3/23 shots

Sunset Park / Industry City, Brooklyn

Battery Park

John F. Kennedy International Airport, Queens 

Forrest Hills, Queens

Midtown

JFK Int. Airport, Qns

Midtown / Times Square

The Lower East Side

Midtown East / Murray Hill

Paying the bills-

So I was so lucky to have been a part of a photo-shoot on Monday, well, my cab was. A former coworker of mine is now a photo-editor with Time Out NY, and she needed a cab to complete a picture. I was more than happy to oblige. 

FYI taxi aficionados I drive a real cab, I just photoshoped the medallion # 

I was told I needed more pictures on the blog, so I'll try to push my pictures out a little faster. Look for the horny (or sex, something of that ilk) issue of Time Out New York. It was really cool to see how professionals carried out a shoot, it was really chill and yet controlled, well handled.

Some dude passed by, and she goes 

"Hey Bill, just paying the rent ya know?" Seemed as normal as all else, then she tells us, "He was my landlord."

---

Monday, monday, it's been a while since I worked during the week. It was really slow, and there was lots of traffic. I had to take the long way back from the airport. I spent the day pretty laid back though, since I was paid for my time while they did the photo-shoot.

3/22 shots

Downtown

Long Island City, Queens

Summer, and it begins

Oh the summer is here, and we had a number of street fairs. The 8th Avenue street fair in Chelsea in addition to some construction on 17th Street jammed up all the westbound traffic in Chelsea and the Flatiron District, as well as northbound traffic on Park Avenue South and 6th Avenue. The eastbound traffic was a little crappy too. As usual there was traffic going west in the 30’s and cross-town in the early 50’s. There was some sort of event at Rockefeller Center, all these football fans of any team in general; no football jersey was the same. 5th Avenue was moving at turtle paces due to gridlock from various crossing streets. Also as usual, since the Pope was gone, the traffic update radio stations have gone back to only reporting traffic into and out of Manhattan, but not reporting on Manhattan traffic. Somebody should start a radio station, which updates on traffic conditions on the Island of Manhattan.

Anyway I got pretty lucky. All cabbies know that the job is mainly about luck, and I got few rides going cross-town, which kill more time than a visit to the local post office. Early in the morning I had an hour-long gap between fares at one point, but since I picked up the cab an hour later, I was able to return it later, and dip into a time that had higher passenger demand.

If it weren’t for the one airport fare and then a rare trip back into Manhattan from the airport soon after, it wouldn’t have been such a good day. The woman going to LaGuardia couldn’t find any identification, so she hoped the airport would accept an article in a magazine with her picture as proof. She was some singer, I asked her name, but it didn’t ring a bell.

The traffic report said that due to a Mets game the Grand Central would be bad, but of course, it was way better than the cross-town traffic in Manhattan.

3/16 shots

Henry Hudson Parkway, Morningside Heights, Manhattan

Fort Greene, Brooklyn

Fort Greene, Brooklyn

Long Island City, Queens

3/15 shots and tangents

The Far West Side

The East Village

Cooper Union is building a new building to replace what could have been a landmark. Across the street the Village Voice has a banner that reads, "Where have all the crack heads  gone?" Oh don't worry, they're coming back in Tompkins Square Park (5th picture). 

The Bowery though, has gone from slum to chic, with the hippin' and the hoppin' clubs, and towers like the one below already finished, with tall european women in height accentuating heels standing taller at the curb reaching for the sky as streams of yellow Crown Victorias vie for attention. 

I noticed CBGB's had finally been replaced by The Morrison Hotel, a place with a shop already west of the famous punk location in SoHo, rather than here in ???NoHo?? I'm getting sick of these stupid names. Anyway The Morrison Hotel is a Gallery that sells photographs of famous musicians mostly Rock based. CBGB's, if you don't already know was the famous venue for punk bands, the birth place of New York punk arguably, or not so arguably, a plethora of bands were discovered here, The Talking Heads, Blondie, Possibly the Ramones to name but few. I've never been there, I never liked punk, a category which Talking Heads and Blondie no longer fit into. But none the less, this place will be sorely missed. When I think of all the horrible places that could've replaced the landmark of rock history, The Morrison Hotel seems like the best solution. I have no idea who Jon Varvatos is though, he is opening his designer store jointly with the photo gallery. Designer wear? and punk music? makes me want to drink an Old E(Old English) forty ounce with the beggars and puke it on the floor of  such a place. Neither More Nor Less covers the sidewalk melee at the opening.

East Village 

Anywhere in Manhattan

I've told you before, I'll tell you again, don't leave your bikes unattended. This is a common site anywhere in the five boroughs, not to mention even Boston where I naively locked my bike outside for too long and never saw it again.

The East Village

A wall of weak plywood and a chain-link fence walls off what was once a community garden, a mainstay for years, teaming with carefully tended to species of plant-life. In this corner, like so many other community gardens, only two or three steps needed to be taken inside before the visitor was transported. 

Happy Popetastic Passover everyone!

It was all going situation normal today before the sun came up, but I knew soon that all of midtown was going to shut down for the various pope locations today. I went to Greenwich Village to my usual coffee shop at 8 am. They always seem a little out of it over there, but what lacks in timely service and perhaps quality, more than makes up for in price and atmosphere. I don't know where else I can get a coffee with soy milk and a pumpernickel bagel with tofu spread for only 3.25 and every eleventh coffee is free. Sure a coffee can be had for as little as 75 cents, but I'm allergic to milk, so I need the fancy treatment. There is actually a health food store around the corner from Katz's in the Lower East Side that sells a coffee with soy milk for only a buck, but the place opens at 10 am, which is already too late for me. Anyway, the cashier forgot to take my money, so it was just sitting there while I waited for my bagel to be toasted. Eventually they realized the accident and took my money. Also eventually I got my bagel, and I returned to my car with a 65 dollar parking ticket, damn! I mis-read the freakin' sign, and it was no parking except sunday, I thought it was no parking monday through friday.

Than I waited an hour and a half at the ship terminal. They were doing the most crazy stuff there. The first ship started letting passengers out at street level where they were all crossing the highway and getting cabs there. Then the officials told us to loop around on the third level back to the first pier, gahhh. The fare wasn't so bad, they went to queens, it was a 22.50 fare and they gave me 30. 

I suppose it could be much worse, I'll take a parking ticket any day, as punishment for taking it easy, instead of a moving violation as punishment for being a knuckle-head. I saw two instances where police pulled up behind taxicabs dropping people off and not pulling over in proper places. You can't have your car over the crosswalk and intersections when stopping. Worse though, I saw the police checking a man's pockets as he placed his hands on the roof of a taxi. Then he drew his hands behind his back to get handcuffed. I checked the driver-seat as I drove past. The seat was empty, engine running. The taxi driver was he, and he was being arrested. 

oh what can I say, Popetastic, Popetacular!

Study of Taxicab Diversity Within New York City (article 1: experimental cabs do a cup of coffee)

Taxis on Trial

A taxicab cannot just be painted yellow, get the taxi stickers and be on the streets. New cars first have to be suggested to the Taxi and Limousine Commission, then the TLC can decide to put vehicles through a probationary period, or not. During such a period, courageous drivers can decide to purchase the vehicles that are pending acceptance. The TLC then keeps a closer eye on the trial vehicles seeing if they can hold up to the stop and go, the potholes, the demons, and the tight twisty lanes of our so called expressways. Within three years or so it is decided whether these vehicles are worthy.

london-taxi-nyc
Originally uploaded by GuyBrighton

Drivers and passengers alike can agree on what makes a good taxi. The TLC has a list . 

The LTI Taxi, famous as a London cab, even did a stint in our city. For some reason, I don't think it was approved. I don't ever see it anymore. 

The LTI meets our growing need for a car with lots of passenger room with easy accessibility. One of the key qualifications for a taxi in London is to have a tight turning radius. The LTI, I could imagine, can turn in a tighter circle than any cab in New York, and possibly all of America. According to their own website, the new LTI gets 25.5 MPG in the city with an automatic, so I assume that translates to 20 mpg in NYC, not particularly special but still better than our Ford Crown Victoria. Also LTI's have a wheelchair access ramp that the driver can slide out from the passenger door to the curb. This one and only New York LTI cab was spotted circa 2005

NYC Taxi - Mercedes-Benz E300 D
Originally uploaded by rayNYC

The Mercedes-Benz E300 D is another extremely popular international taxi from what I've heard from friends who've been to Greece and Israel. Yeah we tried that one too, beats me why it didn't cut whatever is in our mustard. It was rumored that the one driver who owned it, only drove in midtown and would refuse all longer rides. I saw the Mercedes once; the dude was chillen' with his windows down and the sunroof open smoking a cigar. The car had no partition between the driver and passenger, which is a choice drivers can opt for if they purchase a camera that takes a picture of each passenger, however, if the taxicab was considered too small, the TLC might have mandated the camera instead of the partition. RayNYC, who found the image, did his research, and according to the TLC there were just two in operation. He also told me the driver told him the car was twice the price of the Crown Victoria, but gas was half the price. I saw the Mercedes E class taxi circa 1998.

IMG_8696
Originally uploaded by lucky 327

Around the same time the two Mercedes' were on the road, two Lincoln Town Cars were being driven with taxi medallions too. Just like the Mercedes pictured above, they didn't seem to get the right hue of yellow paint as the rest of the taxis. The Town Car was doing extremely well in sales at this time, grabbing almost a strangle hold on the American limo market maintaining a large enough size to satisfy the clientele. A key feature was the air suspension which came in handy on the city streets, evening out almost all the bumps on the road to a smooth gentle ride.

Basically The Town car is a very glorified Ford Crown Victoria, and so for double the price, it wasn't worth using as a taxicab in my opinion, but there are differences such as the air suspension. Today both the Lincoln Town Cars and the Ford Crown Victorias hold respectively overpowering leads in the limousine and taxicab markets. It is their easy and cheap maintenance and reliability, plus their size, and their comfortable ride which give these cars their dominance in these markets. The Town Car outnumbers all other luxury cars by a huge margin in New York City. This market dominance grabbed hold in the early 90's when Lincoln's maintained a constant large size over the Cadilac which changed sizes of their cars from year to year, and Lincoln held the market with their good reliability. However the Town Car wasn't approved. 

The Chrysler PT Cruiser Lithium-Ion taxi 

TAXI 07
Originally uploaded by Triborough

was promised to drive 150 miles between charges and have a maximum speed of 80 miles per hour. Negatively it would take 6 hours to recharge and it would cost between 50 and 75 thousand dollars, however it was predicted to save a driver up to 15 thousand a year.

At the time it seemed almost as likely for this car to work as it did for the Ford Escape Hybrid. Retrospectively, the PT Cruiser was a laugher. This crack team of professionals who had bragging rights of working with government and (?) NASA contracts for electric vehicles, couldn't make a car capable for the job. It couldn't handle the cold weather for one. Secondly, only once did the Cruiser cruise for 90 miles, usually it only traveled 40 in a day, the rest of the time it was being towed. The average mileage I travel in my shift is between 100 and 200 miles, usually somewhere just under 150. This PT Cruiser must have been a hallucination, 'cause I never seen it.

Brainstorming in 2007 

It was only so many months ago, but it was the beginning of an attempt at a renaissance in taxi awareness. With hybrid technology making Ford Crown Victrorias look pathetic besides its impending end of production, the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission had to take visible steps towards a new industry standard taxicab. 2007 marked the 100th year of the taxi cab in New York, and so it was time to shake things up. The NYC taxi was realized as an icon of the city, and so they began to work with a design team to create ideas for a taxi with greater passenger access, more user friendly credit card machines, and a logo that would give the taxi a brand identity, something easy to recognize and understand like any good corporate logo.

STILL CONSTRUCTING:.....

Taxi Prototypes, 2007:

via: Automotive.com

and: The Auto Channel.com

Kia Rondo

Standard Taxi

Standard Taxi

Concept:

Design Trust for Public Space

Mini Modal

Mini Modal Video

Penta?

Taxi Concept for 2008:

Ford Transit Connect

busy

Taxes, sorry guys, I got stories pending, but unable to finish them with the sleeping and the taxes taking up valuable time. 

Got messages from two NYC taxi internet people this week:

One from Yellowcabnyc who wants me to put a photoblog on the site. I'm all for doing that while still keeping my own here. He hasn't gotten back to me yet so we'll see. Go ahead and click on it, it's a valuable source for all NYC taxi news. Now I'm sure there are even greater sources, but I don't know of any.

And another from taxinyc.tv, wow. He wants to talk taxi, great site, has anybody shown the process of getting the taxi license with more detail and entertainment? And it's just the beginning. 

So while I'm being a lazy asshole check those two links out.  No, no I don't talk like that with customers.

3/09 shots

East Midtown (The United Nations)

East Midtown

The Lower East Side

On Van Wyck Expressway's entrance to the Grand Central Parkway, in Queens, Manhattan bound

The Queensboro Bridge, Queens (looking towards Manhattan while stuck in traffic)

3/08 shots

Brooklyn

Mott Haven, The Bronx

Downtown

Midtown

Upper West Side (Central Park West)

Queens Plaza, Queens

Long Island City, Queens

Cabbie choked for using cell

With A little help from her friends: Click that, very relevant taxi news

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A friend from that school/_!_? I attended in Boston has a photoblog worth seeing. Especially if you like to see the unique America we all know and sometimes love. 

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cheers yall