4/28 shots

Boerum Hill, Brooklyn

East New York, Brooklyn

Midtown

4/27 shots

Gowanus, Brooklyn

Downtown

Chinatown

Hamilton Heights

Long Island City, Queens

4/26 shots

Hell's Kitchen

Midtown / Times Square District

Gramercy

Queensboro Bridge

4/20 Pope weekend, day 2

It was another lovely Sunday morning, well, it was kinda slow once the sun came up, slower than usual. WCBS radio was adding to their traffic news coverage "Extended Pope traffic coverage," well I thought it was all hogwash and it could all be avoided anyway. This was the first time I decided to print out Gridlock Sam's traffic column, and the first sentence of the column said, "Don't drive if you don't have to this weekend." I barely noticed the Pope's presence on Saturday, he only stayed by the United Nations, and went to his hotel. I stayed west and downtown on Saturday and avoided the whole thing.

Sunday though was different. I waited at the Downtown Marriott as the sun rose while 10 minutes became a half-hour, and a half-hour grew past 1 hour of waiting. After this time I was first in line for the hotel only because the taxis in front had given up. I had some sort of odd feeling that it wasn't going to be any better anywhere else. The news reports were talking about road closures right where I was, and so I felt kind of special. I thought that I was in some enclosed Pope zone, and I wasn't even sure if I could leave. 

Pope Mobile spotted:

Downtown / Financial District (World Trade Center)

Well I got something out of it all, the Pope Mobile itself was towed past the taxi line and the hotel just before the gates were open at the World Trade Center site (A.K.A. Ground Zero). I was afraid to take a picture as it passed, fearing they'd lock me up and send me to Guantanamo. But then the doorman, the bellhop, and concierge as well as a few tourists whiped out their cellphones and aimed them simultaneously at the Pope Mobile in tow. Another 15 or 30 minutes passed and I got somebody up to Central Park, who told me the streets wouldn't be closed for another hour, he even had a sheet showing all the road closures in the area from the hotel. 

So it was all under relative control after that; pick up tourists, hope they don't go to Ground Zero, than work up to New Yorkers at noon driving them home after errands, or lunch, or the gym. But I soon found myself in deja vu:

Upper East Side

Here I was having found a hotel to wait at, all of Park Avenue became blocked north of 63rd and I was between 62nd and 63rd. Again I wasn't sure if I could drive off or if I would be target practice for the roof snipers. The oddest situation went down where an old man came up to me and told me he wanted to go up to 86th street. I told him he was first on the list when I get a chance to drive north again. So we waited, we all waited, the neighbors, the hotel guests, the Cadillac Escalade Limousine Drivers, the decorated soldiers? We all waited for what we heard was to be merely 15 minutes from the polite doormen and the police both. 15 minutes turned to 30, et-cetera.  The man asked if he could lean on my cab, and I took pictures of the waiting. 

More simultaneous cellphones

The officers told me that chances are all Avenues at the moment were closed north of 63rd.  "Wow this guy really messes with a town," said some random guy in shorts and a Hawaiian T-shirt, " He must think this city has no traffic at all." I looked back toward the hotel to see a sprinkling of hotel personnel all over. A man walked briskly but with a chipper disposition toward the street closure and asked one of the hotel guys this: "Hey who's manning the desk?" to which the reply was, "Nobody is." It was the culmination for me of the small town moment we were having. Hardly ever in New York City, and especially when working as a taxi driver do I hear or see evidence of something or somebody not being watched.

Just then the doorman asked me if I was available to take 2 people to Newark Airport, I really wanted to, but I had to talk between the doorman and the old guy who wanted to go uptown about how I couldn't go uptown anyway, and that once the streets opened north, an empty taxi-cab would be easy to find, and I asked the doorman if he'd help the man find a cab, and he obliged. 

Being that it was such a strange day, I continued to watch as the Papal Motorcade drove by. 

Eventually the Hawaiian shirt guy and his wife left in one of the Cadillac's. I returned to my cab to find the trunk packed and the people sitting waiting to be driven to Newark Airport, and but of course we made it in record time.

4/19 shots

Gowanus / Red Hook, Brooklyn

Greenpoint, Brooklyn

Downtown

The Customs House, very well restored, dates back to 1907, downtown looked a whole lot different back then.

Union Square

The Far West Side

Sunnyside,Queens

Tagged

It is time for me to talk about myself, which is a bit off course from what the taxiblog format is, but I enjoyed divulging some history of myself. When you get tagged it is only polite to forward your own blog post so that all of the strangers who read your blog can know more about you and then make fun of you Hah!  

Who tagged me, why the blogaholic new york taxi driver @ Cabsareforkissing.

G.S. was the first taxiblogger to comment on my blog and link to my blog about a year and a half ago, when I first started this blog. When looking for some inspiration, or an interesting story, his blog is the first one I go to. I'd go there if I were you. 

The rules are you post six interesting things about yourself, and if you get stuck, just bend the rules and write anything. Uhh yeah, sorry I got stuck. Then mention six other bloggers you hope might send this forward.

• I’m a vegetarian; actually I’m a vegan. I was raised an herbivore on top of my allergies to milk and various nuts and seeds. The allergies make me different from the typical vegans and vegetarians, since I never chose this lifestyle as a rebellion from my parents or society as a whole. Rather, I grew up feeling ostracized and struggling always to find something to eat, all the while saving up allowances while all my peers spent their change on candy. Yeah I guess I could’ve eaten a lot of candy, but my parents were afraid I wouldn’t know the difference between the food with milk and the foods without, so I grew up with good teeth, all the while hearing things like, “Wow, you’ve never eatin’ ICE CREAM, my god how do you live.” To which I would reply, “I’ve never eatin’ it, so how would I know if I like it?” It has only been recently that health food has gained popularity, and so it has been much easier to find food now, at a popular, expensive, price. Okay, okay one more thing I need to whine about, I hate health food restaurants, they think everything should be doused with either tahini, (which is a high concentration of sesame seeds whipped to a spread) or cooked in sesame oil. The other restaurants that lack skills tend to make everything with butter, which is an allergy I am becoming more immune to over time. I am most comfortable eating at a vegan friendly Mexican restaurant. 

• I got a BFA in photography. So why am I a cabbie? Well getting a job in photography isn’t easy, it’s all about telling people how good you are, and about getting lots of people to talk about you to one another and then bouncing from one job to another. Personally I have a conscious problem with talking about my skill, my work. To explain one’s work briefly with small words is one thing, but to try to drop as many big words, and big names as possible isn’t my style. I prefer cab driving, because unlike so many other chosen fields, there are no self-righteous interviews, no recommendations, no experience. All it is; is myself, a taxicab, and a shit load of temporary responsibility. As a cabbie I am only judged for my efficiency and no bullshit in between.

• I was born and raised in New York City, but people have a problem believing that. The taxicab though creates and builds upon some mythical urban edge that I almost have or improvise, as people’s questions get dumb. My answers get sharper only to save time as we fight traffic. Sometimes I wonder, have I actually gained a spark of wit from driving this boat? Or are these the most witless sheep to march in? Nonetheless for those who can see through the taxi, I appear completely and utterly un-New York, with no engrained repression, no accent (unless I put one on), and no impatience (well not until you don’t know where you are going). Oh by the way, I love getting directions, by receiving directions, I know you have your head on straight, and I might learn a faster route.

• Much related to having grown up in New York City, I must say a little something about the neighborhoods I have lived in while in the city. The city is way to big to bring generalizations about the whole place. Growing up in various neighborhoods can yield completely different educations, careers, passions, attitudes, wealth, and etcetera. I grew up in the East Village in Manhattan. I was shocked not long ago when a classmate of mine in Boston told me that I must be rich to have been raised in New York, I mean shit, ya might as well call me a Jew or assume that the whole city is made of lawyers, doctors, and agents (I am a Jew BTW, so I was commenting on her anti-semitism, not my own). In case anybody is wondering, a city cannot succeed with only one class of people; it thrives with both a ooober high class, and a dooooober low class as well. As a family we have always existed somewhere in the middle to lower-middle class. Anyway, I have no idea what wealth really means unless you are filthy stinking rich, it is all relative. The typical rents now fetch 2000 for a one bedroom, but most attention is paid to the part of town everyone knows. I have managed to find a rent that would even seem cheap in middle America, and back in the 80’s when this city was rising from the status of cesspool, people could live in SoHo and pay 60 per month. So somebody tell Tia that I am not rich. What, do you think I drive a taxi for pure joy? Well, actually it is kinda fun. Phew that was a tangent, the point is that many people do not understand the many different lives that can be experienced in such a city. Most children aren’t raised in midtown, and all residential neighborhoods have a miraculous way of isolating the children from such a complex size of the city, it is really impossible to comprehend for a child until they hit Junior High.

•  All right I”ll make fact number five simple, after the East Village, we moved to Stuyvesant Town. Stuy-Town was the model for Housing Projects. In an age where everything was a huge project, the city looked at Stuyvesant Town’s green space and mass housing accommodations as a solution to housing the lower class. This was at first a great plan, however over time the most important element of housing projects was overlooked, THE BUDGET. While Stuyvesant Town always kept the neighborhood in good conditions, the subsidized housing projects were neglected, and deteriorated quickly. Actually Stuyvesant Town was completely different from the housing projects even though they look the same. Stuyvesant Town was built after World War Two and put a priority on housing the veterans of the war. To build the neighborhood they demolished an entire shantytown of Blacks and Irish, oh but it gets worse, Stuyvesant Town had a history of refusing minorities as tenants. Previously owned by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, Stuy-Town would establish playground rules where park supervisors would watch children and tell them not to slide head first on the slides, or not to play hardball in parks too small for hardball. Instead of tennis, a game with a half deflated ball was only allowed on the tennis courts, in addition, all games with a ball were to only be played in playgrounds designated for such use. There was and still is no bicycle riding allowed. Fortunately times have changed, Stuyvesant Town was sold for more than a billion dollars to a different management company and is now being completely re-gardened and plowed constantly, There are video cameras and key cards being used now for doors to investigate tenants who may not live there full time. Each apartment is moving up to market rate, which is probably 2000 per bedroom per month, and so it is beneficial to kick out every tenant possible to make way for younger and richer people. 
  

• And now to where I live now; Staten Island. When talking about New York City, New Yorkers will raise there voice and straighten their posture while naming all that is good with their entire existence, but New York’s biggest secret is Staten Island, the 5th borough of NYC’s 5 boroughs, it is about the same size as Brooklyn, and it connects to Brooklyn with the our country’s largest span suspension bridge. What this Borough has going good ends pretty much there. If you’ve seen the suburban houses all in pleasant rows from the city line all the way to the end of Long Island, and throughout the entire state of New Jersey, then You might as well skip Staten Island. In fact Staten should be a part of New Jersey in my opinion. They wanted the Statue of Liberty, and they got Ellis Island. Nobody came to America to live in Jersey, and likewise, nobody came to America to live in Staten. The said, I love it on the island. I get to ride my bicycle through the hills to the beach, and a lot of the houses are beautiful Victorian style in some disrepair. Most commonly Staten Island is known for it’s Italian population and most of the residents I assume are in blue collar or pension plan work. Still there are many others who live only Island because it is the last affordable haven. There are still hints of old New York in the Staten Island accent, which is a cross between Long Island, northern New Jersey, and a little Brooklyn for flavor. And the prices, did I mention the prices. Now if only we had some decent transportation, and a decent place to get some good food.
  

The Six Bloggers tagged are: 

Paradise Driver - The Taxi Driver in Hawaii, with a good sense of humor, and word has it, he's going to be an english teacher in Korea, the good Korea, I'm not good at geography, nor do I care to look it up, I know, America today humph, lazy bastards like me who don't look things up. BTW Good luck on your new endeavor. 

Taxi Talk - His Canadian town is riddled with drugs, prostitutes, and ya know, danger, darkness, et-cetera,  et-cetera, Really?? well shoot, I'm canceling my trip to Canada. Rated the best taxi driver in Edmonton Canada. He keeps the language raw so make sure your innocence can click the I accept profanity button. Are you still driving the cab?

trog - The college people are invading New York City Damn it! but I want to hear about their lives. This blog is written by a friend who graduated the art school up in Boston, who is now down in NYC with a whole bunch of my alumni friends from up north.

Keep Up - Abby gave me the tour of the school in Boston, which I cleverly fail to mention 'cause it sucked balls, but Abby was alright.

GodsHomeMovies - Yet another alumni who makes the school look brilliant, writes of real inspirations and interest and is one of the few to question What the fuck they're doing from time to time, and pull out always with great composition, gorgeous color, well thought out concept, and just all around good photographs, now if only they drove a taxi.

JezBlog - Jez Coulson, I doubt will stoop to the low level of writing such a post on his professional  photoblog. I had the pleasure of having Jez ride around in my cab and shoot as much as he could. His shots from that day are here, and here,

and if you want to find all the taxi shots in his blog, they are here: Taxi Archive

4/13 shots

Park Slope, Brooklyn

Gramercy

Downtown

Downtown Brooklyn

4/12 shots

Chelsea

Hell's Kitchen

got mad butter?

It was at 50th and 7th Avenue where I picked these two up. They were both dressed real nice, one wore a white leather jacket, both had their hair cut so short it was barely there. They walked with care not to scuff their shoes. I stopped and let them in. Instantly the guy on the left started to talk with high energy, animated and throwing in the N word at least once every sentence.

"Yo N-gah, what was that?" the left said to the right, "It was like the N- was up in our face and.. where this n- come from?"

Right guy- “Yo I don't know man, I don't know," he reclined deep into the seat. "There was mad girls though-“

Left guy- "Really?"

Right guy- "Yeeaah, all these girls were all around us. They were trying to pull them off of us.”

Left- “He threw his chain on me son!" 

“What?" said the right

Left- “Does it look bad?" He motions to his face and straightens his posture.

The right guy, takes a minute, and looks at the mark on his friend's face, searches for any other marks, but doesn't take too long to frighten his friend. "Nah, nah, you'll be alright, just ice it.”

We pass 45th on Broadway; vibrant lights shout and dance around the cab, clashing with our silence.

Left guy- “My ma though, she is gonna freak.”

My eyes darted to the rear-view mirror to see what this was about. I got a little tense to say the least when they came in with their language and the talk about violence, but it was becoming clear they were just kids who'd been the victim of some shit from some jerks way worse than they were. I hoped he knew he needed to ice that thing pronto. I mean maybe he should see a doctor or something.

They went on for a bit about how the guy came out of nowhere, and questioning what brought them into the situation. We were now at the north end of Washington Square Park. I stared at the traffic light reading it like a clock. The first red light in a trip always feels the longest. The guy on the left had taken a breath between words for a bit, the guy on the right was handling the night with more reserve and so our minds raced in our moment of stillness.

Hey cab driver," said the guy on the left, "What would you do if some guy started something with you?”

Well actually I've never been in a fight before," I said.

And the figurative wall between the passengers and me was broken; he had the green light to explain his story to me.

"No offense," he said, "But these white guys came out of nowhere and just started with us, throwing names and he was all up in my friend's face, so I stood in front of my friend and he threw his chain at me. I was like, what the fuck? You know?"

I: “Did you punch him back or something?” If it was I, I wouldn’t have done a damn thing, but I had to maintain a tough guy taxi driver image for these clients.

He: “I would’ve trashed him, but I didn’t want the police coming in, ya know, shit man that’d be the last thing I need. Yo I got mad butter on me son.”

Hmmmm, and thus a title for this post, apparently butter is convictions, warrants, previous whatever, whatever builds up a police record for an individual. Who knew?

I: “Did you come from the same club as them?”

He: “No I have no idea where they came from.”

I: “You know I think that whole area is bad. Sometimes there are places where you go and bad shit just happens... often.”

My statement was ignored. Getting told to avoid a spot wasn’t in their modus operandi. He continued talking to his friend who now had some moments of reprieve from this high-energy dialogue, and to me, whoever would listen really.

“Yo I was going to fight him son but shit I got mad butters, mad mad butter, and I figured I’d keep my cool.”

Now we were at Canal and Broadway, turning to soon approach the Manhattan Bridge and take a straight line through Brooklyn and hopefully not too far. Thoughts of pride, and respect circled in his head. He took some time to gather another sentence up. I might have glanced in the mirror again, and I might have seen a hint of the scar, but I couldn’t see the whole thing because the mirror was too small. The one with the adrenaline and the scar he looked kinda young, maybe 22 years, his eyes were wide open on an automatic human instinct to be fully aware incase anything else should turn un-expected. The other mostly because of how he carried himself seemed to be 26ish, and he held a responsibility to take his good friend home safely.

He started again, more softly trying to recollect, directing eye contact with his friend, “Where did they even come from though?”

Right- “I have, no idea.” Shaking his head and speaking at low decibel.

Left- “Do you know what we could’ve been doing to instigate it?”

Right- “Not a clue man, not a clue.”

Fortunately it wasn’t too far into the borough of BK, the fare was paid by credit as we sat adjacent to a fire hydrant. It might have been five minutes maybe even more that we sat, while the two agreed scar face, would be all right. He asked me how bad it was. I twisted and looked uninhibited through the partition and was taken aback at first. Parallel to his nose a red line ran from his swollen upper lip to just above his left eyebrow. I looked longer and harder, the scar though was barely in ‘scar’ territory, it wasn’t raised from the skin so it seemed that maybe it may swell up a bit and then disappear over time. So I told him it wasn’t that bad.

So after his friend finally left, we went on. I told him I’d take three dollars off his fare, because had I known the ride was to continue I wouldn’t have shut the meter off, which ads three dollars as a surcharge at the beginning of each ride at that time, I don’t think he followed. Then he told me he’d give me directions to his house, and I was following his directions until I realized his address was in the other direction, and as is quite common, his directions were completely backwards. I traveled a whole ten blocks or more east when his place was only a little bit south of the first drop off. I then shut off the meter, which was at seven, and turned around. Oh the poor guy was groaning as the sting was setting in and the adrenaline was wearing off. He was looking all around unfamiliar with where he was for most of the ride, until we were within walking distance.

“Stop right here,” he said quickly. And so I stopped, and waited, and waited some more. I was wondering how much time I should give this guy before I give him a quizzical look.

He-“So… How much is it?”

I-“Oh, oh yeah it’s uhh, seven, whatever.”

I thought he would’ve figured that out. He walked into his apartment tower at a medium pace. As I made my way back I thought perhaps the scar had caused more damage than at first we all believed.

And the moral of the story for me is, I shouldn’t go to Times Square empty before the sun is up. For you the moral of the story is similar, don’t party near Times Square, too many assholes. I have to get back to work now. I've been on my breakfast break for just over an hour. Sorry it took me so long to finish writing this.

Snake In A Cab!

Holy sh$%! Taxi Tales has a whopper of an incident:

Part 1: Missing Snake

Part 2: Snakes Alive

4/05 shots

The East Village

The Upper West Side

Hell's Kitchen

The Lower East Side

3/30 shots

Midtown

Midtown

-That's a real cat

Central Park, 65th /66th Street Transverse Road

Manhattan Valley

East Harlem / El Barrio

Fashion District

-and that's gridlock