In Vex

Gaddafi made this 'his' nation's flag back in '77. It has since been the world's only national flag composed of only one color and no insignia.

A transitional council was formed earlier this year, in wake of civil war, adopting this flag, which was previously used in Libyan history. It might not be widely accepted as the official current flag, but that's the downside of vexillology, no? Sadly it is the study of how everyone is divided.

Malawi's on nearly the opposite side of the African continent from Libya, with seemingly nothing in common, except that now their flags have identical colors, though distributed differently, and each flag boasts one of two heavenly bodies most influential upon our planet.

Holly Morris, the best presenter on adventure travel show 'Globe Trekker', was exploring neighboring Zambia on public television today. I love her 'pro-woman' approach to everything, the fact that she's down with hitch-hiking, and that one of her guests on that episode (or hosts rather) was a female mining truck operator. This on the same day many Saudi women call for nationwide action against it being illegal for non-males to obtain a driver license.

This drunk Texan motorist, who drove his Ford Grand Marquis into a batch of cyclists during a race in Mexico back in '08, was indeed a man. Though I guess this is not relevant, since the reason Saudi officials refuse to allow women to drive is mostly to keep them from leading independent lives. Then again, what do I know? At least intoxication was behind this guy's horrible act. The guy in the next picture did a similar thing, but with a lot more damage. His move was intentional and entirely sober.

Ricardo Neis got tired of waiting in his car while a monthly critical mass ride of bicyclists made their way through the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre a couple of months ago. Watch what he did about it. There's a lot of hate directed at bikes everywhere, every day, but this one tops them all. Be safe out there people. And may Libyans get a rest from the bloodshed and destruction around them. And may Saudi women be granted the right to drive. And may bicycles gain the respect they've always deserved.

Yellow Scapegoats

Reposted from the NY Taxi Workers Alliance Website: NYTWA's Response to Proposed Suspensions for 2 Refusals in 2 Years:

For Immediate Release: February 24, 2011 Statement by Bhairavi Desai, Executive Director, New York Taxi Workers Alliance, union of 15,000 yellow cab drivers ”First of all, let's understand the numbers: 2,341 out of 750,000 fares a year is 0.003%. Secondly, these are complaints - not convictions. Refusals are an economic problem that need an economic solution, the TLC's proposal just scapegoats and punishes drivers instead. In the end, it tells us that the city is not actually serious about solving the issue for the sake of the rider and of course, never for the sake of the driver. And really, if the city can make more money off of more refusals and there are record-high number of license holders to fill the ranks of suspended drivers - why would they really try to address it? The easy road is to scapegoat, punish and give the public a false satisfaction. Telling taxi drivers who labor 12-hour shifts, 6 to 7 days a week, without guaranteed income, benefits or protection, that they'll be out of work for 30 days if they refuse a fare a year for two years is adding insult to injury. Of course, this is on top of the Mayor's plan to give away our fares in the outer boroughs to a new second tier taxi and bringing us more competition in Manhattan and the airports. The real solution is to address the real economics of the industry - lower the lease, change the fares.”

Geography Nerds Not Dead

What do Uzbekistan and Liechtenstein have in common? They are the only two "doubly landlocked" countries in the world. What do Bolivia and Tibet have in common? Well, they do seem to be kindred spirits of some sort. However, I'm aiming at a more remote answer. Both once had a coastline. One lost it to Chile in the late 1800s and the other was its own empire in the 9th century, currently under occupation.

China Truck Bike

Been in L.A. for a month. Bonding with paternal relatives. Learned how to fix a few things at the Bicycle Kitchen off Melrose. Great crew there. Community atmosphere. Replaced the brakes on my purple mountain bike and the seat post on dad's white beach cruiser. Even brought in my rusty old "China Truck Bike" that I salvaged from under a tree in Florida and hauled across the continent. That is my favorite bicycle in the whole wide world. I bought it like 10 years ago for ten bucks at a yard sale and when I moved to New York five years ago, I left it in the hands of my bike-loving network of friends, who promised to keep it in communal circulation and working order.

I've been back to visit thrice and twice I've found its tires flat and its frame decaying in the Floridian elements. It's since been restored to its original might, without compromising its old, beat up, commie aesthetic.

I have other little tales to tell of this visit to L.A. and of our way here. I hope to let them out in smaller chunks and therefore more often. Like once a day. That's after I've caught up on a backlog of updates from eastern Europe in September. I've come as far as Budapest. Next is Belgrade. Then Bucharest and onward.

From Gene to Sully

My favorite taxi blogger in New York has written about his recent interview with the Village Voice. He has an important point, which they ironically chose to edit out. In his own words:

"It's that these things are dangerous. How so? They are distracting and irritating to the driver. As if driving a cab in the streets of New York City wasn't distracting and irritating enough without them!

The analogy I make to passengers in my cab when this subject comes up, and it comes up often, is how would you like it if, when you were flying in an airplane, there was a television nine inches behind the head of your pilot, the volume of which was under the control of the passengers? For that matter, how would you like it if this thing was nine inches behind the head of your bus driver? Well, guess what, statistically riding in a taxi is more dangerous than riding in either a plane or a bus.

The main justification for the existence of the city agency known as the Taxi and Limousine Commission is to ensure the safety of the passengers. That is priority number one. So to add an unnecessary and unwanted element into the environment of the taxicab which is distracting and irritating to the driver is utterly contrary to its mandate.

And it needs to be changed.

Thanks Eugene for pointing that out. Thought I'd help you spread the word. By the way, what attracts me to this post the most is that I have always regarded our profession, in a city like ours, to be akin to aviation. It's the same feeling I got from Captain Sully, the airline pilot who landed in the Hudson River, when he expressed that if pilots don't earn competitive wages, the industry will eventually lose the best and safest of them to lesser experienced ones. Same goes for taxi drivers in New York. We have as many reflexes as they have controls in their cockpit.

photo above thanks to zimbio.com

Euro Part V: Budapest

On September 2nd at 7 a.m. I boarded a bus and traveled southeast for three hours, from one Danube capital of 1.7 million to another. Goodbye Wien (Vienna). Hello Budapest.

Hungarians have a very different name for their country than we do. Their language and history is quite different than that of most their neighbors. But they are no less human in their hospitality. In fact, as in my case, they can be more so.

It had all begun 900 miles beforehand. I had been in London for three days and was crouched in a squat position on the sidewalk, awaiting a shuttle bus to Luton Airport. Three Hungarians approached, stood beside me waiting, and we eventually exchanged a few friendly words. Two of them were college sweethearts, on their way home from visiting one's older sister, who'd become a Londoner. I was flying to southern Poland to trace some roots and make my way down to Istanbul by land. We were chitchatting the whole ride to the airport and I was invited to call them when I got to Budapest.

Fast forward a week. On the bus ride from Austria to Hungary I made friends with yet another Magyar. Andras was coming home after not having seen his family for two years, since he had gone to study and work in France. He happened to be headed to the same part of town as I. He had 3.5 enormous suitcases under the bus and no idea how he'd handle them alone. Meanwhile, I had no idea how to utilize the local mass transit and for the first time I could not rely on just maps and asking people because for the first time I was in a place where my trilingual connection to three distinct cosmopolitan language families rendered itself useless. You can guess the symbiosis that came next. He went the extra mile though, and took it upon himself to call the young Hungarian couple I'd met in London to arrange for us all to meet at a mutually convenient landmark. I got a kick out of standing there, utterly dumbfounded, while they shot back and forth in ultra-rapid Ugric. I call that a savings account withdrawal of the karmic kind.

Tibor and Brigi met up with Andras and I on their college campus. They took me around to see their city by foot, trolley, and car. Buda first, then Pest. The three of us chipped in to help a stranded Croat get home, but we also smelled something fishy. In the evening we had an authentic local meal and walked it off through a shopping mall. One particular store used a blown-up photograph of a classic NY street scene with a yellow cab and a patty wagon to attract people (among the pictures below).

My new friends saw me off at 11 pm. I caught a southbound, overnight train to Beograd, the Serbian capital, also on the Danube, and also 1.7 million strong. I had to share the odorous little unit with a slew of obnoxiously drunk Slovak college kids on their way to an Albanian vacation. Serbia was not originally on my plan, but I had met two brothers from the town of Pancevo who had couch-surfed with the same host as I, at the same time, in Barcelona the previous month. They had urged me to make the slight detour on my path from Hungary to Romania. It was a hard offer to resist. Why not add a country? It just so happens to be the least expensive one, in the least expensive quadrant of Europe. More on that later.

IN MY CITY

Always lots to see and do here. some of my favorite things include a 9,335 sq. ft. architectural model of NYC containing every single building constructed before 1992 in all 5 boroughs; a total of 895,000 individual structures. at the Queens Museum of Art in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Open Wednesday - Sunday: 12 - 6pm. It's always PAY-AS-YOU-WISH!

And the best eatery ever is:

CURRY LEAVES MALAYSIAN RESTAURANT.

135-31 40th Road Flushing, NY (end of 7 train).

Best Meal: CURRY MEE WITH VEGETABLES ($5).

Open daily 6:30 am until 11:00 pm

THROMBOCYTE COLLECTION

Although this picture is of a blood bank elsewhere, we thought you'd like to know... that the PLATELETS you donated on December 3, 2010 were sent to the following hospital(s):

New York University Hospitals Center	New York	New York
Kings County Hospital Center	Brooklyn	New York

On behalf of the cancer patient, accident victim or other person with a blood clotting problem whom you may have helped, THANK YOU.

AND PLEASE CONSIDER COMING OUT TO THE BROOKLYN BLOOD CENTER WITH YOUR FRIEND GIL ONE OF THESE DAYS.

TOGETHER YOU CAN TURN IT INTO SOMETHING FUN. PERHAPS A ROUND ROBIN READING OF A BOOK YOU BOTH LIKE. EVEN JUST KICKING IT WITH THE LOVELY EMPLOYEES THERE MAKES IT WORTHWHILE.

Or you can just lay there and pretend you've been hospitalized. 100 or so minutes later you can get up and leave as if nothing happened. That's called elevating your consciousness through forced, self-imposed appreciation for the simple things in life. Like health.

AUDITORY BOMBARDMENT

As if the Taxi Entertainment Network hadn't already destroyed the sound mental fabric of taxi drivers in New York, some gas stations, such as the one next to my garage, also come equipped with TV screens, blaring the same advertisements at us, over and over and over, all day, every single day.

The one song that comes on almost immediately, each time I engage the taxi meter is the one shown in the video below. It might be a cute song to hear once, but I'm sure if you play this song next to any NYC cabbie's ear while they're at home asleep, or undergoing hypnosis, beware. Make a run for it while you can. You don't want to hear them screaming at the top of their lungs. Imagine, every time a new passenger steps in, which happens between 25 and 40 times in a 12 hour period. And sometimes, if the fare is longer than say, 10 minutes, this song will come on again during the same job. Most of us (hacks) drive in an urban human beehive at least 60 hours a week. That can't be good for our mental health. Add the perpetual repetition of the same ads, jingles, tunes, dialogues, sound effects, etc. No ill feelings toward Vampire Weekend or Tommy Hilfiger, but honestly, I don't get to see a cut from the benefits you're reaping at my expense.

WARNING: THESE VIDEOS ARE MEANT TO REPLICATE COLLECTIVE NAUSEA. JUST IMAGINE HEARING THESE ADS AND THEIR SONGS RIGHT BEHIND THE BACK OF YOUR HEAD, OVER AND OVER, 12 HOURS A DAY, AND AGAIN AT END WHEN YOU GAS UP. THAT IS A NEW YORK CABBIE'S LIFE! THESE VIDEOS ARE NOT DISPLAYED HERE FOR THE PURPOSE OF ENLIGHTENMENT, ENTERTAINMENT, OR MARKETING.

The car commercial is yet another intrusive ad. This one takes the award for most ridiculous on GSTV (Gas Station TV). How can you say that you'll help save the planet, but only if people start buying more motor vehicles? "....starting today, when you buy a Chevrolet....". Not even one of their ecological-minded Chevrolets. Just, any Chevrolet. Don't spit on me and then tell me it's raining, Chevrolet. You run deep alright. Deep into the point of no return. They will plant a tree to help remedy the shit you put in the air with their car, but only if you buy another one or two of their cars. Please don't tell me we have become so mindless that this ad sounds heartfelt and intelligent to us. But who am I to speak? I burn fossil fuels for a living. I can't cast the first stone.

LAUGHING ON DUTY

A few things made me laugh today. A billboard seen from Twelfth Avenue, of an ad for storage units, but in reference to non-bipartisanship. Also, a sign on the back of a delivery truck, common to trucks, but instead of the usual wording, this one had a play on words....

zucchini squash
<------ ------->

In the span of a day shift in the yellow cab there are many things make me smile, if not burst out in laughter. Some are more profound than others. Wish I could share them all with you. Especially the more profound ones. These are quite dull, I know. But what isn't dull when measured up to current calamities, like massive flooding in Bogota, Colombia. Or tensions between the two Koreas?

Winona as L.A. Cabbie

Speaking of films about taxi drivers, here is one I sort of, more or less, recommend. Night on Earth is a movie set in 5 different cities around the world. Each scene is based around one eccentric cabdriver and their even more eccentric passengers. My favorite one is Los Angeles, in which Winona Ryder plays the role of a half jaded, half wide-eyed hack who dreams of becoming a mechanic. There are certain aspects of her character I can certainly relate to. Mostly just the awkward occupational reality of being on both an exciting adventure as well as an endless cycle: 10 to 20 minute slices of the pathetic lives of strangers.

Palestinian Spotlight

This past weekend a movie theater in Bay Ridge hosted a little film festival featuring some brand new material from the troubled land of, well, what should I call it? I prefer one of its more ancient, lesser used names, in order not to aggravate anyone. You know, I'm talking about the precious swath of land between the Dead and Mediterranean Seas. Between the northernmost reaches of the Red Sea and the southernmost reaches of Lebanon. How about we call it Canaan for now?

Well, anyhow, this post is about the one film I had the pleasure of seeing. It's called Laila's Birthday and it's about a character I can very much identify with, as he goes through one long day of absurdities and tribulations as an overqualified taxi driver in Ramallah. I think most taxi drivers anywhere in the world can empathize with his frustrations, regardless of whether they live in an occupied territory or not. I definitely can, as a NYC cabbie. It's the privilege of life without having to bend over backwards for some basic dignity that is occupied, not necessarily the land, in and of itself, per se.

After the film I got to meet Mohammad Bakri in person, a renowned Israeli Arab actor and director who traveled all the way to Brooklyn just to answer questions from the audience after his movies' screenings. What an honest, gentle, and perpetually optimistic man, despite all of the uncomfortable experiences in his own life. It was an honor for me to shake his hand.

Unfortunately, he's currently being blacklisted, banned, and sued for an older documentary he made about the Jenin invasion. It's too bad not many people showed up to Palestinian Spotlight. I think its location on the very edge of Brooklyn, so far from Manhattan, might have played a role. This is its first year. I happened to stumble across it by way of wheat-pasted posters on a wall in Boerum Hill.

Here are a couple other, more profound depictions of the film, Laila's Birthday:

http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/movies/27lail.html

http://www.linktv.org/programs/cinemondo-lailas-birthday

OVERHEARD IN BOERUM HILL

A COP ORDERING AT A HALAL FOOD TRUCK ON FOURTH AVENUE SAID (IN A THICK NY ACCENT): ".... and, um, the white sauce, everywhere, all over the place, don't miss a spot." (THAT IS FOR ME A NEW YORK MOMENT)

photo credit: http://www.mightysweet.com/mesohungry/tag/street-meat/

Modern Khazaria

I've been intensely reading this book called "The Thirteenth Tribe" by Arthur Koestler. It's about the history of Eurasia since medieval times, in regards to the emergence and geographical movement of Jews, or at least people who consider themselves as such, and everyone else who came into contact with them. The book is an anthropological gold mine. It adds a lesser known dimension to all the theories concerning our ethnic origins.

Then again, there is the simple fact that human beings are 99.9% genetically identical and .1% diverse. So what's all the fuss about the .1%? Well, in my opinion, our external differences really don't matter, and I'd even dare to call myself an avid xenophile. But as a Jew, or at least someone raised secularly, yet informed their entire lives both by maternal and paternal relatives that they are in fact a Jew, I find it necessary to ask, "how so?" No doubt I feel Jewish and most would say I "look Jewish." Still the question remains. Where did my ancestors live throughout the centuries and with whom did they commingle?

All I know is that my dad's side is entirely Romanian, as far back as we can trace, and my mom's side is a mix of Polish and Ukranian, with the exception of my mom's mom's mom. She's a Colombian hybrid of mostly Spaniard Catholic roots, with a dab of Mestizo (indigenous Amerindian), and she's about a century old (still alive.) She married a Jew who escaped from the Bolshevik Revolution in the Ukraine and somehow landed in Colombia, hence she become one of the first ever, fully-certified Colombian converts to Judaism. Since that was like three generations ago, and the family has remained closely tied with the rabbinical community in Bogota and Medellin, it is safe for me to presume that this crucial ingredient to my Jewry is valid.

Mind you I'm paying lip service to some orthodox notion, which brings me back to the book I'm reading. It declares that in the 8th century a Shamanistic (Turkic) empire that sat between the Black and Caspian seas converted to Judaism in order to gain equal respect from its two Abrahamic neighbors (the Muslim Caliphate and the Christian Byzantium), and that the Ashkenazim of today are mostly their descendants, as opposed to the almost mythical pure-bred Semitic lineage. The truth is none of this really even matters because to be a Jew is something from deep down inside. It's a soul thing, not an ethnic (or religious) one.

However, I still hold on to this general inquiry about universal Jewish identity because I have always sensed a sort of racialist hypocrisy in the way many European Jews tend to view the Jews of Arab nations, and indeed their view of Arabs in general (not to mention gentiles in general.) Whatever happened to the integrity and definition of the word "semitic"? And I'm not even delving into all the other directions and amalgamations occurring throughout Jewish history, which are all mentioned in the book. All I know is this: a chosen people are a people chosen by the creator to carry out the responsibility of improving the world on behalf of all humanity, not for self-serving interests and in the name of exclusivity.