3/02 shots (b)

Far West Side

Midtown (Madison Ave-49th Street)

(not 2nd Ave and 50th)

Astoria, Queens

3/02 shots (a)

Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Far West Side

 Steinway/Astoria, Queens

;

Steinway/Astoria, Queens

Astoria, Queens

Long Island City, Queens

3/01 shots

Chelsea

Garment District

Midtown

Morningside Heights (Columbia University)

2/ 24 pictures

Oh damn, even these big pictures fit. Well they do on my browser. Let me know if you have any problems viewing them. Ah there seems to be a catch, I guess I'm eventually going to have to pay for an account with flickr to keep all the pictures. meh, if the blog gets this good, I might as well.

Forrest Hills, Queens

Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn

Hell's Kitchen (img 1)

Hell's Kitchen (img 2)

Linkage

Two taxibloggers have both posted some interesting material referencing the NYC taxi miscellaneous.  

Taxi Tales out of Cumbria, UK, has posted these three gems. Ford is supposedly pushing their european van for the replacement to our Crown Victoria. I mentioned in my new police car post, the Crown Vic' is slowly retiring from production. It is an issue that I promise to soon post about myself, but I need to research it more and post a big juicy blog full of pictures. So I'll get on that eventually. Taxi Prototype

In New York Cab Tips A video helpfully advises tourists on proper manners for taking a NYC taxi. The video is very up to date, and I pretty much agree with everything said on the video. I only add that cabbies with their off duty light on are either on a break, or ending their shift. Therefore it is at this time that cabbies will only take riders if they are on the way to their taxi garage or home. Also most New Yorkers will not be familiar with the taxi fare you will be charged, so don't ask them. I suggest instead that you ask a cabbie you can trust i.e. me, or G.S., who writes a very good New York taxi blog too. 

Bob of Taxi Tales also posted this great video King Lear, calling attention to the violent crimes on taxi's through the UK, using a piece by Davidson Garrett, a taxi poet of our humble City.

And Irish Taxi out of Dublin posted about King Lear as well, King Lear of the Taxis, be sure to click it to find how to purchase Garrett's book online please. 

Pictures from 2/23/08

Ahh Eureka! I finally got bigger pictures on the blog. I've been looking for ways to do this for 6 months. I even went to my old school, to ask a digital photo teacher if he could help. The self righteous bastard started to tell me what a blog was.

Only when I used fancy internet /art words like accessibility and navigation friendly, etc.. did he tell me to look at the source code, basically telling me to get lost and that he didn't have time for me. I completely understand that he was busy, but to make an idiot out of me by being sarcastic (something New Yorkers don't do) rather than just telling me he was busy, was improper form, but I guess people skills cannot be expected from faculty(?)

Well on the flip side, an alumni had told me that she preferred uploading the pictures through a flickr account. How about that, a simple answer for a seemingly complicated problem. If you want me to mention your blog, I'll be sure to put your link here, or mention it again where it isn't following my negative attitude.

So my ranting aside, here are the bigger pictures. All I had to do was copy the input code for the medium size of each picture from the flickr to here, and I had to change the format of this blog to stretch, to accommodate the larger images. Now if I can remember my account name and password for my flickr account, all my images on this blog will now be a little larger.

I'm guessing this is Midtown

Near Times Square

Times Square

 When the 'Naked Cowboy' shows up, will summer come soon? 

Who needs a groundhog when you got the Naked Cowboy?

Midtown

Another surge (practice) drill, goes past the Empire State Building 

about two blocks ahead.

this weekend, summary

Saturday-

Was easy enough to explain. One guy gave me a huge tip, the first customer of the day. We went from the Lower East Side to Midtown near Times Square and after dropping off the extremely drunk old fellow at an extremely high end hotel, we went back downtown to SoHo to drop off the last of them to a high end apartment building there.

"Sorry about him" he said, "you're going to get a big tip"

I chuckle, "Okay"

I wanted to keep the meter going for the whole ride, because it keeps it cheaper by avoiding a second initial charge and a second surcharge, but the drunk said it was the end of his ride, so he paid with credit card and added a dollar or two in the tip. 

At the end of the whole ride, ride number two came to 12 dollars or 11 and change, he said he only had a hundred. 

"You guys are my first customers so I have no twenties."

"You're funny,"says he, "what if I paid you with a fifty"

"That'd be better"

"How much do you have?" he asks, ugh, starting to annoy me.

"I got 70 total here."

"How 'bout you make it sixty?" 

"What, sixty?" 

"uh hyeah," that's yes to you and me.

So I took his hundred and counted 40 real slow so that he'd hopefully know what he was doing. Yeah so despite the rest of the day being not as good as they had been recently, that ride right there made up for it. 

------------------------------------

But on Sunday- 

I got cheated out 43 dollars and an hour of my time. I took two guys to a remote housing project near Coney Island, Brooklyn, and they both ran out: 

"That's expENSIVE!" they ran out on ENSIVE, leaving their McDonald's meals behind, and a door open. 

I screamed the tires so the door would shut on it's own, found the belt parkway pretty quick and tried to put it out of my mind. But still doing a thing like that has got my head wrapped in it a little. How I may have to become a more selective cabbie. A place like that with no soul around, I could've been shot, and all anybody would say would be, "Jee I hadn't heard a gunshot in a while."  

Silver lining to this was I found myself down at the bottom of Manhattan where all the cabbies seemed to have forgotten about that night. I threw out the McDonalds in a garbage can, and grabbed a fare to JFK 45+tip, 55. 

2/16/08 (b)

Lower East Side

The Taxi and Limousine Commission paid me 9 dollars 

I've erased the names and ID#'s

East Midtown

Far West Side

Times Square

DUMBo, Brooklyn

You know your not from around here when...

• When walking in Times Square, wait what are you doing in Times square?
  
  
• As I was saying, while walking you stop without thinking about all the foot traffic you are blocking. "You can't just stop in the middle!" A street smart tourist from across the Atlantic once stated.
  
  
• While driving, ahem, ahem, where are you going to park your car? don't drive in the city please.
  
  
• While driving, you stay in the middle lane, talk on your hand held cell phone, converse with your family, look for parking, and look up at the buildings, all while maintaining a speed of 15 miles per hour or less. Watch out for the cab cutting you off and changing four lanes at once.
  
   
• When you find a parking spot, you think you have the right to change four lanes at once too. Are you big and yellow? No, I don't think so.
  
  
• That parking spot you're parking in has a fire hydrant... oops.
  
  
• You park four feet from the hydrant, because that's what they do where you're from. That is not far enough
  
  
• You make sure to leave at least one car length between you and all the cars around you. I do this too sometimes, but heavy traffic calls for closer distances.
  
  
• You have a manual transmission. What is a manual transmission?

Geek post #1: Dodge Charger police car

I just can't hold this back any more. I got to post a blog about this new cop car. When I started seeing them in my side-view mirrors my heart skipped in terror at the site of its grille, aggressive stance, and of course, you know "Its got a Hemi." I read an article about the new car. The positives are:

1. More powerful engine
2. Rear wheel drive, like the Ford Crown Victoria
3. Better brakes
4. More fuel efficient
5. More toys in the siren, a blast feature, which sets down a bass vibration through the street

The negative:

1. Smaller trunk

Across from The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Highway Patrol car, uh where is the highway officer?

The police are facing the same problem as the taxi industry, as the Ford Crown Victoria slowly fades away. For a few years the department was purchasing Chevrolet Impalas, which sucked. The Impala doesn't strike fear in anybody, and it looks like a shit box after a year.

So far the most likely place to see the Charger is in Midtown, especially if its leading a police escort for a diplomat or elected official, or especially on 5th Avenue, where all the tourists go shopping. Right now they are the supermodels of the police cars, but soon they may become ubiquitous across parts of North America where it doesn't snow all the time.

2/16/08 (a)

The East Village 

The Far West Side

Paid Vacation

I went to the Bronx on Sunday night, taking two guys down a street that meets the ocean. In the taxi I always find a new spot in my town, a universe its own. I may have found the edge of the earth this time. Each house grew smaller than the next. Modest cars were settled between the street and the sidewalk, steps from each house. On the corner three teenagers stood watching the streets. The sound of my engine traveled up past the "dead end" sign and continued easterly. Too early for the birds, the silence engulfed us. 32.50 was the fare, I was paid 35. One man pissed between the cars as another crossed the street. The air was so still, there seemed to be no scent of money, but I took one more fare to the local train station, then I hit the four-lane highway back into the light.

2/10

Hell's Kitchen

Midtown