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."

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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!