FROM THE PERIPHERAL BRAIN

In my three years of taxi driving, I've taken only one somewhat famous individual in my cab. Actor Patrick Carroll was headed home from nightclubbing early one morning, in the months after his film had come out. He was genuinely affable and even offered me a handful of the Edamame snacks he was chewing on. To me he had been just another random street hail and I happened to be the nearest stray yellow bullet the moment he'd flung his hand in the air. However, I had been in a talkatively grandiloquent mood that shift and so I think this made him feel inclined to ask if I recognized who he was. I had no idea, nor had I heard of him, or much about the movie(s) he was in.

I've also taken the endearingly cordial parents of Tim Long, comedy writer and executive producer of The Simpsons, from La Guardia to their hotel in Midtown. They were in from Canada for a few days to see their favorite Broadway shows. I can totally see where his sense of humor comes from.

And I've had the honor of taking Judge Ralph Fine, of Wisconsin's Court of Appeals, to the airport. Jenine was my front seat co pilot that morning and together we embellished him with fresh inspiration not to lose conviction in what little, yet profound impacts each of us can have on humanity.

This morning I witnessed a cop in a three wheeled golf cart pull up alongside a yellow cab and scold the driver through the window, with his self-righteously incriminating finger pointed high in the air. I noticed the taxi had a brake light out and then I immediately noticed that the Interceptor had one of his out too. When the cop took off I pulled up and sure enough that was the hypocritical beef he had with my fellow yellow. You see I don't have a problem with the police unless I see their egos go out of control. Sadly, this is the case most of the time. Another common example is when they ask you a rhetorical question and then demand the answer, knowing one does not exist, and belittling you for not having it. I always see scenarios like this while sitting through traffic lights.

I took an Italian tourist couple to the Metropolitan last week and they asked me if my name (they had been staring at my hack license on the partition) was Italian. I could not believe it. I mean people have always assumed this when they heard my last name [Avineri], but I never expected Italians proper (who live in Italy) to ponder that. It's a Hebrew name and it means "my father is my candle (light)".

There were 4 Floridian women. 3 generations of them. It was 1 family trip to New York that they've dreamed about and promised to do together for so many years. Here they were, finally, on a Manhattan street corner, and oblivious to the fact that trying to catch a cab at 4:30 pm is not a simple task. Like most of my 14,000 colleagues, I was off duty, on First, and bound for Queens. These women looked so disoriented that I did not have the heart to not stop and see if I could fit in one last fare. They only wanted to go a few blocks over to the H&M by Rockefeller, but they had no clue as to how close or far it was. The whole ride I charmed them with my nonchalant, nothing new under the sun brand of New Yorkerness. A dismissing commentary for every little ant hill of activity and traffic quirk around us. The meter read $5.30 and I was told to keep the crisp 20 I was handed and to "tell your parents they did a good job". Speaking of hailing a cab when it's not so easy, here's one blogger's unique account.

RECENT FARES THAT WERE BRIEF BUT LEFT AN IMPRESSION:
1. Captain of a tugboat on the Los Angeles harbor and NYC tourist for the weekend.

2. Man with a twisted leg. He was making deliveries on a nimble scooter last year when a bus door opened right into his path. Now he has to take cabs for the smallest errands. Currently undergoing a string of surgeries.

3. Two Hindi ladies wrapped in saris kept requesting me to slow down more and more until we were literally going 5 mph. In between they'd just go on yapping away aristocratically. Then they requested the A/C, on this 80 degree day in May, from a driver who spent nearly a decade in the sweltering summers of southeastern TX. At the end they tipped 80 cents. And mind you I did everything they told me with politeness and care.

4. One very nice Algerian was aboard the cab for 15 minutes. We spoke about traveling across northern Africa and he said it's totally doable with an American passport, as long as I acquire visas. Problem is I doubt Israel would let me in if I had stamps from those countries. But I would absolutely love to walk the ancient streets of Tunis, Tripoli, and Alexandria.

cartophilic cabbie(s)

A few who read my blog tell me that it's fragmented to a fault. Spits and chunks of thoughts splattered across loosely knit amalgams (paragraphs). Pardon me if this style of writing is less than articulate to sift through, but I don't plan on modifying it. And frankly, there happens to be a common thread if you sit in my boxers while you read. Letting you in on the world through my eyes. So let me sit in your boxers for a change. Write an update on your life and share it. I would like to read it. I have a harrowing handful of friends who have fallen off the face of my planet.

above picture from mdcassano's photostream

Wooster is my favorite street to jostle and clatter down. It's one of the bumpiest stretches in all of Manhattan. Got that 3rd world charm. Barranquilla in the heart of SoHo. A mixed moonscape of parched cobblestone, half replaced with lumps of asphalt, and further degenerated into clusters of bottomless potholes. But when the other streets get too plain and polished, I must look elsewhere for that besmirched inspiration to give me another electrifying reminder to live fully.

If I had to pick one luminary, it would be Sarah Chayes. I first learned of her one night in 2003. I'm allergic to television, except when PBS is on. So I joined my house mates, who were watching. Nightline was covering Sarah's newfound purpose, living in Afghanistan and serving all of humanity by helping people on the ground rebuild their war torn lives. She had been a well respected journalist on behalf of NPR for years, but had now decided to not just report on social injustices, but actually do something about them. She joined the efforts of an aid organization, and more recently founded an agricultural cooperative to produce viable Opium alternatives. Bill Moyers interviewed her this year and I am still as starstruck as ever.

I can again return to intensely appreciating life for all it's worth. Every drop of water that bathes and hydrates my viscera. Every watt of light that illuminates my journal at night. Every potent rumination that comes into sight. Every split second hand eye thigh tarsal auricular excremental coordination. And most importantly, my innate doggedness. Sarah herself said, "I don't think that hope is relevant. I think determination is all that counts. You just have to try. It doesn't matter if you hope you're going to succeed or not. You have to keep trying." Is it OK for a 27 year old taxi driver to have a crush on a 46 year old foreign aid correspondent?

Mikey, a close pal of mine here in Nu Yo, happens to be a cabdriver too (turned him on to it). We both have a NYC Parks and Recreation Department membership and visit the gym biweekly to work out and shoot hoops, as a way to combat taxi dystrophy. Afterwards we engage in map buffing activities, like brainstorming mnemonics for museum mile. Running along Fifth Ave, across from Central Park, is a long string of cultural hubs that cabbies ought to know by heart. So we came up with funny phrases to address the code A-B-C-J-H-N-M-F, which lists them in order from north to south....
1. Museum for African Art
2. El Museo del Barrio
3. Museum of the City of New York
4. Jewish Museum
5. Hewitt National Design museum
6. Guggenheim
7. Neue Galerie
8. Metropolitan Museum of Art
9. Frick Collection.
His was "Any boy could jump high given no more friction."
Carly's (GF) was "Always be careful just have God nearby mother fu%#ers."
Mine was "After Bartholomew captured Jerusalem he got New Mexico fast."

A pair of Upper West Side moms and their boisterous children got in across from Rockefeller. Returning home from a birthday party, the kids slapped their little stickers all over my windows. Minutes later the moms paused their convulsive flapdoodle and reprimanded the kids, ordering them to peel the stickers back off. I immediately looked up from my chimerical road gaze and said, "oh, that's alright, let them leave it. I love (anarchic) decorations."
"You are just the nicest cabdriver I ever met."
Terminus (after 2 separate stops): $2 tip on a $12.50 fare.
That's a 16% tip. But they paid with credit card (cabbie is charged %5 fee).
That's 73 cents taken off my income. I get $13.77 instead of $14.50, which might sound like pocket change to you, but try calculating these losses across hundreds of transactions. It pays to be a nice cabbie. At least my garage doesn't care if I bring the cab back with minor scratches, dents, cracks, or sticker littered windows.

It's one of those rare moments when the taxi stand on 8 Avenue is depleted of cabs. I pull into the lane that I would have otherwise driven right past. Two garbage truck drivers step in on route to Chelsea's NYCHA. My only efficient option is to hover near the crosswalk until the timing is right (red signal) and then swiftly turn left unto 33rd from that 5th and furthest lane. The instant I perform this trick the two men break into loud jubilation. "He just pulled a triple cutoff!"

Hastily I check my mirrors, misinterpreting their words to mean we're in the midst of getting pulled over. "Relax broth-a, we were just enjoying your dexterity back there cause we do it ALL the time. We drive (and collect rubbish) that way all over the outer boroughs. That's how we get our runs done." They turn out to be better tippers than most a suit and tie out there. And for the remainder of that shift I didn't rub eyeballs with any other jehus for lane seniority. Not from the realm of sanitation, nor deliveries. Just your common cadmium yellow torpedoes and one anomaly. A gang of pugnacious Harleys refused to allow me past their gastropodous entourage. Finally someone on the road with a bigger ego than mine (exception: NYPD).

The answer that I resent the most when I ask a passenger if they happen to have a route preference is "whichever way's faster". As if I plan on milking the meter when they answer no. But whenever I contemplate a policy of just keeping shut mouthed with internalized navigation, memories of refreshingly symbiotic brainstorms with effusive riders keep me from giving up on the immense potential of communication. Mixing the ample yet ultimately abridged wisdom of a hack with the commuter's knowledge of patterns in their circuits of routine is a recipe for immaculate cab excursions. But even then something can go terribly wrong.

Last week I was on the Prospect Expressway with a pleasant passenger who was headed home from the Flatiron to Kensington (BK) at 3:30 am. Our lovely Crown Vic workhorse of a space shuttle suddenly started shaking violently and the steering wheel became nearly unnegotiable. Slowing it down to a stop on the shoulder felt like trying to land an airliner with its landing gear paralyzed. The lady was really cool about it all as I made a 360 degree inspection of our overworked mule. No flat tires, no unevenness in the suspension, no external symptoms of anything. We agreed to coast the last couple miles with hazards blinking. The car would start out normal, but every 1/4 minute the vicious trembling would resume, even as we kept around 10 mph. Coming to a full stop was its only pacification. She was racking her brain for a round-the-clock repair shop, but I explained that the garage from which I lease it was solely authorized and responsible.

We made it to her place and the tip revealed mammoth compassion. She tried convincing me to just have my garage summon a tow truck, which was an option. But the whole thing would take well over two hours and I had to get back in business. So I crawled cautiously all the way up Bedford and over the Pulaski. Those last few feet to the hydraulic lifts a mechanic took over and his dramatic signature pedal jerk finally made the front wheel fold on itself. He literally dragged the front end forward by sheer acceleration, but he had the whole problem cured in 45 minutes. Unfortunately though, these mechanics are so jaded and aloof that they have no interest indoctrinating me with the process of troubleshooting, which I'd sponge up in a heartbeat if only he were into Mohandas Gandhi. Learn as if you were to live forever and teach as if you were to die tomorrow (I bent it a bit).

ps: My big Bob Dylan revelation this week: It's 'lay lady lay' (not 'lady DeLane').

NOTE TO CABBIES:
Beware of the $115 for box blocking having recently become a non moving violation. The meter maids on E37th St. are busy handing these out to everyone stuck crosstown inside the intersection as you crawl through Park Avenue. My passenger's comment: 'That is such a cheap shot'. I've seen this activity in one other spot: 3 Avenue crossing E56th Street. The two rightmost lanes get jammed with those headed to the Queensboro. The meter maids have a field day here.

THIS WEEK'S SHORT LIST OF RED LIGHT CAMERA SIGHTINGS:
1AV across 63rd: red light cam (although i never seen it flash) This link contains a long list of

some other spots

MOSAIC OF TAUTOLOGIES

Member FDIC don't mean jack squat. The car wash restroom on W24th has a sign that says "This bathroom is available to all who need it". You must always put a dollar in there to help maintain the cleanliness. And they do a commendable job of it. It's the most community oriented thing in all of Chelsea. Aside from the gracious proliferation of public relief zones (star bux), an accessible non profit restroom in Manhattan means jack squat and much more.

Not flossing greatens my risk of heart disease, but my arm wrestling match against languorous apathy itself is dwindling in most aspects of my life, aside from the fact that I militantly pour heart health Emergen-C powder into every glass. Lycopene and mineral ascorbates to counter poor hygiene and lack of exercise? Atrophy from perpetual operation of a yellow cab.

Don't go one inch past the white line when approaching Avenue of the Americas while westbound along Canal unless you want a 5000 cent postcard in the mail. If you encounter a street hail, esp. an individual standing snobbishly smack dab in the middle of the street and not budging over as you angle and decelerate, then ever so slowly coast right past them as they follow frantic until snuggly curbside. They have no right to obstruct the flow of traffic for self-absorbed purposes. And half the time they will turn their head and hail the next taxi.
Which weeds out those who have no cognizance of public safety and most likely no appreciation for any driver. Move on, they aren't worth the hassle.

Can't afford to do that, you say? Hard time fishing for passengers as it is? Well, I have a formula that works for me, any hour and anywhere in Manhattan, and parts of Queens and Brooklyn. Just go straight ahead until 2 or more vacant taxis are cruising in front of you. Once you spot a plurality of lit roof lights, turn off at the next street. If someone on that block is coming out of their building, you'll be the first available cab. Otherwise just turn again on that following avenue, which often gets you dibs on that block as well. Repeat step one and two over and over. This gets the goods. Believe me. There's nothing more detrimental to a cabdriver's income than to sit in an ocean of empty cabs. Avoid drag race chicken fights. Make the dough and get the hell home. We don't burn fossil fuels for the fun of it. And it ain't just for the hell of it that I'm adamantly against splitting atoms and creating other high level waste.

Regionalism can get sort of silly sometimes. This week Katy Couric corrected her guest on the pronunciation of 'Nevada'. She made him say it like 'vast', not 'far'. I looked into it and discovered that folks out west believe Katy's correction to be appropriate. I doubt any Nevadans will read this, but 'nevada' happens to be in Spanish (Espanol). It means covered in snow. Hence, the Sierra Nevada (mountain range in California) literally means 'snow-covered hills'. And Nevada is pronounced like Dada (art cultural movement), not rat or mad hatter.

I really do try to withhold from judging others, especially when they're passengers in my cab. People have their reasons for tipping the way they do. But with every new fare, I automatically begin to compile a picture of their socioeconomic status and personal value system out of what I piece together from a conversation, the rear view mirror, or the price tag for an event I'm taking them to. Last week I brought several groups of people to the convention center and back, so they could pick up their runner numbers to put on their abdomen during the NYC marathon. I learned that it costs $177 ($232 for foreigners) to register in the race. Based on that, I'd say the Californians were generous tippers, but the Englishwomen were cheap scoundrels. It's not like these ladies came from London's east end and have spent their entire lives saving up for this.

I just finished reading a fabulous zine:
WORLD DOMINATION THROUGH DUMPSTER DIVING #19.
It features an article called YOU DON'T DESERVE BRAIN CANCER.
YOU DESERVE THE FACTS. Amy Worthington reveals cell phone industry secrets and makes a connection between it and the endless civil war in the Congo. This was published in 2003 and since then the violence in that country has all but disappeared from the news. Ironically, only days after I read the zine, this unique slice of human misery reemerges in the mass media.

I had a recent rider from Albania whose name (Fiutra) means butterfly in Shqip (her old Balkan language). She's especially memorable because she said that when she tells people that she's Albanian, they say oh you're from the state capital (Albany). Another conspicuous rider was a Scotsman in a suit who's traveled to all the Central Asian nations on behalf of the beer industry. He's having difficulty resolving his visa here because his passport contains stamps from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrghystan.

DHS don't like the fact that he's tasted authentic home brews around the world. And in yet a third illustrious fare, the Jennifer Aniston lookalike had you stop by a sidewalk cart so she could buy her 15 month old a hot dog and got one for you too. That never happens. Who ever wonders if the cabdriver is hungry? Then there was the German couple who just disembarked a cruise ship. Their only 48 hours in NYC were looking very pluvial. I came up with the most cliche idea for that: MUSEUMS?. "Boring", they murmured defiantly. Right then I had a clairvoyant moment. I knew exactly what they'd like to hear. "Did you know we have a MUSEUM OF SEX in NYC?" Their eyes lit up as they pulled out a pen to write down the address. That tip that would manifest into another pleasant tip as we pulled into their hotel.

As a cabdriver it's alarming to discover how little people actually know about the miseries that entail our profession. $110 to lease the cab for a day and another $40 (way less than a couple months ago) for gasoline. Roughly half the shift goes by before we actually begin earning an income. We drive anywhere from 12 to 17 hours a pop, in circles, through some of the most temerarious traffic on the planet. The odds stacked against us are twice as tall as the Empire State Building, and still we manage to make due.

If a passenger shows interest, I'll speak their godforsaken ear off about it all, as they lay there in astonishment, wide eyed and open mouthed. More questions flood their heads and the answers keep churning. God bless us, the yellow children of Gotham. I think the exact number of human faces we see in a year's time is greater than any other line of work, simply just from ceaselessly scanning crowded streets with eagle eyes while maintaining a thirty mile an hour peripatetic.

WARNING TO NYC YELLOW CABBIES:
There's quite often a speed trap on the FDR North, just before you go under the Brooklyn Bridge. If you enter where South Street ends or off the 9A underpass (tunnel), do not go a single MPH over 40. Everyone floors it here because it's the very beginning of the highway. A cop stands in the shoulder just over the hill. Only other radar gun trap I've seen in NYC is SB on Cross Bay Blvd. as you enter the residential zone of Broad Channel the limit plummets to 30 MPH and an unmarked hides in the median. On the opposite side of Queens, when WB on Astoria Blvd do not make a left on Crescent St. from 7 to 10 am. One of those little golf cart-like interceptors is busy around the corner. And in Manhattan, I'm pretty sure what I witnessed had to do with that far left lane on Broadway as you're about to cross 14th. It says on a sign and on the ground that you MUST turn left. Taxis break this rule 50 times a minute. Well, I saw folks getting pulled over systematically on that southeast corner one day last week. Must've been that rule being enforced. That's all for now.

Gimme 22 minutes, I'll give you the world.

Before I go into tales of cabdriving, I'd like to invite my dearest New Yorkers on a bicycle adventure this Saturday (5th). It's my only day off. A friend and I plan to pedal through Flushing Meadows Park, stop by the Queens art museum, ride over the GW/Bayonne bridges for great views of NYC from NJ, and board the SI ferry back into town. I have an extra bike. Get in touch.

This past Friday I drove the PM shift for the first time. Just wanted to get a taste. No plans to make it a habit cause my body gets better rest at night. First fare a Dutch couple I mistook for Scandinavians. They taught me the correct pronunciation of Brooklyn (Breukelen) and swapped spots with a traditional Texan family en route to a sybaritic restaurant on the UES. The aging macho father sits up front, annoyed at his newly married daughter's back seat inquiries: "Dad, do you want to visit the cigar bar after dinner? But first we have to find out if blue jeans are allowed." They're in for a disappointment. Soon the roles are a switched again, with a sumptuous, semi-elder French mossback couple entering and uttering a single word: "Peninsula". Nightly rates at that place and the size of my tip are like night and day. I guess its exact address should have been in my rote memorization, along with 40,000 other locations. Or perhaps I should have gone to taxi school in London, not Queens Plaza. I'll remember places I can relate to. So, no, saying "it's by abercrombie & fitch" doesn't clarify anything. I swear it's so much more fun, less time consuming, more spiritually rewarding, and just as lucrative to take two working class women to the nearest subway station from their alphabet city housing project. After that it's on to some intoxicated dude duo that stumbles out of a busy club and politely request Penn Station. All trip long, one deplores the other for having made out with someone who had an ugly face. "Yeah, but the rest of her body was nice." Blah bla bl b. Time to go back to NJ, boys! Then at around midnight this pre-adolescent was operating his remote control taxicab right out in the middle of a heavily trafficked strip along St. Marks Place in the East Village. From the safety of the sidewalk this kid navigates the little toy car back to the curb , narrowly avoiding it getting crushed.

Final fare of the night was by far the best. At 3:39 am an old Polish lady headed home to Maspeth (Queens) stood at the corner of 6 Av and 28th. Her coworkers from the largest department store in the world had just treated her to a few drinks. She had her head poked through the partition the entire ride as she chatted unscrupulously with me, comparing her miserable 75 hour workweek with mine. Laughing ferociously at the mutual list we assembled of similarities between customers at Macy's and typical taxi passengers. Wish I had a grandmother like that.

On Thursday my friend Cassandra, an upbeat schoolteacher from Florida, rode along in the cab with me and had a great time sightseeing New York as we delivered people all over town. She had considered riding one of those double decker bus tours, but discovered this was much better for plenty of reasons. Around two dozen acquaintances have taken me up on my "on duty taxi copilot" offer since last winter. Don't wait too long. I might be retiring from the taxicab profession as early as early this autumn. Outside of hacking, my life has revolved around trying to deplete resources in the kitchen so they don't rot in this apartment that is devoid of all its residents for nearly three weeks, except for the one solitary cabbie who stayed in town. Also, I'm serious about memorizing the lyrics for that song "They want EFX" by DAS EFX, to use as performance art in social situations where the air needs slicing, like bread. Ever heard that song. So intricate.