NYC Taxi Photo: November 2007

Friday 30 November 2007

Sunday 11/25

Upper West Side

Times Square District

Queens

Hell's Kitchen

Flushing, Queens

4 images left to post...

Wednesday 28 November 2007

Hell's Kitchen, I don't know why it's called that, or the more real-estate friendly "Clinton," but there are more small restaurants to be found here than anywhere else in the city. As the traffic light holds me at the corner on 9th Avenue, I watch the reflections of a back door to a kitchen, seeing everything but myself.

Downtown Manhattan's Business District has been a ghost town around these dark hours of the weekend's morning. There are no clubs until TriBeCa, and all the bars are for neighborhood drunks, and perhaps their Brooklyn friends.

In Chinatown, A faceless woman walks the street to avoid foot traffic on the sidewalk. Everyone on the curb melts into a Chinatown stew except one lone New Yorker who walks north.

Chinatown is a place where despite the tourism you actually can find bargains there, it's true. New Yorkers search for cheap gifts behind the foreground of two grey 1998 Toyota Camry'.

The Lower East Side, still finds room to keep a parking lot, but with looming real-estate opportunities, one wonders for how long?

Tuesday 27 November 2007

Code red and green

Oh the season has started already. On Park Avenue they put the lights on a tree, and between Madison Avenue and 5th Avenue we scrambled to get through the intersection and all had to merge back into one lane. It's kind of business as usual, though it isn't usually this bad on the weekends. When the holidays roll around, we can get a traffic jam any day, any hour.

Friday 23 November 2007

Moron- exhibit A

I was taking a woman to Penn Station from the Upper East Side. We decided to go through the park, because 5th avenue was closed from 59th street to 28th Street. Approaching a Central Park transverse road, we got stopped at a red light. I pulled to the left lane of the street to avoid a line of cars. While we were stopped at the light, a silver/grey early 90's Jeep Grand Cherokee on my right side, turned his wheels all the way to the left, and nudged his nose into my car's space.

Having driven long enough in the city, I knew this would become a game of chicken; if unchecked through actual verbal communication, this could become ugly.

I gesture to him with my hands, as if to say, what are you doing? how is this scenario going to work friendly sir? He returns my hand gestures with some mocking gestures of his own. So I figure that I am going to have to explain things to this dense individual. I roll my window down:

I say: "There is no traffic behind me. You can pull in behind me."

He goes: "What!?"

"There is no traffic behind me. Pull in behind me," I say

"I'm deaf. I can't understand you," says this guy.

Hmmm, what is the clearest way I should explain this to a deaf man. what words would be easiest to interpret by lip reading?

"STAAAY, UWAAAY FROM MY CAR?" I said, as loudly and clearly as I could.

"What!" He became indignant in his priorities.

Wow, he wasn't deaf at all,

So I say: "OHH so you not deaf. FUCK YOU... JERK!" I stick up my middle finger so the world could see.

Then he says: "What, you f--(mama jamma) I want to talk to you!" His wife starts pulling him back, as this big russian looking guy is fighting with the door. Holy shit, I don't think he wants to talk to me at all. I think he wants to bash my face in.

"Jesus Christ," says my passenger.

What is funniest about all of this is that his car was too close for him to squeeze out of his car, his big ass couldn't fit out of his door. I think his wife helped a lot too.

So as I pass this exhibit of a moron I beep my horn at the traffic cop, and point behind me. He gestures for me to come over, but I refuse. I'm just a taxi driver, and I figure the world hates me, besides I have a passenger and she has to get to Penn Station.

Wednesday 21 November 2007

Buried in the hard-drive

Times Square, Winter 2003

This is pre-taxi career, but just too awesome a picture not to post.

While this picture is only four years old, 'Howard Johnson's' has shut down, and 'Fleet Bank' has conglomerated with 'Bank of America'. The big 'Fleet' ad has changed to a big 'Bank of America' ad. The 'Chicago' musical ad has probably changed too.

Lucky 327: my new identity, again

I changed my blogger name, yet again, to Lucky 327. What the hell did 4min mean anyway? meh I don't know what it meant, but here's what 327 means:

327 is the number on the cab I used to drive regularly for about a month, when I tested the whole driving 5 days a week thing. That's something I won't do again until the police stop targeting cabbies for tickets and the city does something about traffic congestion. Plus I found midtown impossible to navigate when I had to memorize every street where left turns or right turns were not permitted. And anyway I just like the number 327.

I'm just letting you know, in case I comment on your blog, and you say, who the hell is this?

Tuesday 20 November 2007

Quote of the weekend

Girl- So, I thought you didn't like Laura?

Guy- I wouldn't fuck her with a borrowed dick.

11/18 Sunday

Chelsea

Times Square

Midtown

Far West Side

Lower East Side

LaGuardia Airport, Queens

11/17 Saturday

Broadway / Houston Street

Chinatown

Battery Park City

Far West Side

Hell's Kitchen

Astoria, Queens

Upper East Side (Central Park)

Wednesday 14 November 2007

11/11 Sunday

Houston Street and Laffayette

West Midtown

Spanish Harlem

Rockefeller Center

Far West Side

Saturday 11/10

South Brooklyn

Monday 12 November 2007

Video break:

Thought I'd share some of the old New York: One fabulous chase scene.

Gene Hackman in, The French Connection

Sunday: Marathon: 11/04

With two hours left in my shift, I decided to drive back to the garage.

Four officers in a squad car told me that I needed to wait for 2 hours when they re-open the streets before I could enter my garage. That wouldn't work for me so I found nicer police woman guarding the intersection. She told me that I could go through since I wasn't actually driving through the marathon itself. It was kinda cool that right in front of the garage the marathon was happening.