guy?...Admittedly I'm not like Jesus but turning the other cheek only works now and then...I'm for putting them on a post and whipping the shit out of their butts with a cane...yeah yeah I know...the beatings will continue until morale improves...violence doesn't work love conquers all and blah blah blah...the hell it doesn't work...it depends on who you apply it to and how and why.

Sorry to bring you down, but there's no point in writing this blog if I can't be emotionally and intellectually honest...the world is already a shitpile of lies...there are so many lies hardly anybody remembers a truth anymore...and what is the truth?...I have no bloody idea...that's the only truth I know.

They say love cures hate...maybe it could cure mine...but I don't even know if what I have is hate or plain old outrage and anger...the only love I ever knew was my grandmother's...I go around offering violence to no one, yet violence has been threatened and perpertrated against me so much in my 68 years that I know there are some evil sons-of-bitches out there and no amount of love will ever faze them...all it takes for them to go off on you is to look them in the eye or be in the same room when they don't like your looks or your voice...I saw a guy get all his front teeth knocked out without warning from a guy who just didn't like his looks...a sucker punch...it makes me wish we could all wear guns...I would shoot some of these sons-of-bitches right where they stand...I wouldn't even say draw motherfucker.

I'm remembering this asshole named Roland Manuel...he was doing 10 years in Angola prison in Louisiana for being a goon hired to break up a strike with a baseball bat...besides that he was an armed robber...I was doing two years in the Calcasieu Parish Jail for two joints and 82 tabs of Leary's orange sunshine...Roland was back in Lake Charles for a new trial or an appeal or something...he was a loudmouth braggart who had boxed some...in the pecking order of the bullpen he was the biggest shit there...so the syncophants yessed his every stupidity...I of course stayed out of it and mostly-did yoga exercises on a blanket on the terrazo floor in the corner all day until we were allowed back in our four-man cells...it was a hard-enough life but I was younger and it was just another day of having to stay as sharp as I could in order to wake up another day shorter on my sentence...I had just read Gandhi's Autobiography and was taken with his vision of non-violence...I mean I was enthused...there wasn't anybody but a couple of potheads around to discuss it with though...so I was writing a lot and doing my yoga and minding my own business...mostly they left me alone while I stretched and stood on my head and twisted myself into the postures.

Each morning they woke us and put us all in the common room of the bullpen...we all proceeded to lie down on the floor to continue our sleep until breakfast arrived through the slot in the green steel wall...I was half under a steel table when Roland aroused himself walked to the bars and started shouting uselessly for a jailer...there wasn't even one on the floor...his shouting went on and on...finally I said Jesus Christ Roland give us a break..."Why you son-of-a-bitch you!" he said, leaping across the room and attacking me with fists.

Now my training in the Marine Corps told me to rise up thru the hail of fists and butt my head on his stupid face and proceed to kick the shit out of him by getting two fingers in his mouth and tearing his cheek off...but I had been reading Gandhi...I was part of the "peace movement"...not to mention that I was raised by a pious grandma who taught me to do unto others etc...so I rolled myself into a ball protecting only my face and neck and let him beat the shit out of me...when he saw that he was not hurting me enough, he reared back and kicked me square in the tailbone.

It hurt...it showed me it would only get worse...this thug would permanently cripple me if he could.

I threw Gandhi to the dogs and got up painfully and went at him with both fists...I landed a couple and he backed off but I went after him again...I was enraged...then one of his syncophants got between us...Roland suddenly was content to let it be...he wasn't in as good shape as me and he saw I wasn't a coward...if he was a boxer all he knew was the left hook...he never gave me any trouble after that...but the tailbone is still sore at times more than 30 years later...I still think about that asshole every now and then...I still want to beat his ass...when I was in New Orleans I ran into a guy who had been in Angola with him.

"That asshole? I kicked the shit out of him in the chow line," he said to my great satisfaction.

I hope he was telling the truth but like I said about the shitpile...everywhere I turn there is somebody lying somebody threatening or somebody posing...yet with me I think everything is written on my face...every now and then I catch a look at myself in the rearview mirror and I don't look nice...don't like what I see...if I were a woman I wouldn't give me a second look...

my ragged old face a mass of seams and scars from having been dragged across poisonous living coral 45 years ago...my eyes dimmed and out of focus...no hint of a smile...all the muscle tone gone from cancer weight loss...shrunken cheeks...white hair...yet I keep on keeping on...doing it every day...dragging myself from bed at the last minute...driving a taxi all night...paying traffic fines...paying personal loans...trying to be useful to someone...trying to write and knowing I'm not making it...alone as usual...confused outraged and on the verge of tears sometimes...looking at this hopeless mess called America and just wanting to move to Hanoi to finish my book...God please just get me to August...I promise I'll never come back...just get me out of here...to some place where no one spits in your face...where is my Brazil?

The Other Thing

2010-02-26T03:03:00.001-05:00

They both were stunningly beautiful and fresh. One was black-haired like a raven and the other was a strawberry blonde with a genuine smile just for me. They slid into their seats and she asked me to take them to the Upper West Side. There was a whiff of Tabu.

I exhaled. My eyes were lit up. I felt slightly crazy and lightheaded from it.

“Where are you from?” I asked the blonde.

“Switzerland!” she beamed at me in the mirror.

“Ai yi yii!” I exclaimed, rubbing my hands together and laughing. “Switzerland! O my God…”

I told her I would drive her to Switzerland by way of Alaska if she would pay for gas.

She laughed at my raw admiration and honest desire. She was delighted. She said something in Swiss to the other and they laughed and she settled back in the seat and smiled at my reflection in the mirror, as I steadily made my way up Eighth Avenue, slipping in and out of the iron streams of cars and weaving gently past the others until I held the lead with the lights. I felt her watching my face and kept my eyes on the problems of driving.

I must have sighed. There is something about European women that American women just don’t have for me.

We had pleasant conversation about her lovely country. Did she like New York? Oh yes she loved New York. They both loved New York. They had a place here. New York was a wonderful place. And Switzerland was also a wonderful place, and they were happy to live there but they loved New York very much.

I told her I knew a Swedish woman once who was the most-remarkable woman I had ever met. She was appreciative and I saw that she understood more than I had said. It might have been my tone as I described a woman who spoke five languages with fluency and the other things about her. I was brief but thorough.

I couldn’t see the other who was directly behind me and she didn’t say anything to me or in English to the other. I tried not to look at her too often but each time I did she was looking back at me frankly in the mirror, her eyes wide interested friendly and smiling. She was about 30 I think. The other was younger.

They give you their full attention, that’s what it is. They are really there, these European women. They aren’t somewhere else when talking with me. They treat me with respect and no condescension without giving up an inch of their freedom status or femininity. There isn’t a hint of competition, patronizing, challenge, domination, subjugation, inequality, fear, or age-ism. They seem to have nothing to prove, nothing to fear, nothing to hide, and no one to confront; but they will take you on intellectually, with equality, confidence, and generosity in argument. I never met one who wanted to cut off my balls but I knew one who meant to teach me a lesson and did.

Every one I have met has been something else again. They share and they are interested in what I have to share. There seems to be no class-ism or class-consciousness among them, and that is the most-remarkable thing besides their great looks, which they know they have but handle casually; and they must have other things too that keep them alert, smiling, confident, and healthy. Like money education security and the other thing.

I talk to them about books of authors from their countries which I have read. I tell them what I have read and sometimes they have read the same thing and sometimes they are surprised that I had read that. I tell them I know nothing of modern authors from their countries and sometimes they tell me names of present ones, but usually I am driving and forget to write them down.

The rides never last long-enough.

I let them off on West 60th and she tipped me well and smiled. I could have kissed her face it was so close in the window when she paid, and I would have if I could have. Then she and the other laughed gaily and ran across the street to their building.

They looked in love and held hands as they ran lightly like otherworldly creatures from some rare and exquisite place. Their laughter was melodic like their speech, almost a song. It was all very fine. Everything had been fine. The ride was perfect except that it was over and she was gone but it had been fine.

I drove all night in the rain that came later and couldn’t get her out of my mind. Then after I turned in the cab and drove my own car home in the rain the others started coming back from the closed-up place, where I keep them so I can’t think about them too much or about the other things.

Mapless in Blue Eyes

2010-02-25T14:00:00.004-05:00

notebook madness...too many of 'em...if I had every notebook I ever kept...you too eh?...this small one has the melding of banalities and bizarre-ness of a night's work hacking the streets of New York...the man who ran off on a $7.90 fare... my momentary outrage and oh well...then the nasty English chap from a bar in Williamsburg...who gave me the finger because I didn't know the way to where he was going..."But you're a cab driver," he'd insisted, incredulously, when I told him I couldn't figure a way there from here, and if he didn't know the way, we were out of luck...of course this isn't true...I have a map...but I didn't feel like resorting to it with this arrogant prick...I didn't like his looks that's all...the whole stiff upper lip bit and he didn't do it well...I could see him directing a firing squad in South Africa...he insists that I must know the way..."It's off Metropolitan Avenue" he says apparently not-knowing we are on Metropolitan Avenue...I tell him I don't know where Metropolitan Avenue is...he is outraged...but he doesn't know where it is either obviously...the sign is right in front of him...I tell him "Yeah well I didn't ride around New York on a bike with a map for a year like they do in London. I been here 50 years off and on and I don't know every street."..."But you're a cab driver!"...I am thinking oh...kay...mother...fucker...I have to pause my thoughts because I am thinking of doing something mean to him thru the partition window...of doing something unforgivable to him...to give him a taxi story for the boys back in the pub ...he can't believe he has captured a taxi driver on the taxi-starved corner and he won't do what he demands...finally he gets out stands on the sidewalk and gives me the finger...I tell him across a lane of traffic that I would have found it on the map if he hadn't had such an attitude...thus the finger...I laugh at him and hit the BQE for the Williamsburg Bridge...my thoughts like old cars on a wet freeway...switching lanes moving thru invisible synapses and blinded by oilslicked wipers of logic...sliding confused from the absurd to the inane at the corner of profound and divine...through the underpass past the squalid dark garbage bins steel and green...overstuffed iron boxes on wheels waiting under impassive gaze of vacant human-less windows seemingly etched into the concrete monoliths of steel and glass...every window an eye...garbage-trucked on 37th St...bus-bullied on Sixth Avenue...suffering superior evil glances of lazy mean cops in Times Square...all I can do not to give that smart-aleck there the finger...

I will tell you a story about him...after I told him the truth about the ticket he'd said open yr trunk we'll see if you have a fire extinguisher...I nearly laughed in his face...I opened the trunk...see he said, no fire extinguisher...imagine that I said, folding my arms...an equipment violation I explained, goes to the fleet owner...I have nothing to do with it...he let it drop and told me to get on...entrapment plus harrassment of a citizen...I record it in my memory for the Tribunals someday...I hope to testify at the trials...I have a list of crimes and misdemeanors longer than Route 80...the city installs a no left turn sign at 46th and Seventh Avenue where I've been turning for 50 years...it's the last eastbound street to bypass Grand Central...is there a cop directing my attention to the new sign?...no...it's beneath the exalted dignity of a heroic New York cop to stand in an intersection with a whistle in his mouth...it's too sensible!...it worked for decades but we're progressive now...four rookies under his command lurk around the corner with flashlights waiting for the unlucky sucker who never thought to look for a sign where he has been turning for 50 years...130 bucks...I made the same mistake again a week later and got another one...yes I know maybe I'm too old to be driving a cab...don't think the thought hasn't surfaced...on the other hand these cops are nothing but tax collectors for Mayor Mike Bloomberg...they don't direct traffic...they obstruct traffic so they can give tickets...oh yes they do...check out the traffic jams and you will find a cop car up at the head of it...five will get you ten...the bastards!...I know...it doesn't bug you at all...well I don't really give a damn either...it really makes no difference to me...I just mention it is all...nothing I can do about it...I'm not superman...I just get up like a zombie everyday and put one foot in front of another until I fall back into bed some indeterminate time later...after having sent in another hundred bucks or so to the City Entrapment Bureau...or to a lawyer...somebody has to keep them in potato chips...even if they are a bunch of hired goons...everybody's got to eat...that's how I see it...the Universe is eating itself...every single thing in it is eating some other thing somehow...we chew swallow and shit our way through life and then the planet eats us...no matter how many preservatives or bullet-proofed tombs...the earth will devour us...it's a done deal...Manhattan won't out-last the pyramids...they built things better back then.

A guy in the back with nothing else to do asks me: "If you could be anybody other than who you are, who would you be?"

"God."

It cracks him up...he cackles..."Why?"...I look at him in the mirror...if I were God I could make him vanish...I want to disappear him...I want to disappear the whole scene sometimes...but I can't do that of course...I'm not a magician or a serious revolutionary...I tell him so that I could have instant gratification...he doesn't understand...I let it go and get him out at 14th and Ninth Avenue, where he is headed to a trendy new bar...where do they get all this money? how can I get some of it?...I am thinking about it when this Chinese bitch and I mean bitch gets in...she orders me about like I am her house servant in the Forbidden City...she is imperial...about 40 I guess and pretty but hard...in less than a minute she has me chained to the floor of the cab and is threatening to whip my back with a tapir tail...she orders me here and there...go left!...go right! stop at the light! watch out for the car!...I endure this...I ask where we are going and she says never mind..."I'll show you!"...I go along with it...I meekly submit...I nearly cringe...I am wondering how to properly kowtow in case it comes to that...she takes me away from the congestion on Essex Street into a dank street in Chinatown I never saw before...it is like an alley...not many alleys left in New York...it is full of garbage cans...I see a rat out in the cold scaring up a late snack...she abuses me some more...I wait patiently...finally I say listen lady I am not your slave...she has a fit...she misunderstands..."what?!...I not a slave! I been in this country four years! Never speak to me like that! You hear me? Never! Never speak to me like that!"...She goes on with the never-never routine for a few more sentences...I say please pay the $9.50 fare...she takes money from her purse but holds onto it..."Never speak to me like that! You understand?"...she holds out the bills...I reach for it...she pulls it away..."First you must understand"...she repeats it...I wait in silence..."Never speak to me like that!"...I say please pay the fare...she hands me the money...I grab it as she tries to take it back again...now I have it!..."Now get out of my cab you crazy bitch!" I say...I don't like to say that word it is like saying nigger but my control is slipping..."Aha! Now you have money! You are very brave!"...for a servant...I say get out of my cab...she doesn't move...she asks "You want to call the police?"...gladly I say, taking out my cellphone and stepping from the taxi...I will call the police...I am breathing hard and tense now...I hate to involve the cops...she gets out and yells something at me as I get back in and drive away...I suddenly realize she is drunk and maybe high on coke and maybe an addicted prostitute getting older and just hanging on...I feel sudden shame...ah Mike you and yer big f-ing mouth...give yer ego a rest will you?...you are a slave and you know it...and so is she...that's why she went on like that...maybe she knows it too...nobody likes to be reminded.

That's how it goes some nights.

Then you're headed back to Queens empty and you pick up this quiet classy young dame on Fifth Avenue in the rain...she is quiet and you didn't even see her face...it's a long ride downtown...take the FDR? yes...no traffic now...down Fifth and left on 42nd for the highway...WBAI playing Tracy Chapman..."We are the witness to the rape of the world"...I feel relaxed with her and no need to talk...the rain stops the clouds move and a low white moon shines on the roiling river as the tide comes in..."Pretty," I say. "Yes"...we are in perfect synch..."How long have you been driving a cab," she asks my wasted old face...I laugh..."Since 1873, ma'am, soon after the civil war"...she laughs...are you in the market? I ask...she says yes...I ask is it getting better? she says yes, for some...I am liking her more and more..."How about you?" she asks me...I tell her it has never been worse and I am moving to Thailand...I tell her why and she says that's a good plan...so you don't think it's going to get any better, she asks politely...I tell her no...the ship is going to the bottom...it's full of holes and the bilge pumps are breaking...the Captain's a madman and the crew is homicidal...the steering gear is broken and the gyroscope is frozen...it's blowing a perfect storm and they're panicking on the Bridge...she laughs at my description as I pull up to her big lighted building where I suppose she is working a well-paid night shift...she pays and tips well and flashes a genuine smile... with dazzling blue eyes between damp blonde locks beneath a black wool hat...another one I'll never know...separated by class sex age and money...wearily I go through the hour-plus stuff I have to do to get home to Eric the Cat.

A Night in the Life

2010-02-23T03:35:00.000-05:00

The following photos are scenes I see from one or another angle nearly every night while driving a taxi in NYC; in no special order. Tuesdays end in a laundromat because Wednesday is my day off, my only day to do laundry.

Click once for close-ups.

I have nothing to say. I'm considering merging this blog with my other: Orogenesis; mikehavenar.blogspot.com. Driving a taxi six nights a week blanks me out, and often I'm too tired to write.

The Ho Rule

2010-01-04T06:54:00.000-05:00

I knew it would happen sooner or later, that a driver would approach me with union talk.

"We should have a union," he declares on meeting me. "Don't you think taxi drivers should have a union? Have you ever thought about a union for taxi drivers?"

This is me he is asking. I nearly laugh out loud. He has no idea what he has started. We are standing in a crowded, very crowded, shape-up room of the taxi fleet I drive for, a space of less than 100 square feet. Men are standing asshole to elbow waiting hopefully or with great anxiety or resignation for the dubious blessing of a taxi for the night. At least 25 men inside and another 10 outside are waiting. Obviously, there are more drivers than cars. Taxis are arriving from the day shift and leaving with the night shift with monotonous regularity, but the crowd is hardly diminished. Men are arriving all the time.

I have seen this scene before; plenty of times before. It has been like this since I started driving back in the early seventies, and, when economic times are hard, the numbers increase as people lose their regular jobs.

The irony is that he comes on to me with this talk in the very same garage, where a Peruvian man and I tried to stir up union action by inciting men to think and talk about the situation and their condition. We failed of course. That was 21 years ago. I had almost forgotten it, until I snapped to the fact that this had been my last garage before I quit the taxi business, I thought then, for good. I didn't even recognize the place when it hired me. New name, new ownership probably; same facilities.

I make a "shhhh" motion with my lips and a finger at the mention of "union."

"Don't let these guys hear you say that word."

"Why not man? Don't you agree that we need a union? Why not talk about it?"

"Because they will fire your ass, and there is no union to protect you now."

He looks at me like I am a strange one. How else are you going to make a union if you don't talk about it, he means. It seems so simple to him.

"In the first place, you don't know what or who you are up against. You think it is the fleet, but it's a lot more than that. The fleet isn't your real enemy. And if you're serious about making a union, you have to be quiet about it until you understand the implications of what you are doing. And if you mean a union, you have to mean guys who will fight with their fists if necessary, because a union that won't fight for real is a phony union, okay? We had one of those already."

He asks me do I know about a taxi drivers union. I say yeah I know quite a bit about the taxi drivers union that is no more, because the sons-of-bitches sold us out and walked off with our benefits, and that is why you are paying exorbitant rent on a cab that is busting your balls.

He seems to realize that I'm as serious as the heart-attack I'm expecting any day now.

I see he thinks that by getting drivers to talk about union, one will magically form. I am prepared to tell him the facts of life regarding this, I explain, because I have been through it twice; but we have to meet on a day off, because it will take a long time to explain. I tell him if he is serious about a union, he can prove it by being quiet about it until he understands the Ho Rule.

I share with him one of the most-profound things I know about making a taxi drivers union. I don’t even start to tell it all. I don't like people stealing my ideas and screwing them up. It's only an appetizer and not the main course. He seems interested. Of course there's nothing wrong with chewing it over in private, providing he is serious and not just blowing his horn. It's ironic that it happened here of all places, between the same rock and the same hard place.

It’s a different business now; but still the same. And I’m different too; but still the same. I've been thinking about this problem since 1974.

I see it with new eyes.

The Bloomberg Bottleneck

2009-12-31T14:53:00.000-05:00

These new cabs have great radios, the fancy metering system is a marvel of the ages, and the cars handle like cow ponies, but driving a cab in New York City is still a damned hard job.

The taxi business has changed, to say the least, since I started driving for Chase Maintenance Corp. on West 47th Street about 1974. Those were the days when the garage paid 43% of the meter to the new driver for a probationary six months, then raised it to 49% for the driver and 51% for the fleet.

And, besides maintenance and tow-service, fleets paid for the gas and oil too.

Sometime around then, the Taxi Drivers Union, degenerated and corrupted from its original organization by mostly-European Jews, who had brought wise union practices to New York, sold the drivers out for a 10-cent "surcharge" on every fare that went directly into the union's private pockets. By the time this happened, most of the older Jewish guys had retired or sold their medallions and lost interest in the union. The new owners didn't like unions of course.

"They sold us out for a dime," old cab drivers told me then.

Without knowing their names or faces, we all were cynically and realistically convinced that the Union, the TLC, and the fleets were owned and operated by some sort of mafia. I won't mention any ethnic group. They almost all have a "mafia."

I've forgotten what the "drop" on the meter was then, but it wasn't anything like the $2.50 fare-start of today (plus night surcharge.) Many taxis had "hot seats" that made it impossible to take a fare "off the meter." But they were easily disabled and often were. Cab drivers all over the city resorted to it now and then. It didn't take long for the bean-counters and dispatchers, often former taxi drivers, to figure out who was cheating too much, and to get rid of him in one way or another. They would give him brokendown cabs, or not send him out at all, or fire him outright.

Back then we made fewer dollars, but the dollars were worth more. I supported a wife and baby with it, and had enough left over for concerts and other perks of our day. Then it all changed.

Once the union had sold us out, the fleets went back to "horse-hiring." The term comes from the time when taxis, or "hacks" were pulled by horses, that were often-driven, like today, by the immigrants-of-the-day. Horse-hiring was what the union had done away with by strikes that paralyzed the city.

Taxi driving always was and still is an entry-level position into our society. A Polynesian doctor might need more classes to qualify for a stethoscope, but he can still drive a car. All sorts of people drive cabs. But it's not for everyone.

Horse-hiring means the driver rents the cab by the day or night. The fees go up or down according to the day of the week. Friday and Saturday are busier days, and Monday and Tuesday slower ones. A driver might pay $129 for Saturday and $115 for Monday. Plus gas.

Now the driver pays for the gas but not the oil. Fortunately, this powerful taxi I'm driving is surprisingly economical with gas. Still, $25 to $40 a night is part of a big nut to crack before the driver makes much money. Remember that a driver has to make the next night's rent and gas before he profits a dime.

In 1974, I paid about $30 to the Taxi & Limousene Commission after obtaining a chauffer's license from the State of New York, was handed a picture ID, walked up 11th Avenue to 47th Street, and took a taxi out the next night.

This time, I paid more than $600 all-told for a hack license that took 3.5 months to arrive in the mail. I won't go into the labyrinthine regulations or the suffocating schools or the legal tightropes over the lakes of fire that I had to negotiate to perform this near-miracle.

The first thing I noticed when I finally got behind the wheel and hit the streets was that there are a lot more taxis. Apparently, in my absence and without consulting me at all, the City issued about 5,000 more taxi medallions. Somebody must have made a bundle of money; but the result for the cab drivers is that the job is harder; much harder. The competition for riders is brutal.

Fares are higher; much higher. But riders are fewer. When rides were more-affordable, more people rode. A fifty-ride night was common. In the two weeks I've driven, I haven't had more than 30 rides per night. But like I said, the fares are higher, and the competition for them is greater. It gives with one hand and takes away with the other.

In the seventies and eighties, we had to fill out "trip tickets" with a pen: pickup point/destination/number of passengers/total fare. "72-M" meant 72nd Street and Madison Avenue; and so on. It was simple but time-consuming. The new metering system dispenses with that.

GPS records are stored in an office computer, and the whole fee-collection process, including credit/debit cards, is performed correctly and speedily with receipts all around, providing that a driver pushes the right buttons at the right time. So it is simpler, better, and more-honest, I suppose, because now drivers, riders, and owners have accurate records of who did what and who paid what whenever. It all holds up in court, and the courts are many. But more about that in a later blog.

I'll end this first blog with this, because I have to get it out of my system:

Somebody whose name I suspect is Mike Bloomberg has messed up the traffic flow in this great old city really badly. I don't know who's idea it was to put a damned mall in the middle of Broadway at Times Square, but I think we should bring the guilty bastard in, give him a fair trial, and hang him from a flagpole at the UN.

Broadway was at least a thousand years old when the Europeans began to foul this region, and since so many Indian feet and toboggans had already created it--because it was the easiest walk to the end of the island, the Europeans decided to keep it. For about 300 years now it has been the longest street in Manhattan. It is the spine of the commercial district that stretches from one end of the island to the other. The broken spine.

It was the easiest and often the fastest way downtown, especially at night. No more. Broadway traffic is now diverted onto Seventh Avenue, already clogged with cars bound for Penn Station at 33rd Street. If one gets onto Broadway from crosstown streets below 42nd Street, one must then leave Broadway at 36th Street, because Broadway has been blocked yet-again before Herald Square. Dog-leg left, turn right, stay left, and so on, and finally Broadway resumes below 23rd Street. Blessed relief.

And here's another one: ever since Penn Station was built, 33rd Street has always been the fast way to get there from the East Side. Sure you got stopped by traffic sometimes, but most of the time you could zip over from First Avenue and get your passengers to the train on time. No more.

Because, I'm told, there were head-on collisions at 33rd Street and Park Avenue, where the speed tunnel emerges from uptown, a concrete barricade has been built to block 33rd Street traffic. I had to learn this the hard way of course, by assuring my fare that this was the fastest way to go.

Then 33rd Street is blocked again at Sixth Avenue, by humongous concrete planters; another walking mall.

I want to ask the Mayor or whoever was responsible for this assinine change, have you ever heard of speed bumps? Railroad gates? Did you really have to block the whole damned street? Can't you handle the streets like your saner forebears?

There were more women taxi drivers then too. I've only seen one in two weeks.

I began this blog because so many of my customers have asked me about the taxi business. Probably because I'm old and they think I know. I know a little, and have opinions. I could go on and on and probably will again.