Friendly man at 5am

Two memorable fares came on board this weekend; the first was around 5 am Saturday morning. I picked him up by being the last amongst a wave of taxis zooming down Second Avenue. Sometimes it’s better to coast down the avenue catching every yellow light looking for the passengers the other drivers couldn’t get.

He requested an intersection in Brooklyn that I wasn’t familiar with and I told him that as long as he knew how to get there, it’d be cool. He gave pretty clear directions, and I found the streets on the map eventually. He referenced a few streets that sounded familiar, but in all truth I can’t remember the last time I was on them: Brooklyn Avenue, Nostrand Avenue, Eastern Parkway. The only one he mentioned that I was fairly familiar with was Atlantic Avenue.

As we drove there, he was very helpful with his directions, and more so, he engaged me in conversation. He worked the night shift for child services, where he does lots of overtime as every case needs to be thoroughly investigated otherwise the government gets on his ass for not fully investigating. However his boss wants him to stop doing so much overtime. A damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. An unmarked cop car raced west on Fourth Avenue as we waited on Atlantic.

“Was that a Chrysler 300,” he exclaimed excitedly.

“Yes.”

It didn’t occur to me that the inventory of NYPD unmarked cars was shifting in new interesting directions. He told me that a lot of other cars I wouldn’t expect were being used. I don’t know how many of you readers are really interested in this conversation, so we’ll stop there.

Then he goes on to tell me that once he had too many tickets and in a certain circumstance he outran the cops turned a corner parked it and walked away. I don’t know about you, but the only reason I watch police chase shows is to root for the bad guy, too bad they never get away on television.