NYCTAXIPHOTO

And I don't have to go right now

2012-01-11T00:09:00.002-05:00

I just put up a new section in my blog. A place for all the images captured in the bathrooms I've found in my taxi driving days. Sadly I only have 19 pictures, as I often forgot to take my camera with me to the Loo. Also most bathrooms needed a high quality camera to get better exposure... anyway, here are some bathrooms, that fit the criteria of a quick entry and exit with a space to leave the car for a few minutes without a ticket.

Available Toilets

the radio and time - a pointless post.

2012-01-09T14:55:00.000-05:00

radio, mmm volume up, 2pm, better late than never to wake up,

beats in a kitchen reverberating
remind me of wheels rolling
spare time between 5 dollars and 10

like when time really accounted for something
time only here for me had such a significance, almost something i could see like an inch and a foot

time was always going on a fifth of a mile basis.
and the traffic was flowing
convincing myself that we were progressing
like computer made rhythms

it was advised to never put the car in reverse, unless you accepted driveway drop offs

time is soooo slowww now... ugh this terrible song came on the radio just now, assaulted my ears, and then a lot of loud stupid advertisements. I should've changed the station 5 minutes ago.... see time. slow... err well i guess all that proves is my reaction time is down. oh darn.

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T22:53:00.001-05:00

Here's a few lines I just came up with: Thoughts on photography, on being free, on always searching for what makes me proud. Most importantly, about listening to the air of change, this feeling brewing that everything needs work and progress, that stagnancy isn't very healthy for me right now. I quit on Wednesday, The very first cab I take on New Years asked me for my phone number and will supposedly call me because they always need drivers, but I'm not going back, no. I'm not putting it all on hold any longer.

I’ve been on an endless journey to a tease

Seeing every place without knowing it

A classic Greek motif coffee in my warm right hand

Sipping and staring at endless compositions

Seeing within a box

A contrast between knowing and thinking,

Thought bubbles tramping around in my head,

Slaughtering my rights to walk around and take my time with this town

The tease is over

The world can’t be won through a window all the time

The traffic light boxes are clanking in anticipation

Our moment in stillness will cease

Only 34 hours to go

2011-12-26T12:43:00.001-05:00

Well this is awesome-ish. I just took off this week for Christmas day; missed Wednesday too, but I managed to work every other day so far. This is my last Monday, tomorrow my last Tuesday, and Wednesday will be my final day. I actually feel like it is most likely that I'll find myself back in the cab business soon enough. It is like being wired into the flux of life in such a special way it is an addiction of the greatest most healthy kind. But there are a lot of factors that pull all the goodness out of the profession. I'm pretty sure that I'm always looking for a sign that this is my calling. I'm looking for a hidden message that all the fate and randomness of being in this big toasty warm Crown Victoria on these cold days will tell me that either I should get out while I still have the time to find something else, or that I should sit back, relax and enjoy the ride I bring.

And I have to say that everything I see in the news, the politicians and their disguised punches at the lower class, and the public in general, their disgruntled take everything for granted attitude towards the fantastic service they recieve, the traffic, yes!!! YES!! THE DAMN TRAFFIC!! and the overhead fees that just don't make it all worth the time!! There are so many rides out there, more than ever before. But the daily lease price I pay is $109.75 now, and I pay another $30 or $40 for gas, .50 cents per ride, and 5% of every credit card transaction comes out of my pocket as well. You can see that there are loads and loads of cash coming into big yellow taxis, but it's all trickling up out of my pocket. Easily I can take 15 even 20 rides and still be in the red for the day.

A loss of a day, or a gain?

My Thursday was just such a day, wasted 3 hours and 15 minutes waiting at JFK airport and gave a ride to Kew Gardens for about 20 bucks. I called my taxi friend Gil for the best directions there, and he helped me greatly. Since I had a short haul ticket to get back to JFK within 90 minutes and wait on a shorter line to get my next fare, I decided to see Gil's new apartment in Richmond Hill and He treated me to a fantastic cactus burrito. Very nice neighborhood there, it reminds me of the old tranquility that we used to have in the East Village back when I was just a sprout in the 80's. You gotta get so far out to the ends of the city to find an apartment that even comes close to reasonable in living space and price. I parted from these quiet confines of interlaced streets with enough time to get to the airport with my coupon for the quicker line, but then I got a call on Gil's phone, D'oh!!! I had to turn around and return his phone. Yeah a taste of our own medicine, cabbie leaves phone in friend's cab. So I drove to LaGuardia Airport, waited there for an hour and ate that great burrito. By the time thursday was done I'd worked 11 hours, maybe it was the full 12, and I actually lost money. The way I see it though, is I got to see more of New York. I'm still finding new places and seeing fantastic environments after driving a cab for 6 years and being born and raised here, I got a nice new meal, I had time to enjoy both airports, I spent much of the day driving through empty streets in a more quiet New York, and all I spent was 15 dollars. I'd like to see you do better! You can't rent a car and pay for gas, get a big cactus burrito, cover 136 miles, and only spend 15 dollars in 12 hours, can you??

Good Taxi Karma:

Check this out though. On Friday, the day was all pretty mediocre until I had this really cool guy from Manhattan Beach California who had to go to JFK. From there I took Atlantic Avenue back toward the city. I figured I didn't have enough time to go back to Manhattan and pull more cash in before the taxt was due for return in Brooklyn. But the most awesome string of luck hit me all in the mighty boro of Brooklyn!!

I got $11 dollars for a ride from Bergen Street and Flatbush Avenue, to Atlantic Avenue and Court Street. While I looked to pull away, people stopped me and climbed in to go to Ikea in Redhook, another $12 bucks. At the Ikea a man was looking for a yellow cab and walked in. He took me all the way to 91st street and 2nd Avenue, paying me $37.80 with a credit card. I was really scared that I was cutting my time restrictions really close with that one. No waiting, no searching, my intention was to be off duty, but another lady hailed me before he even got out of the cab. She had to go pretty much around the block, from one school building to another. The ride was 3.80, she gave me 4 bucks, and with that I flicked the off duty light on, and raced back to the garage. This was one of the most amazing strings of luck I've had in a long time. A consecutive run totaling 63 dollars in about 50 minutes. I was just gonna go home early and then wham, lucky times, that's taxi God magic juice!

The pluses of today, minute by minute:

So let's get back to today being awesome-sih. On the plus side here today, I went to Starbucks and got a Venti, that's a large for those of you who don't speak Starbuckese. I got a Venti for the price of a small, or, tall. When you're an early bird, the other people who have to work these crazy hours sometimes throw you a small favor every now and then. And as I've written this blog post, I've had 5 trips already from this veteran cabbie pick-up spot on the upper-east side, transporting people to the local hospitals. I figure today will be slow, that it'd be best to count on these people, everyone else might be off, and they have so many days off that even the airports will continue to be in practical hibernation.

My Steady cab needed to be checked on today, so they gave a different car, I think I've already had my few hours to get comfortable with the mirrors, and I found that if I sit on both my pillow and my comprehensive city map, I can drive it well. Oh let me correct myself, still not so sure about the mirrors, I'm a bit of a nervous guy, everything can always be better and always needs improvement. Nothing is more important to my than my side-view mirrors, what with my partition putting a block on my left blind spot.

the ride run-down up to the minute:

Anywho, I now have $19.70 in net/gross earnings, minus 2.50 for the five rides is $17.20, plus $3.70 in tips, which comes to 20.90, that's not right, it should be all dollars and no change, as it's all been cash so far, anyway woohoo I just got a $14.20 ride, with a 2 dollar tip, but it was a credit transaction, so that's 16.20 minus .81 cents, so that's an extra 15.39 added to my gross total, minus another 50 cents for the ride, so 14.89+20.90 = 35.79 minus 5 bucks i gave my dispatcher in the morning, minus 2 bucks I spent on the coffee, and I now have a total of 28.79. in the end I will have to spend another $140 on the lease and the gas, and maybe another 10 bucks for the ny state taxi ride tax. Alright! Now I just got a 13.40 ride with a 2 dollar tip but again a credit; so that's another 15.40 - .72 = 14.68 - .50 = 14.18 + 28.79 = 42.97 - 140 = -97.00. Yep I'm down just about a hundred bucks, than I hope to make another hundred bucks so that I can go home with some profit. A hundred bucks profit on an 11 hour work day translates to a $9.09 per hour salary. So you see, I'm doing this as a hobby that gets my by. And the chances that I'll even finish the day with that right now are very slim. I gotta pee

... intermission..

Ahh it has now been 20, or 30 minutes since I had to pee. I drove around in a circle of sorts- a right on 51st street from 7th ave, a right on 8th avenue, a right on 54th street, a right on Broadway, and I parked the cab at the McDonald's a the corner. I took my laptop and Starbucks cup over to the S.Bucks across the street. Unfortunately I found both bathrooms displaying a vacant sign and yet they were locked. I waited 30 seconds, and then decided to try somewhere else. Most likely this location has decided to lock the bathrooms so only customers could go after they asked. I fell into an iffy category, as I had purchased coffee that day from a different location, right back around when I started writing this post at around 5:30am, this location was about 6 miles away, and 4 hours apart. I walked back to the cab putting my laptop under my pillow and my coffee cup back in it's place, and I put my winter jacket on. I walked two blocks to the Sheraton Towers and used the wonderful facility over there. Swwweeet!! My ride rundown is now a 7 dollar ride with a 3 dollar tip, in cash, and a 4.20 ride paid for with a 5 dollar bill in cash. So we can now add 14 dollars to my gross income, that'd be 15 bucks minus one dollar for the state's pockets. Let's do a recount of it all and see where I'm at...

I've got $108 in my pockets.

I've made $37.20 in credit transactions

a 5% transaction fee takes away $1.86

I came in to the day with $70 to make change for my customers.

I gave $5 to my dispatcher.

I paid $2 for coffee.

The state takes $4.50 for the 9 rides within the confines of New York State.

The garage will charge me $109.75 for the privilege of driving the cash cow, Queen Crown Victoria.

I've driven 30.7 miles so I predict that results in around 7 dollars, or 9 dollars.

and so the tally comes to... drum roll please... YEP!! If I returned the car right now I'd go home with negative $56.91. Oh wait, I just gave a 9 dollar ride with a 4 dollar tip, so now we have negative $44.41.

Not bad, not great by any means, but I wasn't going to break the bank today. It is now 10:17 in the morning. I have 5 hours of driving within the next 2 hours I will have made the money I need to pay off the all the charges. And then I'll have 3 hours to perhaps make my $100

I only, only, only, only have 30 hours to go-oh-oh!

sorry, couldn't help myself, a little Ramones for you, a piece of New York, from Forrest Hills, Queens. the the famous now extinct CBGB's in the East Village.

And now finally, I've found internet, at my favorite spot in the lower east side, a nice health food store just around the corner from Katz's. It's now 12:39pm and my meter tells me it has grossed $102 dollars. not a good sign as I need to get the meter to gross $225 to give me a profit near $100. Obviously despite my quitting on Wednesday, I've already checked out. I still have 2.5 hours to make 10 to 15 rides and my hundred. This is not out of the question. I will put the laptop away and get hardcore with this M.F. right here, teehee.

and so now... I only, yadayada, have 28 hours to go!

Final Update: I made 31 dollars, for an hourly average of $2.95 per hour. I'm just happy I made money. Another driver said he made 20, and another said he had only 10 rides to my 21, so go figure.

Jinxed!

2011-12-13T17:08:00.001-05:00

Nissan is already marketing their NV200 globally as a New York tough, van; but it hasn't even arrived. Check for Snakes -New York Avenue in Arizona

tide change

2011-11-27T17:54:00.000-05:00

greetings, I posted something a while back in August when I was feeling rather glum. The effort required back then to make even half the expected income of a day was too much, and I was feeling it was about time to drop out of the taxi business. There are a lot of things that really fill my mind and set my body into a rhythm that I really love in this career, but the one thing I detest is that the raw capitalist nature of the job has me always thinking about dollars, in effect it puts the driver in a role where they become a slave to their own mind, nobody in particular can really push them around when the driver breaks down all the influences, but earning income based on traffic, customers, overhead costs, and the likelihood of repeat customers, can make a cabbie very crabby indeed. I don't like what I see developing inside myself sometimes. It's like a game of billiards, except instead of seeing with tunnel vision directed at the next ball, it's on the next fare, so many meaningless strategies are attempted and it just feels like a waste of energy and talent.

this season is being much nicer to me in the income sense, the money is coming better than it has in 10 months, but still, I don't want to limit my happiness to the longing for a few more dollars, it feels degrading. And so I'll keep you updated.

I want to have time to devote to bring this blog to a complete site with all the stories i can remember and all the pictures I love, and let it run itself into another photo project. I assume that I'll quit this gig after about 6 years or so, I'll quit in january or february, and grab a few jobs that pay out half the income, but it will drain my energy only to the level of an average citizen, it'll give me time to work on this site. and go to the next step.

Mercedes-Benz

2011-10-29T11:17:00.003-04:00

Yep. You've seen it here first folks, unless you've already seen it at my flickr account. First time I've seen a Mercedes Benz S.U.V. taxi here in the city. It's not the first time actually that there's been a Benz among our yellow cabs, but the S.U.V. is a new one, and it's especially interesting since the Lexus taxi isn't approved anymore, so this might be the alternative for an owner/driver who's been driving long enough to be able to afford such a thing.

Why? you ask: it's a clean diesel vehicle, so it doesn't burn as much gas, and it might also have cleaner emissions.

For those of you not familiar with the whole taxi model issue in New York City and North America, the Crown Victoria, our most used taxicab here will soon be unavailable. So as the months move forward from about 2 years ago up until within the end of next year, we're going to have to find the best alternative car to replace the big Ford Crown Victoria. We need a car that has a lot of trunk space, room for 5 large adults, good gas mileage, long lifespan and good reliability, cheap replacement parts and cheap repairability, and last but not least, the highest safety standards.

This is a subject that really gets me excited. You can probably figure that out if you click HERE for my photo page of almost every model of taxi on the New York Streets today!

I tried to go one further with a page of as many pictures I could find of taxicab models in New York City since the dawn of time, I start with a umm.. vehicle, that pre-dates the meter. see the history page HERE.
I set the pages up also in the tab section right at the top of the blog. The Mercedes Benz taxi from the late 90's is on that page, as are a bunch of other interesting ones.

The Year 2013: I probably should tell you that the mayor and the Taxi and Limousine Commission has already approved one certain vehicle to be used once we hit that certain date. On that year the standard taxicab will be a Nissan NV200. I believe the only alternative vehicles allowed to be taxicabs will be vans retrofitted for wheelchair access. I find this extremely limiting. In my opinion we are going through the early stages of a mini taxi revolution right now. We're experimenting with small cars, large cars, minivans, hybrids, and diesels. We are looking into greener solutions, and wheelchair solutions. And I worry that between the year 2013 and the 5 to 8 years after, we will be stuck again with a taxicab that doesn't really address anybody's concerns. Hey at least we won't all be driving the Crown Victorias anymore, but there are major concerns that the new taxicab has no plan for wheelchair access, and it doesn't do enough to limit emissions. By the year 2020 we won't have one hybrid taxi on the streets, and perhaps every taxicab will have annoying sliding doors.

Never mind the fact that when Nissan holds a monopoly on the New York taxi industry, it means Nissan will hold all aces at the poker table when negotiating a sale of a car. What is an owner to do? they can't purchase a different car, so the taxi van could inflate its own price based on the regulated demand. Nissan estimates 1 billion dollars in profit from this deal, and maybe, you think, maybe, officials in the mayor's office and the taxi commission might have asked for a few kickbacks to put Nissan in such a good place? it'd be naïve not to think that. I think this van will be awesome for the most part, but I also think it'd be beneficial to keep other cars on the approved taxi list, like the Toyota Highlander, The Prius, and Camry.

A day @ J.F.K.

2011-10-04T16:40:00.005-04:00

From the J.F.K. Central Hold Lot:

Every now and then I feel like I need to save my energy, and so I weigh the pros and cons of waiting at the airport.

The cons: I may make very little money, I may be missing out on the streets of Manhattan, and for all the stress I saved criss-crossing Manhattan, I could get the same level of stress all in one heap with a JFK ride into the city. comparatively when it's a 3 hour wait during the busiest hours of taxi driving in the city and then a 1 hour or more drive into the city, that equals to an earning of only 45 dollars, 42.98 if they pay with credit card. Tipping is crucial after you've wasted all this time.

The Pros: While I wait I can sleep in the car, take long walks through the parking lot and people watch and car watch. There are so many interesting varieties of taxicabs available now. Did you know that taxi owners can now purchase all wheel drive Toyota Highlanders that don't need to be hybrids? there is a side of home fries at the cafeteria that I can order for only 3 dollars which contains nothing I'm allergic to in the ingredients. Amazing things can happen in the income department as well, but they are rare. I can get say a short haul trip to somewhere in Brooklyn for as much as 60 dollars, more money than Manhattan with a bigger tip too, Brooklyn passengers tend to tip more, a fact which is changing now as richer people are migrating to further parts of the city, they tip less of course. A short haul grants me permission to head back to the same airport within 90 minutes and cut to an express line and hopefully another short haul! but of course what are the odds? Never have I gotten this lucky, but I think you can get a trip to Long Island where you negotiate the price and still receive a short haul pass. The passes are given to us to encourage us to come back, and also as an apology to us because more money is made in short time in the borough of Manhattan. I've had days where it didn't feel particularly astounding, but my time between fares would be between 2 and 5 minutes, with my time spent with passengers at only 10 minutes or less. That is key, quick customer turn around, and tips in the 2 dollars range per ride. You get both of these, and it's like the good old days again, but yeah it's like a once a week phenomenon. The abundance of yellow cabs and new drivers is confounding even on the slowest days, and their reluctance to care for their own safety is also exasperating.

The Holding Lot after the morning rush. It has probably just emptied from 100% down to 30% capacity, but it is starting to slow down. The wait if lucky may still take 1 hour. These two cabs in the foreground are parked unconventionally out of line, one must've lost its turn with a dead battery, and another brother cabbie is helping with a jump start. Since the whole thing is going down right in front of the dispatching office, they should accept him back out of the hold lot with a pass to his assigned airline terminal, and hopefully the helping cabbie will also be accepted back into his place in line.

J.F.K. is a welcome reprieve from the madness:

About every twenty minutes a plane would pass over the holding lot and across the Expressway to the landing strip:

After a trip to the bathroom and maybe a quick lunch or prayer, this cabbie is turning around deciding to drive back empty rather than wait on the long taxi line. The cab lot I believe holds around 1000 taxicabs:

it was a normal day, oh right, then this happened:

2011-09-27T19:55:00.002-04:00

okay, I feel a lengthy post coming on, not that anything eventful has been going on, but I've collected about 50 or so photos and videos, and a good chunk could be put up here and maybe summarized into a day in the life type thing. this for example I saw today.

This is why it seems the safest pre-caution to take is probably keeping good maintenance of your vehicle. Why it wasn't but a mere 8 hours, or was it one full day before this that I saw a van with both front wheels tilted inward and it was driving at more than 40 miles an hour on the highway. Who knows what caused this, but I feel it's safe to say that it lost a front wheel. And it's pretty hard to control the van after that happens I'd imagine. Last week I saw a taxicab lose its rear tire, poof, gone. He changed lanes on the highway, and what I thought initially was a tailpipe emissions gone horribly wrong was actually the tire combusting. The cab was able to pull back from the middle lane to the right lane and than to a small patch of dirt on the side of the road, well done, but again, maintenance. Our New York businesses that mess with automobiles as a way of getting the cash rolling in, tend to let their cash cow bleed until it dies. We have to prey the cash cow doesn't take an actual life with it.

A wonderful thing

2011-09-15T09:44:00.002-04:00

Hopefully this will free me up a bit more, give me a starting point to start writing the blog more. The theme: songs that pop on the radio, and give me some peace, some tranquility as I pretend not to be an automaton making a series of turns within a square grid. This song was a clear stand out as well as some song from Fionna Apple, and another song from one of those new trendy bands. But anyways this is the song I could find and be sure this was the exact same song, and everytime Al Green starts playing I think my heart rate slows down a little, as if I was petting a cat, or staring at fish.

Idioteque

2011-09-11T09:03:00.001-04:00

Reckoner

2011-09-11T08:47:00.001-04:00

9/10/2011

2011-09-10T17:49:00.002-04:00

well folks, I guess being that I haven't been posting much at all, it would be rude of me to go completely blank on this 10th anniversary of our movie magic tragic day, and by that I mean it was a very surreal day, I don't mean any disrespect. I'm still not ready to fully lament on my opinions and feelings about all that, mostly because I was not so closely connected with the World Trade Center, and yet I was living in New York City at the time, with my family, and we had to figure it all out. It's all still very indecipherable, I mean do we even know what these "evil powers" want? usually terrorism has a very clear protest cause, but the radical powers that are against us seem to just be doing it on the same grounds as a Hitler type, we are not like them, we are the stand out example of the opposite of them, or so they think. But to examine all of this is just to play into their hands. And let me explain, this "they" I'm talking about is a very universal "they" because as the whole terrible hate void goes on, it's all very unresolved, and until it is resolved we can't really say who is the real enemy that we have decided to fight. The radical Islamists are the one's declaring themselves the enemy, but why is Osama Bin Laden's family being protected from harm by the United States? well that can be explained, i suppose his family is good people, but mind you his family is rich, Saudi Arabia is rich and therefor they are not the enemy. The enemy becomes Pakistan, because we don't like Pakistan so much. Fine whatever, I'm not a very knowledgeable person when it comes to all of this, but just remember, the only finite thing we know is someone likes to scare us a lot, and it seems like the sources putting out the most fear are the media and the Government. The Government has been spreading less fear than it was under the Bush Admin, but still a high level of fear nonetheless. It's not so clear who we should hate, which is good news, because in order to live life to your fullest really with a clear mind, shouldn't you just always be on your quickest most ready state always, always seeing everything around you, it doesn't matter all the energies behind such things, what matters is that they are there, and we must be alive.

So there it is, my dribble. Oops, I totally wasn't going to write all of that, but it just came out. anyway, I had another idea for my blog recently. I was thinking of putting in a song a day entry, just whatever happened to come on the radio that day that particularly inspired me. Tomorrow will be different, I picked two songs that I think are expressive about the whole 9-11 thing. And Oh my gosh, can we please stop calling it that, oh and no more "Ground Zero" there is no "Ground Zero" It was and will always be the "World Trade Center" until all the buildings re-open.

Thank you, and have a pleasant September.

new taxi

2011-09-01T22:26:00.004-04:00

The Ford Transit Connect!

It looks odd, especially with the rooflight advertisement cone on top, it really conflicts with the tall boxy shape of the car. besides that though it looks like it may have more passenger room and luggage room than the Ford Escape, that's the car next to it.

Apparently now you can buy this car as an alternative to the approved hybrids, or the big Ford Crown Victoria. Or I'm not sure, maybe you can't get those cars anymore, they may all be off the approved list now. Another new addition to the list is a regular Nissan Altima, not just the hybrid model.

Iceland Trip, part 2

2011-08-23T01:04:00.001-04:00

More Pictures from that other place:

The Iceland Trip, part 1

2011-08-22T00:49:00.003-04:00

Here's the best of pile from the tourist shots I took. You know, waterfalls etcetera. Well I don't have much to say about it, yet. Here you are:

I'm sorry

2011-08-19T19:44:00.002-04:00

I'm sorry, that I just haven't been able to give this blog the respect that it deserves. I haven't posted all the pictures I wanted. I haven't been able to fill it with juicy stories.

the story part is the real tragedy here. most of my job has become a project for me to move as much into the mundane as possible, and all the nuances of the job have really become closely examined, and for the most part any people that seemed the least bit weird, or out of ordinary were just that, they have been only slightly off, and all has really been mild entertainment for me. but as days, paved way to years, I just wanted everything to be normal, I didn't want any drama, i didn't want any story produced at my expense. I have a few stories, some of which I have put down in this blog, and some that I haven't, and that very very mild accumulation was enough to me. I decided to go from working 2 days a week, to 3 days a week, to 4 days a week, and now 5 days a week. Many times I have minimized my 12 hour days to 10 hours, and cut my night hours out of my shift. I have avoided risk and taken large pay cuts, all just to grade my excellence on my skill to avoid trouble rather than my skill to pull in money.

the real truth in the cab business now is the most dangerous part, the hardest part, and what makes me pull out my hair is the other drivers, who play chicken with me and use lanes that don't even exist to steal customers from me, cars who are yellow cabs, my fellow man, and women, but also car service cars, also weekend warriors from New Jersey, also good bus drivers, bad bus drivers, garbage trucks, and just plane non-descript assholes. people for 3 to 4 hours of my day can be commonly using their vehicles as assault tools, to threaten my life, to threaten all that I hold dear. and at the end of a calm day, I make 70 dollars. At the end of a better day 120, which is rare now. I can barely afford the rent, and despite all of this the cabbies keep coming, the lease prices never go down, and the government won't give me free healthcare. this project should end, and it should end very soon. I just don't know what to do next.

this thing is still really really awesome and fun. I love taking in all these people, as I have an anxiety about people in general, and 99% of the time they prove me wrong, people as a whole are very very good, and I feel thankful that I am a part of this thing we call humankind, but the powers that be are not fitting many lower class jobs sufficiently into the economic puzzle. this and many other jobs when performed at the highest and fairest levels do not provide a livable wage. Remember as an independent contractor I pay 15% of my income in taxes, i dunno maybe more i don't remember.

Anyway this isn't exactly goodbye, it's just an acknowledgement that I'm not authoring this blog like I should be. We'll se where it goes from here. Maybe it'll free me up to write more about what's on my mind, and dump more good pictures in here. But make no mistake this should be coming to a close eventually.

has it been 5 years or longer.

2011-07-21T10:42:00.024-04:00

people ask me how long, drivers and passengers alike and they are always astounded by my answer. answering this question is kind of like telling your age, you just pick a number and stick with it, who's counting. maybe it's been 5, maybe it's been 6. I think I remember as a kid reading in the book, and well, having it read to me, Roald Dahl's BFG, he said age depends on how many hours somebody spent awake, most people sleep half the day away.

my job started as a weekend thing, and only this year have I tried 5 days a week, 70 hours that'd be. But these numbers never really add up that way, if you really want to measure a cabbie's work load you'd probably do best to measure the miles driven.

anyway I was going through my older albums and found a nice set of 5. okay I got carried away and threw in some more. honestly the whole blogger/google experience is so hard to work with I've now tired myself out, I deleted one shot, by mistake, and I could look back into my picassa album and find it, but it wouldn't be worth the 30 minutes. I could re-arrange these pictures in the perfect order, I could write what's special about each picture, which isn't so special, because every picture has some thing to it. so bother, this is it. I'm going on a nice vacation to see relatives in Iceland tonight. enjoy!

Men In Black -take us back in time. part2 -video

2011-06-21T15:10:00.003-04:00

here are the short videos from the event, well, I like to call it an event. It really brightened up my day, as I spent one hour of my time driving around in circles through the area trying to find a legal parking spot, which gave me more rides and more money than usual. Weirdest one was a driver who pulled up to me near the U.N. telling me he had a passenger, umm yes? well this passenger was going to Randall's Island to play baseball with his team, apparently the driver didn't know how to get there, so I got about 25 dollars or so going there. this where the shot was taken at the top of my page, I was looking for a place to relieve myself, and presto, a photo op presented itself.

This day definitely encouraged me to look at things more like I used to, especially on Saturdays and Sundays, the more aimless the driving, the more circles you take while the day seems very slow, it seems good things just happen, especially when you view everything through dreamy childlike exuberance. Oh yes then I eventually found a place to park the car and spent an hour walking around the set, much to the dismay of the people working on set, I don't know how they manage to make a movie in a public space, but that said, it is a public space and there aught to be a law the prohibits the limitations of everyday activities amongst the public.

The last four videos in this post are of people involved with the movie, enjoy: oh and btw, I am totally going to see this movie, this is one of the few movies I'm actually interested in seeing, especially rare for a movie that I've seen blocking our major intersections, but they did a very good job, everything looks really cool, and I'm impressed that they were pretty polite to the public, while also noticing the little details like authentic license plates, and authentic street signs.

Men In Black -take us back in time. part1 -photos

2011-06-21T11:17:00.002-04:00

Greetings, I am currently finding myself waiting in an office somewhere in Chinatown to take a defensive driving course, which is mandated by the Taxi and Limousine Commission. I have to take it today and then send in my renewal application form along with 120 dollars which doesn't include the fee for this course, and doesn't include the fee for the drug test which I should take very soon as well, and then Ta Da!! I'll have renewed my Taxi License. It should be of no surprise that the renewal form thinks that my regular driver's license is expired again. This happened last renewal year too I believe. So whatever I'm not going to stress this all, and if this course doesn't happen, I'll just schedule one for Saturday, hopefully my garage will understand, maybe I'll work some extra days for them.

That all said, it's pretty nice in this office, there's like some sort of calm humming machine, like a silence machine, i dunno, and free internet. So lets make the best of this.

Without further ado, see 42nd street on set as the crew for the Men In Black 3 movie cram it with cars from the 70's -ish:

Shift Video - today

2011-06-12T18:52:00.001-04:00

Shift Video - 2/8/2011

2011-06-06T15:41:00.003-04:00

This is memorable as we made it all on one set of green lights after 80th Street. Not much traffic but still very anxiety provoking watching the cabs in front jostle for position when the was no position to get.

May 14th: From BK to JFK

2011-05-29T08:44:00.002-04:00

Ah Yes the videos are back! Fear not, I'm not a maniac driver, this video has been sped up to 8x the speed of normal time, so that you can get on with your day rather than slamming your head against your desk in bored agony. And yes this video most likely was recorded on may 14th, and not the 27th, but still, hey, aren't you shocked I'm actually showing you something from this month rather than the usual time lapse of er... 425 days. Anyway, hope you enjoy the madness, and you know the scary thing? the traffic wasn't even that bad. it can get worse, a lot worse.

Shift Shots 3/15/2010

2011-05-28T09:32:00.000-04:00

Queensboro Plaza, Queens

-My Guess- Long Island City, Queens

Madison Square Park, Manhattan

A decisive move early in the day can change the whole day's pay

2011-05-27T16:13:00.004-04:00

Allow me to type out some garbage to get the cob webs out of my brain until I can put together something worth reading:

Well, 5 years? 5 years I think I've been driving now and still everything is always somewhat new. I still feel like if I get a good day it is a combination of all the right moves of where to be with timeliness mixed with a huge supply of luck, and when I get a bad day, I just feel like I've made all the wrong turns, and given up too soon on places to wait, or vice versa, it's just contagious, and one bad move leads to another, soon enough a day passes and the profits between two days are so contrasted one day made twice as much as the next. If I see a day in the light that I am feeling lucky, and I just make moves to cruise through potential places to pick-up rather than waiting at a place, and the difference in profit is staggering. One different move at say 9am can change the course of an entire day. Is this all boring you? I know, I know, but I'm trying to get somewhere with this, I believe it's a metaphor for life, to go out and push, and be positive, to always be awake, constantly thinking of positive changes and things you can add to your day to benefit them, while always viewing your fate in a positive light, it changes everything. On the flip side when you examine every option and only find a dead end, and decide rather than pushing for multitudes of options of fate to land in your lap, to stay put and hold all your proverbial eggs in one basket the odds come up much smaller. And also driving around with blinders on, seeing only competition between yourself and the other yellow cabs, it takes away from everything else around you, stopping and smelling roses so to speak. You must remember, you're there to pick up passengers, any passengers, and so being first isn't necessarily always best, it gives you a higher likely hood of passing by the customer when the one behind you was ready to stop, and if you slam on the brakes or swerve violently, you could cause an accident.

Oi, oi, I digress so much. It's hard for me to focus, I've been away from the blog so long. Can't find enough time to both relax and put my mind on the blog and give you all the stories I've had, nothing too big, no, not too big, but still odds and ends have piled up, and my mind is all a clutter with endings of little tales without well constructed middles and introductions. Even when I'm sitting at the airport, I feel time is spent better relaxing, breathing, slowing my heart rate, walking around, stretching, just appreciating the moment for what it is.

This week: a story of how a simple move, one move, can change the entire cash flow of a day-

So the last two days were a clear example of how one move can change the whole course of a day.

It was tuesday, not usually such a great day, when I had a ride to LaGuardia Airport. Seeing that the taxi lines were a bit too large and it was 8:30am, I felt that it would serve me best to just shoot back to the city via the R.F.K. Bridge, that's the Triboro Bridge for those who resist change. I got off at the exit before the bridge and get somebody just before the entrance back to the bridge again. He wants to go to 53rd street and 6th Avenue. I was anxious about him before he even got in, as I didn't want a frustrated guy heading straight into the height of traffic congestion. I wasn't sure if he'd be okay with taking the long way around to avoid midtown crosstown madness, but wow, he was a super nice guy. He was okay with the R.F.K. and then when I saw the slowness of the FDR Drive, I opted for 125th street. Again the whole time I was always second guessing myself. Should I take 2nd Avenue down to 53rd? or Park Ave down? I was overwhelmed as every option in my head pulled up a map of potential daymares of congestion, it was unavoidable. He fortunately put his two cents in and suggested enter Central Park at Lenox Avenue and coming out a 7th Avenue taking 52nd down to 6th Ave. What a relief, it was still a very long ride, but far more comfortable, he was open to talking about the route, so I did have to make a nip and a tuck to his suggestion, making the left at 5th Ave to Marcus Garvey Park where I can then make the right on 123 and the left on Lenox. See it wasn't without slowness, there was maybe wait time of 5 red lights at Central Park's exit at 7th Avenue, but other than this, so, so nice. and the ride was a hefty 40 plus dollars. In comparison, without traffic I can take people back to the airport from there for about 25 perhaps, maybe it was only 35 on the meter and he gave a ten dollar tip.

Now lets compare this tuesday move, this tuesday luck with wednesday's loafing. On Wednesday I had a trip to LaGuardia even earlier, this is good, the earlier the better. It was almost 7am after I dropped her off and I saw the Central Hold taxi lot was practically empty. I pulled into it placing myself at only 3rd on line to exit the lot, with about 10 cabs waiting on the line that comes between the lot and the terminal, so in actuality I was more like 15th in line. I waited for about an hour, which isn't terrible, but on the other hand, the money is in getting that meter to run with customers as often as possible especially during the hours from 7 to 10 in the morning, 8am being the key time slot that a cabbie wants the fastest rides and the highest fastest turnover rates from one customer to the next. My fare went to JFK Airport, and I got a short haul pass for it, which enabled me to drive back to LGA Airport and pick up another fare instantly. I decided in favor of LGA over JFK as the lot at JFK had a possible 1 hour wait time, plus another 40 minutes of traffic that I might be able to passover if I got through it sooner rather than later with a vacant cab -that's a special thing about New York traffic, it gets worse, sometimes progressively all day long without a lull. It took me an hour to get her to JFK, and then get back to LGA and pick up there. My passengers at LGA of course needed a midtown address, actually two midtown adresses that involved crosstown, waiting time, and 42nd street, and mid 50's area, oi!! they tipped only 5 bucks, a good tip, but I lost a lot of time with them. And I waited at the Sheraton Manhattan for eh only 10 minutes or so at some point in the day, where the doorman suggested to me these customers needed a minivan. The guy in the similar crown vic. behind me suggested to him that his car could fit all of their bags anyway. When the doorman told him his car was the same as mine, that was my cue to initiate the suggestion that yes, my car can fit all of their bags. it was a tighter fit than I imagined, but we got one back in the front seat, and stuff the back end. all three guests were adding a hefty mass to the big new yellow machine. I carried through the city streets making all maneuvers with briskness of the steering wheel, but the acceleration had no assistance in my attempts. once on the highway I believe i needed to push the peddle to 800 rpms more than the usual amounts, in other words, i needed to give the car about 33% more gas to get it going. they gave me a nice tip as well. and then I pulled into a holding lot again, and waiting an agonizing time from 12:15 to 2pm.

So you see in summary, bringing the car around from place to place pushing it through a few good spots rather than waiting for the hail mary to save your income from the time demons, it changes everything, and it all starts with that one move, a decisive action at 9am that defines your driving strategy for the whole day.

My income on tuesday: $167.00

My income on wednesday: $97.00

Shift Shots 3/14/2010

2011-04-15T15:34:00.003-04:00

Location Unkown

Long Island City, Queens

Shift Shots 3/13/2010

2011-04-15T14:28:00.000-04:00

Bowery, Manhattan

Shift Shots 3/7/2010

2011-04-14T18:59:00.002-04:00

Jersey City, NJ

The Lower East Side, Manhattan, NY

Shift Shots 3/6/2010

2011-03-31T03:23:00.003-04:00

Industrial Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Shift Shots 2/28/2010

2011-03-26T08:57:00.005-04:00

Canarsie Industrial Park, Brooklyn

Canarsie, Brooklyn

Long Island City, Queens

The Bronx

Morningside Heights, Manhattan

Midtown, Manhattan

Shift Shots 3/1/2010

2011-02-28T08:04:00.001-05:00

Williamsburg, Brooklyn

The East Village, Manhattan

Fulton Street

2011-02-26T09:11:00.000-05:00

It was an okay day perhaps 2 weeks ago or so on a Sunday, and 89.9 played this as I let the car roll around downtown. Sometimes, especially on a Sunday, the music and the environment meld perfectly together, as if both sight and sound started to speak to me.

For the full lyrics see here

Downtown here specifically is a work in progress. And tears are mostly shed when we place our own expectations on it, when we lend it all our baggage and weigh it down. That's my opinion. Downtown always felt like it had something to say to me, before the 11th of september around ten years ago. And forever into the future it will always speak, mostly because down here there is a time for hustle, and there is also much time of relative silence. On nights and weekends for now and in all the years past there was time when all you could hear was the wind howling from the East River to the Hudson. And the only eyes that watched me, the one soul who walked around searching for silence, were security cameras.

Maybe I'm tugging at thin air, but the lyrics seam to fit. A tale of two sisters, one who fell for a man giving her things like a gold ring. The older sister pushed the younger into the river for jealousy. And the younger sister survived, came to the man who stole her ring back and pushed her in again. I assume all three died. All succumbing to something that must have meant more to them than it really were. Because in the end all it was; It was greed and lust, disguising itself rather shallow like, as love.

Shift Shots 2/27/2010

2011-02-25T06:41:00.001-05:00

Long Island City, Queens

Shift Blues-

2011-02-23T21:46:00.000-05:00

a shot from 2/22/2010 - An example of an average day of paranoia that my credit card machine won't work, or worse, that not even the meter will work:

Here below is a shot of one of last year's cabs on the fritz again. I was afraid the computer that reads people's cards (most of the time) and feeds them with advertisements and fear-mongering -oops I mean news, wasn't communicating properly with the meter. It was an occurrence unfortunately that happened way too often. So I decided to turn the meter on and pretend I was a passenger to see if everything was working correctly.

more words below the picture:

It seemed to be fine, so with some reluctance I continued my work day. Sadly I lost a key 20 minutes in the busiest time of day, but it could've been a lot worse. I could've gotten a parking ticket, or the machine could've been completely busted. So I lost that 50 cents you see on the right side of the meter (the zeros don't appear in the photograph) to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to fund their busses and subways, plus probably 15 bucks for the time I lost. All in all it wasn't a big deal at all, But somedays can be really bad, sometimes the meter just refuses to work because it can't grab a signal from the computer, and this is because either something inside the computer isn't working, or because an entire network of these things is off the grid for hours on end. Sadly these machines sometimes decide to take the day off, while we still end up paying the lease and getting stuck with a car that can't really do it's job. Sometimes I wish Hal wasn't a part of our business despite the fact that in theory accepting credit cards makes all the sense in the world. I feel it increase our income by umm.. I dunno.. 30%? But isn't that all the more reason to get all the kinks out of it?!!

Fortunately my old garage that used to carry this system got fed-up with all the headaches and switched to the other company, and many other garages did as well. Those computers while providing a lot more information to the driver, and also having a much more efficient staff ready to fix their problems aren't without fault either, but they are better than the system shown above.

But please, please, if anybody in an authority position is reading this, please simplify the systems in our cabs further. The touch screens fail as they get overused, the credit card swipers often don't work and are always installed in a different location, and facing a different angle in each cab. The reading devices seem to be more finicky than a metrocard reader in terms of being speed sensitive. Often when the card reader can't communicate with the network, it takes so long to tell the driver, that by the time the driver's informed, the passenger has left the cab. sometimes everything works fine, but it takes a few more seconds for it to go through than it does for the passenger to leave the car.

Most often though the card swiper is swiping improperly wrong, and we have to examine the process of which way they are swiping, is it too fast, too slow, right side up, right side down, is the swipe machine on the plexiglass dysfunctional? It could be one or all of these things, and so you have to play the role of swipe doctor. At wee-late hours of the night, that are so late they are early sometimes my clients failed to have gone through all of the steps on the touch screen. Here's a thought, make the machines work more like an ATM, have on screen directions, with actual functioning buttons next to them, have an led light that lights up this whole payment area just like an ATM machine. the simpler the better. It seems somebody has failed to realize that as many as 60 people a day use the machine, and further more they are quick, quicker apparently than these computers are. If we now have a computer that can beat the smartest man on Jeopardy, than can't we get this right?

Links to reference - Hal: 2001 a Space Odyssey, Watson: Jeopardy

Shift Shots 2/22/2010

2011-02-22T21:32:00.005-05:00

I know, it's been a while since I've posted form the archive of pics from 2010. well I pushed through a few more. Funny how I can only get stuff done, when I know that I have a limited time to do it. I should be sleeping now.

Long Island City, Queens

The Meatpacking District, Manhattan

SoHo

East Flatbush, Brooklyn

bytes from behind the wheel:

2011-02-18T12:03:00.004-05:00

Here are 2 clips from the week:

Early in my shift:

No worries, they turned out fine. It was great money, and they handled themselves perfectly. Here's another clip below of the hilarity of your's truly, getting frustrated with other drivers:

First recording with the meter on:

2011-02-08T18:01:00.005-05:00

This was a specific ride request, from Warren Street in TriBeCa, the Bed Bath and Beyond, to Avenue B in the East Village. Unfortunately I couldn't do the video for the entire duration, because the camera fell out of place on the bumps at Chrystie Street. We have some goings on here. It was Chinese New Year this Sunday, and I was planning on going straight through the heart of Chinatown, but then I changed course, as I started talking to myself muttering curses for being so stupid. In retrospect it would've been faster to take 6th Avenue straight to Houston. Anyway it makes for good video. Enjoy: this is a ride that took longer than 20 minutes, but at 8x speed it'll be a painless 2:11 for you at home. I am without a firewire cable to plug the drive with all of my music into my computer, but until then I can select from YouTube's long list of tracks, which are pretty good actually, no?

Today's Video Progress:

2011-02-07T20:48:00.004-05:00

Alright, pretty proud of myself here. Compilation of my 1st two shots with the new camera: The return to Manhattan from Newark Airport back to the city, at high speed interlaced with a soundtrack provided from the YouTube list of freebee tracks. I think I did pretty well if I say so myself. And just if you're wondering, you can relax, I'm going to eventually return to the still camera as well, but I need some time with video for a bit.

Moving Along -first post from new camera

2011-02-07T07:29:00.007-05:00

Ah well hello all. I'd like to continue my thanks to the regular readers/viewers who continue to tune in despite my less than regular postings. My transitional phase both between garages, and between cameras has taken longer than I expected to acclimate to. I just bought Quicktime Pro now, and of course one more hiccup has occurred. I have QuickTime 10, which is incompatible with the 7pro, so I guess I have to trash 10 and then get 7?? All this needs to be done so that I can manipulate the videos more. My plan is to have them at 8x speed or 4x speed depending on how long they are and how boring. Anyway without further ado I have my first video which is only 2:30 long so that should be short enough to put up on the blog without any editing. You'll see the tremendous difference in quality from my earlier cellphone shots, and hopefully you'll agree with me that this is a medium worth pursuing. Story of the clip, description whatever will continue below the video, or, "after the jump" as they say. Well here goes, direct from YouTube:

There is nothing more fantastic on a Sunday in the late morning, better in the early morning but beggars can't be choosers, than a trip to Newark Airport. Has anyone seen the famous cover in the New Yorker Magazine that jokingly painted an image of America from the eyes of us New York residents? Basically that cover scaled up Manhattan as this larger than life portion, while New Jersey was a blip on our radar and all of middle America was virtually non-existant in scale, in the far distance California could be seen but barely. When shooting video in Jersey and driving, the speed and spacial difference becomes so blatantly contrasting from the city that I feel New Jersey becomes a representative for all the rest of the country, all the rest of the world really. Being in New Jersey with a New York City licensed yellow cab is like, well, it's just an entirely sublime experience. It is as if God came to you and said "You deserve the day off, or at least an hour, oh and take an extra dollar for gas while you're here." Okay God probably has better things to do than to give you some gas money, but you get the idea.

Anyway this trip couldn't have come at a better time. You see I just bought this Kodak Zi8 camera 1 or 2 weeks ago, but I didn't buy the memory card for it yet so the thing was virtually useless. In my spare minutes I could take some sample shots from different angles to see where the camera could best be placed, I'm still working on that, but that's about all I could do. My sunday was really really slow. I talked to one or two other drivers; one guy said he drove around for 2 hours and got nothing. I came back to him a few hours later, and the same fellow told me that it had now been 4 hours without a ride. I got somebody at The Hilton in Times Square and took him to B&H, which was a measly 6.60, but he asked if I could meet him after his purchase to take him back to the hotel where he would pick up his bags and we'd go to Newark Airport!! Of all the serendipitous things!! I agreed that this was a good deal, and told him I'd give him the ride for 55 dollars plus the 6.60 ride to B&H. When I dropped him off, I told him he could pay me later, I then made a right on 33rd, parked at 10th Avenue by the AP building, ran to B&H bought the 16 gig chip, ran back to the car, pulled it around to the store and waited for him. 5 minutes later he came out, and we started the journey. total told him would be 60 for everything, and he even paid 70!! fantastic, and I got my memory card to boot.

So this little bit of footage is coming from NWK Airport heading off the prelude to the Turnpike and entering onto the Pulaski Skyway. hopefully I'll get the quicktime pro app to work soon and then I can start compressing 20 minute video into high-speed blips.

Shift Shots 2/21/2010

2011-02-05T19:55:00.002-05:00

Flatiron District / Gramercy

Harlem?

Shift Shots 2/20/2010

2011-02-04T19:46:00.004-05:00

Morningside Heights

Bushwick, Brooklyn -is my guess here, or Far West Side of Manhattan isn't out of the realm of possibility.

Javits Center -Far west Side

a little history-

2011-01-28T19:04:00.000-05:00

Taxis in front of the Hotel Manhattan, 1912 | NYC Vintage Images

new camera coming soon

2011-01-28T07:30:00.000-05:00

I can't resist shooting the occasional video with my phone, especially with this snowy weather we've been having lately. Terrible quality picture and sound have brought it all to the point of barely watch-able. But I've finally pulled the trigger and purchased a Kodak Zi8 pocket camera along with a car-charger and a little clamp piece that can hold the camera above a table and other things. I've figured that I can clamp the camera to the meter-stand. There's enough space between the meter and the dashboard that I think the camera can fit in there and protrude enough from the dash to make some video. Hopefully with the car-charger I can shoot a few moving pictures and charge the camera in the time between. When I get all the stuff in the mail, and the memory card, I'll start shooting right away.

sorry for the posting delay.

2011-01-27T17:23:00.002-05:00

I promise, I'm gonna go on a blogging blitz tonight, to schedule postings that will cover the next week. things have been different lately, what with the extra day of work picked up and my truly living independently now I need to devote more time to sleeping and eating and cleaning and working.

Excuses excuses. How does everyone like the new blog layout? I suppose I caught a little of the winter madness and I wanted to brighten it up, and make it simpler and easier to read. I think I will return a picture to the header soon enough, but well not so sure of that either. It looks so clean and organized this way. I'm very pleased with the white background instead of the black background. is it easier to read? are you understanding the links on my righthand side bar better? opinions?

not above a twenty

2011-01-27T16:48:00.004-05:00

This story happened some time ago, about mid-December.

I haven't told you about the creepiest fare I had lately. Some guy gets hails in the West Village, and rather than telling me exactly where he's going, he gives me directions. But he doesn't give the full directions, he gives me each direction a block in advance as if he doesn't want me to know where he's going. I try to act non-chalant about it to emphasize that really if he wished to tell me where exactly he was going it wouldn't be much of a problem. So he's already striking me as very strange, but also he doesn't seem to bad, something about him just seems like the type who's gonna fuck with me just a bit, but all and all, he's really not very threatening. He asked me if I had change of his 100 dollar bill, and he already rang the bells in my head that he wasn't so right, so I told him I didn't have change of that much. "I just started my shift," I told him. "I don't have that much. He let it go, but it worried me more and more as we got closer to his destination because I wondered how he would pay for his ride. He told me that the ride never comes above 10 dollars, and that he wouldn't pay more than that. And this was all fine with me. I wasn't trying to cheat him, and I now had this good meter that when it is stopped it doesn't continue to tick away like the one I used to have. Anyway he directs me past avenue D, and I tell him then, "don't you want to make a turn here? There are no stores this way. How are you going to change your bill?" He was falling asleep at that point, but I woke him up. And that all made me feel better about my situation, as bad folk don't usually fall asleep during an attempt of some sort of shenanigans. He told me that he wouldn't be going to a store. "Oh so you're just going home?" I asked. Yes was his half coherent mumble. So the nerves on my spine just tingled, and tingled and tingled as we drove around the projects, projects in which I was somewhat familiar with. I knew friends who'd grown up there, and I was quite comfortable with the place, but that didn't mean that some people do dumb shit there, and might even use the idea of housing projects as a threat, like by sending a novice cabby into the projects and then running out, if the cabby had any brains whatsoever, they wouldn't chase you. Anyway, so I don't know why, but I followed all his directions to a T, capital T. He asked me to pull into the parking lot even, and it was still dark outside, but I did as he told. I guess I just wanted to see how this would all go down. I saw his 100 dollar bill a few times in the mirror, I knew he had it, but it wasn't worth taking. The larger the bill the greater chance of counterfeiting. Ripping off a cab driver by using counterfeit money is the safest way to take all of a cab driver's money, and the safest way not to get caught.

He gave me a big smile and opened the door, after I waited a minute for him to pay me. He didn't. So when that door opened and the dome light went on my passive aggressive dominance took over. I put the gas pedal to the floor, and gave the rear wheel by his foot a good spin-out. He was awake now. "What the fuck are you doing man?" He asked me.

"You have to pay me before you get out of the cab," I told him. from that point we had a discussion about trust and so on and so forth. He said I was nuts if I thought he wanted to get arrested. I told him I didn't want to call the cops either, and I showed him my phone which had the number pre-dialed on the screen. I'd dialed the number about 10 minutes ago and was only waiting for the moment of absolute fear to hit the call button. I even counted all my money to show him that I didn't have change of his 100. I did so much explaining that I genuinely believed myself. It wasn't until a half hour later that I realized I had 2 more 20's in my back pocket. But even if I did take that 100 dollar bill, I would've had to waist 30 minutes driving to my parents' house nearby and picking up a whole new wad of cash to make change for my new passengers. The law stipulates the cab drivers are required to carry change of a 20 dollar bill, there is no requirement to have change for anything higher. And besides, he was acting weird all throughout the ride, and I figured maybe he was even counting on my fear to perhaps get away with a free 10 dollar ride. So we agreed to drive him to the pizza place where he'd have my money, if I waited. Of course I waited, and he showed up with the money, including a dollar tip of all things. Surprise, surprise. See the fare came out to 9 dollars, and like 20 cents. I offered the dollar back to him since he was so negative towards me, but he refused to take it. I think over all he respected me for my job, and he knew that if the rolls were reversed he would've done the same, or he would've ended the ride a long time ago. I doubt that he actually got change for that 100 at the pizza place. he probably had the two fives that he gave me the whole time.

2011- My resolutions are resolved.

2011-01-12T20:19:00.003-05:00

There was some time ago, maybe only this past summer when I took a man and a woman whom I assume was his wife down to Chinatown, no wait it wasn't last summer, it must've been a full one or two years ago.

(Aside- story continues after the paragraph, this is just a paragraph on taxi tech stuff)

At the time, our computer systems were relatively new. 6 months previous to this ride, we didn't have televisions invading the riding public with a constant stream of advertising, and allowing them to pay by credit cards. And it amazes me to remember that I've driven so long: in 5 years I have now used 4 different brands of taximeters and two different brands of computer tracking equipment to assist with credit cards, and before that we had a big partition without a monitor, but instead a jumble of maps and regulation taxi information was posted all over it. Honestly, I can say that I like the system we have now better than what we didn't have before. The partition looks a lot more clean and organized with all the information displayed on the monitor rather than drilled in beneath cracked plexiglass, and scratched up with whatever the disgruntled passenger possesses. Now it is very frustrating indeed when the system crashes and it takes all your business away. One day the system crash was so bad that we couldn't use credit cards all day long, and another time the system crashed right in the middle of a ride to the airport!! right in the middle!! during a trip!! My old garage has since been so frustrated with the verifone system that they switched over to the creative technology system, and now at least, when there is a problem, the system notifies the driver and the passenger both, not just the passenger, who usually doesn't notice that anything is wrong unless they have a degree in computer software. Also the meter that connects to the creative mobile technology is a more fair machine, when I stop the meter, it actually stops, it doesn't keep ticking if I keep driving. Anyway now, sorry for that digression, back to the story-

Anyway so this guy was one who really knew his stuff and asked me to take the FDR drive down to 25th street and then take second avenue down, he told me he owned a garage in Brooklyn, and wondered aloud how he should reconfigure his trip sheets. You see, previous to all the computer technology trip sheets were of a sturdy manilla 2-ply paper on which you were required to write down the pick-up location and drop off point and include the times of all trips. Now that we have the computer do all the tracking for us, it was rendering the old trip sheet obsolete. He looked at the sheet that I had which didn't help him much at all.

"It's all the same," he said, "You don't need to record any of your trips anymore." He was right, but my garage for some reason had kept the old trip sheets all this time, it has now been 2 or 3 years, and still we have all the space to record up to 35 rides. only recently have they made room for recording up 15 credit transactions on paper, and then later, to 25 credit transactions. But still there is oodles of space to write down, if one chooses to do so, every single ride pick-up and drop point. However, this garage owner was calculating how to change his business plan. You save money by saving paper, and by saving paper you save on storage space, which in turn saves more paper, and all that weight reduction might save big money by not having to file workman's comp when someone in the office lifts a whole box of files.

Anyway now we move to the year 2011, the year of that ride I suppose was 2009, 2008. Come January 1st I was cooped up in my apartment in Brooklyn and I couldn't get any sleep as usual. It would take me 2 hours to get to my taxi garage in Queens. The clock strikes midnight and I hear fireworks, "Oh Christ," I say "To hell with this." I don't have a clue as to who's doing what in my neighborhood, and I sure as hell don't want to take a train right to 42nd street to switch to the train to queens only 2 hours after the ball drops. Of course my screwed up sleep system puts me to bed right about the time that I should be at the garage. I come in the next day and they tell me that the boss man is looking for me, I laugh it off because it must be some kind of joke. I mean who should expect a driver to work on New Years? it's only the night that pays well, but once day break falls, there is nothing. And to add to all that, there is the mayhem of trying to calmly get to work and save energy for 12 hours of driving among these drunks who are so damn happy that another day has passed. WoooHooo! I need to buy a new calendar and my iphone is fucked. yeah woopdie fuckin' doo. To my surprise the boss man wasn't happy with me at all, I don't give him excuses, I never do, I'm just not that kind of person, I missed a day I missed a day, that's all there is to it. He says to me "I'll miss you!" and so I laugh at him, I never laughed at the man before, I was always afraid I'd loose my job or something, but I think I'd already checked out. You see I knew that there were two major garages in Brooklyn and at least one would take me, what's more they don't give their drivers an argument every time they need a day off, or a huge vacation even. My old place kicks drivers out if they screw up 3 times. And it doesn't matter how many days you worked for them to replace a driver on vacation, or during major holidays, if you miss your day, you're not going to work there very long, and you never get a discount. So I found my point where I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. An easier commute, a chance to actually live in my apartment in brooklyn rather than just visit it on my days off, more vacation days, more work days, and bosses who talk to you rather than shout.

One week later I had made the transition to the garage in brooklyn, the same garage where Gil works at. And when I go into the office I'm pretty sure I see that same guy whom I gave that ride to Chinatown some 2 or 3 years ago. I don't bring it up though, I don't think it was one of my best rides. Right at the end I tried to overtake a box truck before my lane evaporated, but there wasn't enough room, so I needlessly accelerated only to hit the brakes. So I won't ever tell him I gave him a ride.

I was already planning to switch before my boss blew up at me one last time, but that just sent me to the other place quicker.

Happy New Year! Shift Shot 2/16/2010

2011-01-01T00:00:00.001-05:00

Midtown- looking down 7th Avenue to Times Square

I posted this shot before. Because I was so excited about it I couldn't wait for its turn in the chronological order of posts. But now that this one's turn in the big folder of pictures has come up again, it only seems right to post it again. Besides, it is Times Square after all.

By this time I should be sleeping In preparation to go for the new years shift to hopefully navigate the streets safely, while still making some profits. Hope your year is well, and I hope you have many changes planned for the new year, and that most importantly- you stick to your new years resolutions rather than getting scared and settling for less, don't settle for the same old stale bread. It always seems like we've come so far until we look back and see we haven't gained much ground doesn't it?

Well cheers! Raise a glass,

only one glass now, no need to forget everything,

and ring in the new year!

Shift Shots 2/15/2010

2010-12-31T10:00:00.000-05:00

East Village

Far West Side

Greenwich Village

Shift Shots 2/14/2010

2010-12-31T03:00:00.000-05:00

Park Slope, Brooklyn

Upper West Side, Manhattan

Greenpoint, Brooklyn

Shift Shots 2/8/2010

2010-12-30T20:08:00.003-05:00

Well here we are, it's practically 2011 already and I have yet again not managed to finish posting the shift shots for the year, and certainly haven't found the best shots of the year either. But anyway, I'll carry on. And as I've been saying for quite sometime, I do intend to move this blog to video eventually, but I have a lot of research, okay, a little research to do, before we go that way, as I haven't purchased the camera for the job. were there any glitches with seeing the video from the last post? That's one more question I might have, is it better to feed the video through youtube, or is flickr ok? Anyway lets carry on with this. Cheers, and have a happy new year if I don't post 'till then.

Downtown

The East Village

Astoria, Queens

NYCTAXI-VIDEO: From the blizzard

2010-12-29T22:43:00.005-05:00

Well sorry I fell out of the routine of regularly posting, as usual. And thanks Star for the reminder, BTW Star has a blog over in Milan, Italy, and you might want to go over there. I can't wait to check out more italian taxicabs, I love seeing what cars are across the Atlantic that they haven't been kind enough to give us. Anyway Star, you've been cool enough to always leave comments, and even a post sending readers my way, so I should dutifully send some over yours as well.

Where were we now? oh yes, the storm, major snow. Major, major snow. I drove the day of the storm, but at just about the time it was getting near unmanageable the cab was due back. No worries, it was all cabs in, and even the cars got 24 hours of vacation, ahhh, they never take off unless it really comes down. That it did, as I called in the next day, I said it wouldn't be such a good idea, and the dispatcher agreed. So I walked about town watching all the cars get trapped. Then we all figured the roads would get cleared soon enough, so I came in on Tuesday. The owner and dispatcher gave us cars with a warning, "do not leave 'The City' or else you'll be stuck for a month." He said the highways to the airports would be fine, but not to do any out of town trips either. well I pretty much wound up err, doing more. But everything seemed a bit more chaotic than we knew it would be, and yet, still sort of manageable. He also said no side streets, stay on the main roads. Wow, was he ever right about that!! all the side roads were plowed in for 2 days, or 3, or 4.

But even in Manhattan you needed to be really careful, not much gas, and light presses on the brakes in cars with really good brakes only. I did get stuck once, at a hotel in Times Square. It took me 2 hours just to get my passengers there from JFK, but fortunately while they were angry about it, they were congratulating me every step of the way, in pretty much the worst traffic jam on 9th Avenue that I had ever seen!! it took 30 minutes to travel 4 blocks. So it took about 6 guys to push me back on to the pavement from the soupy piles of snow I pulled into to unload and load bags at the hotel. hey so it was an adventure, and due to A-the bad camera work, hey I'm driving too! and B-a really piss poor cellphone for a camera, we have some footage of some of my exploits, but alas, could be better.

So here are the videos from this week, with wheels and without. If you have any problems playing the videos, please hit the pause button and then scroll down to watch the next one. Hitting pause should give the video some time to load. I realize that a post full of videos might be problematic, besides, some videos might be better than others.

It probably makes a difference to tell you that this video shot just as I returned the car the day of the storm, was only at 5:30 in the evening, 6 and a half hours into the snowfall.

Day Off: And these were from the day after the storm, which might have been worse than during, because it may have convince just a few to feel it was safe to start driving. I'd say that half if not more than half of the drivers wound up stranded.

Day On: Back on the road, the city came to life only very slowly, and really it won't be fully functioning probably until next week.

Shift Shots 2/7/2010

2010-12-22T15:42:00.002-05:00

Bushwick, Brooklyn

Brighton Beach, Brooklyn

The Metropolitan Museum of Art- Upper East Side, Manhattan

Shift Shots 2/6/2010

2010-12-20T19:21:00.004-05:00

Queens Plaza- Long Island City, Queens

Sugar Hill- Harlem, Manhattan

Shift Shots 2/1/2010

2010-12-14T05:55:00.001-05:00

Chinatown

NoHo

Far West Side -Across the street from The Javits Center

Shift Type and Snapshots -12/13/2010

2010-12-13T17:44:00.007-05:00

From JFK- typed out at 9:55am

Ahh, nice to sit back in what may be the best car the garage has, and have a breakfast/lunch. Would that be a brunch? Anyway, figured Monday is always a good day to wait at JFK so I brought the computer along with me. We’ll see how this pans out, I just came from LaGuardia and the phone hotline was an old message from the night before as usual, LGA doesn’t run a tight ship, but the JFK number said that the lot was only at 50% of taxi capacity and moving well, so it was worth a try, rather be waiting in a parking lot for 2 hours to get 50 bucks than 30. However, the message from JFK was from an hour and a half before, so it’s a gamble. Had a great day yesterday, and as usual not such a good one on Saturday. There was one problem fare, but eh, I don’t want to get all worked up about it right now. I’m gonna eat my hash browns, and relax.

Some photobooth shots from the cab-

Who needs to run the engine, when you have piping hot box of fried potatoes to keep you warm? it's fogging up the windshield! I warn you now, the computer's camera flips around the image like a mirror, so everything is actually on the reverse side, and to make matters more confusing, I'm sitting on the passenger side.

The Crown Victoria aficionado might see something new and lovely on this car: The Headrests! They are huge!! Oh I can't describe how great it feels to drive a 2011 Crown Victoria, but I'll try, tight suspension, more power, brakes that stop really well but also stop smoothly, a trnsmision that puts in the power with no herkyjerkyness, and best of all, a really tight suspension that can handle all but the worst of bumps, i.e. craters! the car is amazing, and they aren't even sold to civilians anymore, you can't buy them if you wanted to. I said suspension twice didn't I? oh well, it's just that good.

Shift Shots 1/31/2010

2010-12-09T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sunnyside, Queens

The Far West Side

Park Slope, Brooklyn

Chinatown

Shift Shots 1/30/2010

2010-12-08T17:05:00.002-05:00

Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Chelsea

The Lower East Side

Shift Shots 1/25/2010

2010-12-08T13:14:00.003-05:00

Upper East Side - Midtown in the distance

Morningside Heights

Hamilton Heights

Morningside Heights / Columbia University

Long Island City, Queens

Shift Shots 1/24/2010

2010-12-07T14:14:00.003-05:00

Prospect Heights, Brooklyn

SoHo, Manhattan

Shift Shots 1/23/2010

2010-12-07T06:52:00.001-05:00

Hells Kitchen

Shift Shots 1/18/2010

2010-12-02T08:49:00.002-05:00

Rockefeller Center / Midtown

This photo despite being from about a year ago, is time appropriate, now that we're approaching Christmas (BTW happy Hanukkah everyone!) Rockefeller Center is the epicenter of XMas madness. The big tree bought from a chosen property in upstate New York has been trucked in and all lit up, taller than most buildings in most cities, it becomes the centerpiece of the winter-wonderland complex.

But a look to the past to see the future, come mid-january a contrasting night shot provides a glimpse into the loneliness midtown finds itself with. Avenues that can hold 6 cars across become vacant stretches of damp canyons, whispering echoes from block to block of cell phone conversations and slick tires in constant motion. The only hope for an encounter with one place in one minute is a red light, when every sound including the switch of the signal through the yellow, the red, and the green, every single motion, movement, and function, is bounced around in sound against hard urban materials: marble, concrete, iron, and layer upon layer of pavement.

And as you can see, the store appears to be shouting at the consumer to buy, buy, buy! But alas, what is a store without a consumer? The lights stay on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and although it seems a bit wrong environmentally it eases tension in my mind that there is always a light on. There is a safe feeling here in the middle of the night. That mannequin in the window reassures me of the identity and status of such a place during the hours of normals; people who think waking up before 6am is akin to capital punishment, people who believe that staying out 'late' is only until the clock strikes midnight: otherwise their subway car, or taxicab will turn into a pumpkin. And so my mind lets the air flow through my body and my muscles relax with the knowledge that the sun is due to return to the sky very soon. These are our limited moments of time and space, before the normals arise and return our city to chaos.

Bryant Park / Midtown

I was so amazed to see a cab from Springfield Massachusetts here, that I parked at the nearest fire hydrant and grabbed a few pictures.

Manhattan Skyline from the 59th Street Bridge (A.K.A. Queensboro Bridge)

Looking Downtown (or south) down the East River from the bridge.

Shift Shots 1/17/2010

2010-12-01T13:44:00.003-05:00

Williamsburg, Brooklyn

The lighting is strange here, I know, but I felt that it was actually as close as it could get to the real lighting that existed, which is a major reason for taking the picture in the first place.

Williamsburg Bridge, leaving Brooklyn

As we head to the future, a link to the past

2010-11-30T18:41:00.003-05:00

DeSoto Page!

While looking for articles on the latest goings on at the Taxi and Limousine Commission in reference to their search for the taxi of tomorrow, I found myself at this treasure trove of history from DeSoto. The page goes in detail about how DeSoto came to be a New York Taxicab and thus, an american taxi, and thus an american icon before the Checker Marathon. Pictures on the left, words on the right, It's fantastic, seeing all of the stuff they equipped these cars with, and it's very timely too, as these were purpose built vehicles, taken from the factory and re-engineered to some degree to meet the demands of customers, drivers, taxi-companies, and the regulatory board, which at that time was the hack bureau of the New York Police Department.

DeSoto Page!

Shift Shots 1/11/2010

2010-11-25T11:00:00.000-05:00

The East Village

Shift Shots 1/10/2010

2010-11-24T22:49:00.001-05:00

Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Shift Shots 1/9/2010

2010-11-23T19:41:00.003-05:00

I debate weather this should even be posted. It is, and it isn't really, from the shift that day. I was on my way to work waiting for the subway, when just before the downtown 6,5, or 4 was to get to the station, the emergency service unit of the police came in and a duo of paramedics. The token booth operator and I'm sure the MTA was quick to coordinate the entire effort and somehow relay the message to the train to stop before the station and wait for them to do their business. It all happened really fast. Evidently there was somebody lying in the hollow space on the tracks, and they were all called in to strap him on to the stiff board they brought with them to then take him to the ambulance upstairs I assume.

So strange though, as to how they knew he was there, if he was alive, if he was fine, or really, really, really intoxicated? Or was he just trying to find a place to sleep where he wouldn't be bothered? although to do something like this you'd have to be crazy enough to be taken away to a hospital. Sad, if only people could be left in peace... on the subway tracks. heck it beats getting shipped around from hospital to hospital and getting a bill for a few thousand bucks. I heard them ask him several times if he was okay, but I didn't hear a response.

After it was all said and done, the police started cracking jokes with one another, the paramedics however were extremely professional. Who'm I kidding they were all really pros, doing it all so quick and with such non-shalance. Both the city paramedics and the special service unit of the police department only see the weirdest stuff this city has to offer, so for them, this might not have been the strangest thing that night. This is also a special glimpse for those of us, i.e. all of us, who've been waiting on the train or at the station forever hearing the all too common message "There is police activity ahead", the message list goes on and the messages are getting better, but still they are seemingly intentionally vague. Just remember not all news is news deemed suitable for the public's ears, so the next time you're waiting forever for the train, imagine all the things that can, and actually do go wrong, more often than you know.

Return of the tips! some good ones, some bad.

2010-11-19T22:50:00.001-05:00

Isn't it so strange, it seems whenever I call attention to something, especially something that is only related to things as mysterious and inexplicable as the rising of tides and phases of the moon, that then my hypothesis is turned on it's face, flipped like an omelette sunny-side down.

etceteras etceteras

I was trying my damnedest to figure it out, was it my unshaven face? Was it a led foot? Who knows what it was, as this past week has proven otherwise in tips. Oh there were people who didn't tip, and they did seem to hold to a pattern I've noticed, extremely routine riders who it is both my pattern, and their pattern for us to ride together on a weekly, and sometimes daily basis, don't tip, or just round the fare up to the nearest dollar. I wonder if they know that the extra 50 cents on the meter isn't going to me, nor is it an indicated included tip. Either way I avoid holding grudges for them because they don't really make much money, so they really can't afford much more, but still it is bothersome. It isn't like I make more money than they do, and besides they will sometimes purchase a large coffee for themselves before or after the ride. Why don't they get a small, and give that change over?

Anyway I digress, I digress. I had one fare who may have tipped me the highest in terms of percentage I've ever received, I took her down 7th Avenue from 47th Street and Broadway to Penn Station. I happened to be in front of her hotel as I saw her exiting, so I opened the doors and trunk and also helped her big luggage into the trunk and out of the trunk. The fare was 5.30 and she gave me 20, saying "Keep it." She had a big smile on her face. Now I could expect a tip of 3 dollars and even 4, but a tip of basically a 300% was unimaginable especially for such an easy quick ride. I looked at her with dis-belief. "This is 20 dollars," I said, "And the fare was only 5.30. Are you sure?" To which she simply smiled and nodded in approval. What a day maker. I was already really struggling for customers at that hour and it really helped me out huge.

What do you know the next fare was going from the station to Baruch College. They had the european accents, they paid only the exact fare: 7 dollars. I thought briefly that it may have been because I honked at another asshat cab driver who had his off duty light on and drove in two lanes simultaneously, screwing both me and the traffic behind me, and what was worse not only did he refuse to indicate his intentions with signals, he may not have been working, so he was three times the asshole. And for them, I took my frustrations out on the car peeling away from the scene on the slippery streets after dropping them off, as I just had no other alternative, because I don't believe in bottling up my feelings, nor do I believe in telling them about our custom of tipping.

1 fare or 2 after them took some tourists going to a golf store on w 35th. They had the address on paper, and being that it was a crosstown street it was easy to find. On our way we passed a storefront with the same name a block early, luckily we all so this. "Wasn't that the place?" They asked.

"Yes it may be," I said, "But it says retail space for lease. I think they moved one block west. the address you gave me should be on the next block just west of 6th Avenue."

They were very relieved. They got out within sight of the actual store and the fare came to 10 dollars and 20 cents, but you see, it read on the meter as 9.70 with an extra of 50 cents. I can't bring the meter to add them together until I turn it off, which I can't do because they might pay with credit card, and add to that the fact that the meter only briefly adds the numbers to a total before oddly returning the numbers back to their original separate places, and then clearing itself of all numbers, leading the passenger to ask what the fare was. So I don't turn the meter off until I receive payment. Customers have been a very mixed bag of understanding with this method, but is the only safe way for me to operate otherwise I'd be eliminating the opportunity for a customer to pay with credit, which, you guessed it, is not allowable by Taxi and Limousine commission.

Anyhow digressing again, long story short he pays me 10 dollars, I turn the meter off so it briefly shows the full fare of 10.20 and I point to that 20 cents, and ask for the extra change. Hell I used to ignore these rides and just accept them cheating me out of 20 cents. But with all the low tips lately I can't bare to get short changed. To my surprise he emptied his pockets and gives me all his change and laughs it off. This leaves me elated, as he'd just given me 2 dollars or more extra, but I know that they did have a pleasant ride and so it was not in anger that he gave me extra.

Oh and the most, most odd ball ride was this woman who encountered that meter issue when she swiped her card, and it didn't read, I told her to keep swiping. Her boyfriend who I dropped off first was extremely nice, and in his company she too was a very nice person. But somehow when left alone with a glitching credit card reader, she was pissed slightly, and convinced, possibly by the brainwashing tabloids such as Fox and the New York Post, that I was the perpetrator of some brilliant scheme, yeah, a brilliant scheme to steal 40 cents from her, and thusly make millions of dollars.

"umm, the fare just went up." says she

"Yes don't worry about that, it's not a big deal." says I

"Yes it is. It just went up 40 cents!" she adds

"Well it doesn't register on the card." I confirm. Though I guess I have no authority. I could've sworn there was a sign posted at our garage not to hit the time off button on our meters early as the meter doesn't register the added units from that point on. I guess the guys at the garage were wrong.

"Yes IT DOES, I see the extra 40 cents here." She is getting really pissed. I guess I should've stopped in the middle of traffic, and held up yet one more upper east side street. So I ended the debate right there, my week was going to good to let this shit get to me. You see as long as the vehicle keeps moving, the meter is likely to keep turning even when time off is hit, but see there is no alternative when you pay with credit, other than to stop immediately which I don't believe it doing, in fairness to safety.

"well, you can just tip me less then." I say.

And with that she gets her transaction approved with a 60 cent tip. Ahh finally good riddance to you missy. Wow what decent folk, and what a turn for the ill that one took, sheesh.

Another fare gave me his location and was in a great rush, giving me exact directions, he was an older gentlemen in that special class of people like my father who may have actually worked for their money, earned a living at different things and moved up the ladder, a ladder which seems to have eroded over time. It was audible the sigh of unexpected bliss he gave when I hit the time off button a block early for him and had the fare come an exactly even dollar amount. I don't remember what he gave me, but it surely was just a bit more than he usually gave. Like I said before, it doesn't actually matter how early I hit the time off button unless I stop the actual car, but it adds to a piece of mind for people.

These blasted machines!!!

Need I say how much I despise this whole system of meters and their evil partners in crime, the computers that allow credit payment while confusing passengers and bombarding us all with advertisements and unwanted programing? I was onboard with the whole thing, and still I love the idea of credit payment, it's just that it has been engineered so poorly, plus they deduct 5% of each payment from our pay, which includes payment for things that we don't even receive at the end of the day, like tolls and the M.T.A. tax. It is completely despicable, and what's worse is sometimes the computer fails so badly that it just shuts down. I had one rider on Monday who it died on in the middle of our trip to LaGuardia Airport!!! I asked her if her screen was showing anything, and she told me it wasn't. I then had to inform her that my screen up front had just turned off. I had to break it to her that she couldn't pay with a credit card. Luckily she took this news well. she even tipped me at the end which I didn't expect, and would not have been angry in the least if she hadn't. She tipped low, but I didn't care, any tip at all was greatly appreciated due to the lack of service I gave her. She told me that when she got in the screen was saying it was experiencing a fatal error.

Oi!!! you know, you folks at Verifone really should've thought to inform the drivers when this occurs. Why do we receive no warning?? This is just one poorly engineered flaw in a series of mistakes with the equipment. As I pulled into the taxi line at the airport, but I pull aside from a place in line, as I don't know how long it will take to fix the problem. I turn off the engine, pop the hood, pull the extra fuse out and wait for 5 minutes. Another driver walks up to help. He tells me it will be fine, and that I should put the fuse right back in, 5 minutes isn't necessary. I tell him of all the times I experienced a whole mixed bag of problems and how sometimes it seemed necessary to give it more time. He didn't want to get into too much of a debate with me, but asserted that this wasn't such a big deal, and I'd be fine if I put the fuse back in. Sure enough I put the fuse back in after waiting only a minute as he directed me back into the line before more cabs came in, and the system re-booted within another minute or 2. Ahhh I was relieved, although never all completely confident that it would work if someone were to pay credit.

Never until that day have I had the entire system just shut down mid ride as if the car wasn't even turned on. Although I have had the system refuse to operate in the back-seat. It wasn't the first time a passenger has informed me of the system error encountered message. It is these "encounters" that bring us closer to understanding the inner workings of the machines, you see, they run on a Microsoft windows based OS. They are destined for hiccups, and that is just with mild use, but these computers are in service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with hot and cold temperatures. I once had system that decided to expire at 8 in the morning on monday, the worst time for expiration. I waited around the garage for 2 hours until the mechanic realized that he couldn't find the booklet to program the new monitor he just installed to replace the expired screen. These systems have gone so badly that my garage is going to slowly switch all the computers in every taxicab with another brand, there are three different variants of T&LC approved combinations. I had the pleasure of working the newer system, and the meter was easier to read and use, but the credit card reader on the partition was completely broken. Fortunately the reader just below the monitor was working, and wow, did it ever work, the equipment was so much more efficient that the transactions went through faster, and I also believe were easier to understand for the passenger.

Lets end this on a good note

Well I've done it again, turn this blog negative, so lets drop that crap, and go for the good stuff again, the last fare was something to brag about. Tuesday was looking good for a change, but then slowed to a crawl at the end just before picking up to hustle at the end. And I was lining myself up for an income just above the average when I guy comes in and wants to go to South Street Seaport. He specifies it is Fulton Street, and he says just off the drive. So I quickly understand that he is okay with taking the highway there. I ask him though specifically if it is at Water street, or South Street, and he specifies it is near the pier but that he wants the land side, and not the water side, so I am almost certain he wants me to take the highway there. This was a fantastic fare, and not only that he adds 6 dollars to his fare on a credit card.

But the best of all, for the record:

I drive around the block and get a woman to the airport. The cab was due back at the garage just over the Queensboro Bridge in a mere hour, but I was game for the challenge. Dare I say I was feeling lucky. I asked if I could take the Triboro/RFK Bridge, and she said in British form that she was in quite a bind actually so whatever I deemed was faster. That was my okay to gun it as if she was family. I hit the FDR Drive rather than the Brooklyn Bridge, full aware that I would get myself stuck in traffic crossing the Kosciusko Bridge. As I proceeded up the drive I heard on all three traffic stations about traffic on the Brooklyn bound side of the Brooklyn Bridge, phew dodged that bullet, but also the news informed me of traffic just before the RFK Bridge, so I opted for the Midtown Tunnel instead. This was a little taxing. I waited at a total of 7 traffic lights to progress into a very slow merge at the tunnel. And it was only as we did all of this that the news mentioned a back up on the Long Island Expressway, which is exactly the highway which the tunnel outlets too. I figure I'm headed for doom. She's saying on the phone that it seems unlikely that she'll make the flight. And yet through all of this she holds her mood in constant positivity, not getting all that mad about her circumstance. She was probably just telling herself that she should've given more time, and in reality it just wasn't feasible to have expected getting to the airport on time.

To add to all of this I was surveying her the whole time about her flight's location, and trying to determine if she was headed for Terminal A, or Terminal D, soon enough all the pieces came together on the phone and she was headed for Terminal A, definitely to her advantage in traffic when she was pressed for time. I asked her when we got out of the tunnel this:

"So I'm guessing you basically have to be at the airport in like 10 minutes?"

"Yeah pretty much." She frowns.

after finding the toll booth, the cars in front of me made ambiguous maneuvers to the booths, I came out of the gate a rabid dog with his eyes on a prize. I carefully held my place as an expert motorcyclist tried to turn time backwards, and yet I followed him, keeping him within sight. Soon enough he was gone, but still I pulled up to 70 miles an hour speed like I was driving a train high on some sort of paraphernalia. we arrived at the airport within 7 minutes of my goal of 10 minutes. The total ride took a total 30 minutes, which is extremely special for 4pm. She said to me, "You were superb" and I felt as though she may have had her knuckles turn whiter then my own through the duration of the trip.

And to top this off I made it back to the garage in 15 minutes, yeah through all of Astoria to Long Island City in another blink of an eye or two. Fantastic, and it is these moments when I feel like superman.

No Tipper

2010-11-18T22:50:00.002-05:00

And then the next tuesday, which was the tuesday before last, yes I hold grudges. It was 8 in the morning and I remembered that at this time if I came to 35th street at the FDR drive service road, I'd get a boat load of ferry passengers who needed cabs. It was a precarious pick-up location. I was intending to turn off the service road and wait at the corner for the arriving ferry, but the boat had already arrived, and the parade of professionals were already crossing at the red light. The first hailer I saw was this woman with big black sunglasses. She stood practically next to my cab and stuck her hand in the air, and yet there was no place to pull over per-sé. Under high demand times, I often pass these people right by to teach them about concern for the safe and efficient flow of traffic. It is obnoxious that they assume a taxi should stop in the middle of traffic. I found that there were two ramp cut-outs in the sidewalk, so I pulled up on them so that she could safely enter without me hindering traffic. Of course things didn't exactly work that way. She may have been a little frightened by this maneuver, but also all the traffic had no idea what I was doing and was too skittish to drive around my car, so I might as well have stopped traffic as it would've been easier, but hey, you never know how experienced the drivers are with city driving behind you.

Anyway, she gets in and tells me her address, 570 Broadway, "It's in SoHo," Says she.

These addresses always bring to mind a marker in my mind, 770 Broadway, which is the old Wannamaker Building. My middle school was trying to get the second floor of this building to use it for the school, and also when I was just a little boy, smaller than I am even today, my parents would use the bank and I'd sit with little patience in the large bank and stare at the organ player, yes they hired a man to play an organ for the patrons, wow oh wow how banks have changed. They didn't have any bullet-proof glass either. Now of course the bank is gone and in its place is an Ann Taylor Loft. Long story short the address 770 Broadway holds significance in my mind and so I think I can use it as a North Star of sorts to figure how close or far other Broadway addresses are. This method doesn't work very well, it is a mere starting point.

But I suggested to my fare that 570 Broadway may be in NoHo, but I figured she was right. Sure enough I looked up the address in my pages of address references in the taxi drivers hand guide. There is also a mathematical code for addresses for each avenue, but with all of the codes to remember on top of the math that needs to be done, looking the address up in my book is far easier. Crosstown streets are easy to figure out, but streets that go north and south are too miscellaneous. I digress, low and behold her address most likely lay between Houston and Prince, or Prince and Spring. And I hoped beyond all hopes that it would be a big bold address number, large enough to read in a moving vehicle. Usually when a passenger announces a street address at 8 in the morning on a weekday, it is one of these large font, bold numbers announcing to the world that a significant number of people work here. But amongst these larger numbers, are thousands of buildings that only a postal employee can find. All these thoughts danced in my mind as I proceeded up 35th Street and down Park Avenue. And as I proceeded I condemned myself for making the turn to 35th street when I could have taken the highway to Houston and then across. But again who knows which is better, and what is better in who's mind? the highway may be faster, or it may not, and it takes more distance, as the island of Manhattan pulls eastward to accommodate the alphabet of Avenues A through D. So the highway would've pulled us 4 long blocks east making us drive 8 long blocks further on badly timed traffic lights. She says nothing of my inclination to go street all the way, so I figure she isn't bothered. I merely sit on this thought due to her lack of tipping. When we get near the address and I slow down to frustrating speed and she seems to be doing nothing to help me, she then tells me to change the location and drive straight to the Starbucks "Down the street."

Ugh, down the damn street, my how very specific she was. And I remembered being at the Starbucks on Broadway in SoHo. I remembered being at this Starbucks more than once, with my friend who lives just a block a way, but which streets was this Starbucks in between, surely it can't be far, it must be just two or three buildings a way, as she wouldn't want to be late for work. I think, virtually pounding my head for answers, where was it?? near which stores?? they all come and go so fast. The whole neighborhood's rate of rotation for business locations is confounding. "Ohhh it must be on the right side!!" I say

"Yes, it is." short answer without enough tone to judge her disposition. And I slow down to even more confounding slowness. there is much frustration here as it is after 7am, and only the left lane is legal to drive in. The right lane is for busses only. The only vehicles in that lane are busses, police vehicles searching for law-breakers, and cars from out of town who think they found a secret lane until they get ticketed. So in my head now, I have to contemplate how this woman who wasn't even so easy to pick up, is now not even so easy to drop off, I have to spot out this Starbucks 'just down the street' on the right side, as I drive on the left side, which must be rather complicated and stupid to her, then I'd have to cross over the bus lane to safely pull to the side of the street just in front of the Starbucks I eventually did it.

"There IT IS!" I proclaim with great pride. I hit the time off button in advance as usual and the fare comes to a perfect even 11 dollars. I also hold great pride in trying to get riders there in the lowest priced fare they've ever had. Low and behold I receive exactly 11 dollars. Not only did she say nothing to me upon exiting the cab, not even listening to my standard "You have a good one" line that I give each customer, I have no idea what one I am referring to so the phrase fits for all, holidays, days, nights, weeks, but she also was working in SoHo, coming from New Jersey, and wearing big sunglasses, oh yeah and she was buying an overpriced coffee with an over-inflated sense of self. I pondered what I should do to have had bettered the situation. You see I was taught in taxi school, yes we have a taxi school, that we should never talk about, ask for, or demand a tip. It is highly un-professional, and so even when foreign tourists ask what is the right amount to tip, I tell them they can pay whatever they wish. You have to dig deep in a conversation with me to get me to actually come clean with you about what I would like as a tip. Well, if you are a customer that is, I wouldn't dare start or even instigate a conversation revolving around tipping behavior. But for this type of passenger, well, I think the fairest thing to do would to ask her just as she is leaving if there is anything I could've done better, and if she looked at me quizzically I might be as bold as to ask if there was anything I did wrong.Hopefully that would put forward an inkling of understanding in her mind.

Shift Shots 1/8/2010

2010-11-18T12:00:00.002-05:00

Bay Ridge, Brooklyn

Just had to look this one up to be sure where it was on the fabulous Google, I can't say enough about how amazing google maps is. They came complete with 35 reviews of this place. Piecing together the good reviews with the bad, I'm leaning on believing that while this place may not be absolutely the worst, it is still not worth the time, and while it is really beautiful to look at, that's about all it's good at doing. Too bad, it looks so inviting. Anyway this kicks off yet another year of belated shift shot posts. Happy 2010 everybody!!! Oh what's that you say? You say it's almost 2011, nonsense, I live in the past!

interactions update:

2010-11-17T22:50:00.003-05:00

been awhile since i've talked about latest fares and my impressions of the job and the people. Honestly, it has something to do with my ongoing campaign to keep things as even-keel as possible. I'd assume the habit to keep things minimized to a predictable and safe pattern is common for anyone with such a job where anything might happen, but knock on wood, anything doesn't happen. And so, the interesting interactions for me are reduced mainly to computer glitches and a driver seat that smells like pee. Anyway, these are some highlights that some up what I've been feeling about the job lately:

Tips

I've been explaining to my friends that it seemed nobody has been tipping lately. I was just starting to accept this as some sort of new thing. I was grossly exaggerating I realized as usual. I was examining the actions of small percentage of passengers which was increasing, but still holding under the 50% mark. The fact remaining though, was low tips were increasing from 1 out of 10, to something like 3 or 4 out of 10. What was going on? Why was this happening? Was it because with my experience I was driving more irrationally in the eyes of these passengers, or was it just a fluke of just picking up the wrong people, all of which by the way were coming in all types, from high income to low income. I should add that the best tippers tend to be people who used to drive cabs and now make about 75,000 or less a year, all my assumption. Those who make a ridiculously high income, or a ludicrously low one, tend to either tip low, or not tip at all. But as always, this job above all is a natural sociology lesson that teaches the cabbie that while pre-judgments make us feel more comfortable in daily life, they usually don't really inform us of any real knowledge whatsoever.

Perhaps, these little stories should be broken up to several blog posts. I should let you know that I am now over this all, and it seems it was some sort of fluke surge of no and low tips, with little to no explanation:

Low Tipper

The most aggravating ride that got my head spinning was when I picked up a man 3 weeks ago on a tuesday, my first ride, 5 or 6am, requested to go to Park Place and Broadway. I was confused by this location for a brief second, as I don't usually recieve Park Place as a destination. He informed me of the route immediately for me to take, quickly relieving my brain of thought. I was to take Lexington Avenue to 25th Street to Park Avenue all the way down Broadway.

"Ahh," I said to him, "Right by City Hall?"

"Yes" his reply.

I know of Park Row better as it has a more defined location separate from the traditional grid-work of the city's streets. As I drove down the deserted dark streets I made extra effort to push the car through the lights that change quicker than sane driving style permits, 17th street, 14th street, 11th street, Houston Street, Howard Street, and a few others. I passed 11th street as the light turned red I think, that one pisses me off all the time. it doesn't even intersect with traffic, why does it turn red so quick?? nonsense!!! I think it is part of a scheme to slow traffic as it passes through the East Village. the fare was phenomenally low with no cars on the street. We came from 3rd Avenue and 63rd all the way to The Woolworth Building for a fare of something like 7.80, and he paid me 8 dollars. Eight Fucking dollars!! It screwed up my whole day. I was intending to do small runs in the neighborhood of 63rd/Upper East Side for the first 2 to 3 hours of my day, and now he sent me all the way downtown where hardly anybody lives, for 8 fucking dollars!!! I could've done 4 runs at 5 to 7 dollars all with no tip, but it wouldn't have bothered me because, firstly, they all are very low income workers who really can't afford to tip, and second, if I do those trips fast enough, I make the same money as an airport ride in less time and while using less gas.

I thought more about the ride and what could've possible been wrong with it. At the end of the ride, he called out, "It will be on the right at the next block." But he called that out one block too early.

"Right here?" I said. The word next has always confused me. does next mean here, or there?

"NO!" the Next one." Well there we go, I ruined his day, which hasn't even begun yet, and it has already tripped on words.

"Ohhhh," I said, "You mean the Woolworth Building." I should've said it louder, with more indignation. Fuck street names and directions, all you needed to tell me was to take you to The Woolworth building, one of the most fucking famous landmarks in the damn city. Fucking prick.

I was still fuming about this a few minutes later as I turn to go uptown on Church Street. A midsize sport utility vehicle wants to get over to the left, but does so with timidness. So be it as there is no traffic, so I wave them over, and slow down. And now of course they wait in front of me as reveling in their newly acquired lane. Not only are they in my way, but now I can't see in front of me down the long wide street, possibly missing fare opportunities lining either the east or west side, stuck behind some moron. The pass ever so slowly all the way to left of the street, which mind you is 4 lanes across!!! they don't use a turn signal once!! I take my frustration out on them and in 2 seconds time do what took them so long to do, crossing over lane after lane using my signals and the abundance of engine torque the car possessed. The streets were wet from that night's rain, so while I pounded on my horn the tail end of my car danced like snake, and with that I peeled away from my aggravations and back in to my more civilized mind, which of course told me that I was indeed an idiot. I looked up to the express bus in the right lane of the street, and thought I at the very least gave the commuters from Staten Island a good show.

2009 Portfolio: re-edit

2010-11-11T17:42:00.002-05:00

I have just taken out 4 images from the portfolio I posted yesterday, and added 5. Eh still not sure that's final, but then again, it's when things are unwilling to change that they become tired and stale, okay enough of that. here are the new additions. and shorty after this post I'll make the appropriate picture swaps in the portfolio post:

The 2009 Portfolio

2010-11-10T11:02:00.007-05:00

Shift Shots 12/07/09

2010-10-20T22:32:00.002-04:00

Well here it is, the last of 2009 shift shots. I know, I know, It's about time!!!

Greenpoint, Brooklyn

from what I've seen some of the best work on walls is in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. But I pretty much know that my all city sights is actually quite limited, and that alone says a lot about this city. I am pretty sure that there is even better work out in the Bronx, perhaps Staten Island, etceteras. But anyhow Greenpoint definitely showcases some of the best. Oh I guess I'm grouping Greenpoint Brooklyn and Long Island City Queens in one group because both neighborhoods border each other across a bridge, or two.

Anyway. now that the shift shots for 2009 is done, I'll get on with the sorting for the 2009 portfolio post of the best of the best for that year, than it's on to 2010.

Shift Shots 12/06/09

2010-10-15T19:59:00.001-04:00

The Lower East Side

Long Island City, Queens

South Bronx, The Bronx

I thought this was pretty awesome, I was able to find the location of the above picture using Google Maps. The idea was to verify the location on Google Maps and then check for the nearest neighborhood title. The 'South Bronx doesn't seem specific enough, but unfortunately no maps I have on hand show any neighborhood name.

But I still think it's pretty cool that below the Major Deegan Expressway the street was documented not only by Google Maps but also by the moving camera truck. Not only that, but it also took some pretty cool pictures. The only way I was able to find the street though, was by going to street view at 144th street and then pushing the arrow along until we get under the highway, almost as if I was virtually driving the camera truck.

Ward's Island

Shift Shot 12/05/09

2010-10-14T21:04:00.006-04:00

Turtle Bay -is my guess here, or perhaps I just like saying Turtle Bay.

We're finally getting near the end of the 2009 shots. So when 2009's posts are all up I'll sort through all of them and put together a portfolio of the best of the best of that year, then it's on to the 2010 roll. BTW since the Los Angeles vacation I haven't bought a new camera yet, and I think I'm enjoying keeping my mind more solidly focused on taxi driving when I get behind the wheel.

Through all these years photography has been a great tool to keep my ambition going, to make me feel like I was on this taxi trip as a project of sorts to see the world through a new perspective and always be able to step back from it when the time came. Carrying a camera helped me take anxiety away from uncertainties of the job, and when I was really amiss as to where to turn next I could always turn to the camera, but lately my experience has made me feel more comfortable in the cab than I am with my own two feet pacing the concrete. There is a wonderful feeling in the cab akin to the feeling of dreaming, where I can cover so much ground in a full 10 to 12 hours and never become winded, always sitting back with a cup of coffee and thinking about it all, or simplifying it all so much that I'm not thinking 'about' anything per se, but only thinking about what to do next if anything.

I am not going to drop the recording of images by any means from my habit, but I'm still going to take a bit of a break. Right now I'm contemplating what tool I should get next to record video of my driving during the shifts. This is where I want to go next, but I have my doubts if any device is right for this. The iPhone while it has a good battery life, and a good camera, doesn't have a good GPS for instant directions for a taxi driver. The Android while it has a better GPS seems like a worse device for the other things, really bad battery life, and probably less compatibility with my mac at home. Then there is the GoPro HD which has cool mounting devices, but really I need a smaller device witch could be concealed better and have a decent battery life, for a camera 2 hours of battery seems really crap. I could just get the next generation version of my old camera and use it for video, but I think for the cab I'd rather have a smaller device, and to boot having internet capability would be cool to find things instantly for customers, as well as live internet posting on the taxi lines, but again I have my doubts if the phones while convenient enough for your average person, are convenient enough to use in really fast situations for taxi drivers. And those flip cams: again poor battery life and not enough storage space. Plus the iPhone has the added bonus of quick video editing and posting instantly to the internet.

So that's where I am on the next chapter of this blog, which is still quite far from now I suppose since I still have all of 2010's photos left to publish. Maybe I should just wait another 6 months or so and then get a real GPS device, and then an iphone, or maybe a point and shoot with HD video. For now I'll just get a cheap phone, and yes, when all of it is thought through it really isn't worth while for the money one pays monthly for a smart phone service? it's really quite stupid.

Shift Shots 11/29/09

2010-10-13T22:06:00.002-04:00

East Flushing, Queens

Sunnyside, Queens -Looking to Manhattan skyline over the Queens rooftops and treetops

My best guess for this brings me to Greenpoint, Brooklyn

Shift Shot 11/28/09

2010-10-01T16:45:00.000-04:00

Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn

Shift Shots 11/23/09

2010-10-01T02:23:00.002-04:00

Far West Side

Curry Hill / Turtle Bay / Flatiron District

Eh it's on the border of all those neighborhoods, though it could definitely be labeled Curry Hill, that almost seems offensive, not sure that is an actual name for the neighborhood yet.

Flatiron District

This building was featured in the New York Times, mentioned as a new trend in design. I'm not sure weather to be disgusted with it, as it pays no mind to its surrounding environment by sticking out like a sore obelisk, but on the other hand it does have an interesting design. I'm leaning more on the disgusted side with this though. See in New York City we have a thing called air rights. Each building has a specific number of floors it is allowed to have, so when the landowner purchased this land they bought the land rights of practically every other property on the block so they could some how pack so many floors into this tiny lot of space and claim these views at the foot of Madison Avenue and Madison Square Park. It is hard not be disgusted when you have a friend who is a broker for rental apartments and is always telling you the prices that the average apartment is going for. Average, and I stress, average studio apartments in the West Village are going for $2,175 per month; That's in a neighborhood with very old buildings where foundations are sagging, and construction may have never been at a quality level to begin with, being that the neighborhood was never intended for people with money, but rather, the low income families. Oh and did I mention small apartments, bad electrical fuses, no elevators, bad plumbing, and roach infestations? In the Upper East Side the average price paid for studio apartments is $1,711 and of course those apartments may have all the previously noted qualities as well.

Lower East Side

Shift Shots 11/22/09

2010-09-30T11:25:00.000-04:00

Co-op City, The Bronx

New Prius

2010-09-30T04:37:00.004-04:00

If you haven't seen my album of current taxis, it's one of those things I've been excited about. Since I've taken a picture of each cab currently in service the excitement has faded, but the new Toyota Prius was the most recent car that I hadn't taken a good picture of. This one is a little better replacement of the last picture I had on file.

You might also want to check out my other photo albums, the taxis of the past I put a lot of effort into, and it brought me much joy in finding so many of the models that have gone into and out of service, as well as the colors, they weren't always yellow here.

Shift Shots 11/21/09

2010-09-29T22:31:00.004-04:00

Well it's been a while, but I'm gonna get back on track and start posting the shift shots again. As you can see from the title, I'm a bit behind, almost a full year behind to be exact. Well, here we are.

Chinatown -Under the Manhattan Bridge

The Far West Side

Penn Station

Brooklyn Queens Expressway- Above New Calvary Cemetery, Queens

Vacation Shots Part 2- The Desert.

2010-09-25T10:00:00.003-04:00

The Desert:

It may have been day 4 or as early as day 3 of the vacation, when it had been time to take this trip to a more climactic point. To go out on the edge and just come up with something way off the normal scale for what people would do with their vacation in the Los Angeles area. After all I had a car, and each day was a full day of time to do what ever I wanted with it. It felt glorious to know that I had the weather, the car, the time, the food, I had everything, and yet it was all very fleeting really. Each minute that is not filled with some activity, is just another minute on faster course to the passing of time. It was just before the vacation that my friend Bob, who I always sit with on a weekly basis at the coffee house around the NYU campus and we look at pictures and talk about the latest Apple product; Bob recommended going to the -east- of California. He told me that the further from the ocean I went, the more likely I was to find everything unchanged over the course of decades: Ghost towns, defunct gas stations, and major street intersections with no but one building on one corner.

So having already ran out of ideas for that short period of time on day 3 or 4 of the vacation, I used the sacred Google, prophet that it is, in order to find pictures of something nice; nature, ghost towns, whatever. The pictures on Google Maps were already attached to the coordinates of where they were. So I picked the most general area around where there were the most beautiful pictures, and generalized it enough to memorize an exit, or an overall area such as, Moreno Valley, where only one highway went through it. Sadly my friend who was kind enough to let me stay in the downstairs room in her house would have plans later in the day, and given how unspecific my plans were, she wouldn't be able to go. However Brian was available, so I drove to Westwood first to then go back south and then west. He provided significant back-up with his blackberry phone. I forgot to mention my phone is practically dead, and had been even then. It is only capable of making one 2 minute call, and that's only if it is kept off. Anyway with his Blackberry he was also able to check the map, and it told us where we were.

The pictures we came up with, and the place we found ourselves in was fantastic. The pictures I had researched earlier that morning were of a lake in a wildlife preserve. These pictures contained beautiful sunsets and pelicans landing on the lake just as little bits of red and blue light from the last sun of the day reached the desert. Alas, we never found that lake, but we found ourselves in places that may have been much more awesome.

This was the mark of contrast between New York City, and the furthest from it with a road placed down the middle almost as a joke.

The above picture is of a farm, I think they were growing and packaging hey stacks?

The land was so flat and dry, that the road was actually higher then the dirt.

Every hill, mountain, mound, was different from the next, reduced to minimalist identity with sparser signals of life on each shot, but an even greater texture emerges from the mounds. I apologize for that: See back in photo school it was a trend to shoot mounds, and it is almost impossible for a photographer to resist.

And so we found are way to this dead end, where Brian thought if we were allowed to continue we would have found that lake, which may have been all dried up. It turned out even later that we did find the National Park, and the ranger was nice enough to let us in for 40 minutes free of charge. It was the most boring thing, just a beach, some changing station, a few families. The lake was huge, and boring. I preferred our earlier destination to the dead end where we found a truer blend of dessert life.

After all these pictures we stopped in at a Starbuck's and were hit with a huge blast of Air conditioning at the door. The coffee there was only $1.50!! and when I asked for soy milk at the bar, they not only supplied it free, but they poured it in the drink for me!! I thought I was getting some sort of desert deal, but it turned out later on, that the coffee was the same low price everywhere there, and at each place they would pour the soy milk into the coffee for me. I assume it was this huge difference in temperature between the car's air conditioning, the desert heat, and the frosty Starbucks that did my camera in, because I couldn't take another picture.

Pictures from my summer vacation! part 1

2010-09-23T19:23:00.010-04:00

Hah! You thought I'd never get around to it didn't ya? Unfortunately it would be the last time I'd use this camera of mine. I don't know why nor how it broke, but it just stopped working only about 3 days into the eight day vacation In Los Angeles. It was so much fun taking one week off from work and spending a whole weekend with a few weekdays sandwiching it together. I woke up every morning and put some plan together and did something. And I can't thank my friends enough for spending time with me, offering their time, and their homes.

Manhattan Beach:

How sweet it was to be waking up right next to a beach, and the best thing about waking up over there, was their 8am is our 11am, so there was always plenty of time and sun left everyday.

So many cars were out there of so many different ages, and very little damage, or wear and tear, with hardly any rain out there and a low humidity. It does wonders for keeping cars in good shape for years, and leads me to think it might do wonders for people too. the air out there always contained a light breeze and as long as I wasn't in downtown, there weren't too many concrete sidewalks to reflect the bright sun and amplify it to uncomfortable proportions. You might be wondering why I posted the pic below. Well I had to show you that they carry surfboards on bicycles!

And speaking of climate change. The friend I was staying with told us about this Lake of Self Realization. A place dedicated to every religion to bring some sort of spiritual blah, blah, blah. It was really amazing. Surrounded by hills and the Pacific Coast Highway I believe, but beneath all of that, The lake was absolutely tranquil, the temperature had to have been 5 or 10 degrees cooler than it was up on the road, and there were trees everywhere which created breezes and shade to see the lake.

Pacific Palisades, The Lake of Self Realization:

Heading to Hollywood:

If my camera hadn't broken I'm almost positive I would've had 200 to 300 shots of cars. I went to a car show later on in the week and sadly have no pictures from that.

The Hollywood Reservoir:

The Hollywood Reservoir I think totally set the tone for this vacation. And it also speaks to something I do quite often with my pictures. We came here, and saw the Hollywood sign, an esoteric, cliché touristy thing, but we did it in a very in crowd way. We saw it from a place that not too many tourists see it from. Up in the hills the Hollywood Reservoir was constructed at around 1929, perhaps part of the public works programs, or maybe even before that. Anyway, it was an awesome L.A. version of the same stuff I yearn for over on the east coast, seeing our common urban world mixed with natural life, seeing how the two mix.

At the Mulholland Dam, which looks like it was done fairly cheaply, but still with so much care. Now adays you don't see such projects made with an attention to aesthetic value: The curve on the overhanging roof, details on every thingy that holds up the fence, etc...

Brian saw this bump at the dam, and it reminded him of a Mario Brothers game button. so me and Elissa took a series of pictures of him pretending to jump on it. As coincidence would have it, it was Brian's last week in L.A. before he left to go back to his native land of coastal Maine. I knew Brian and two others out there from a school I went to out there in Maine where we all studied either photography or film.

It seemed like the Reservoir was a sort of Central Park for the people of the area, always jogging or walking their dogs.

The story with Elissa is that I knew her through a friend of mine here in New York, and he ran a few of those meet up groups, you know, those are those groups that people with similar interests get together for to do something and meet people, via the internet. And my friend Jesse whom I met her through, and who I've known since about the age of eight, was one of the few Meet up group leaders who wasn't a skeezy freak, and she was also a normal person with no pretensions about her.

Let me go off a little bit on a cabbie's diatribe... These porta-potties... were the best I've ever had the pleasure of using. Actually I only used the one on the, left, I think. It had soap!!! I've seen one's with soap dispensers before, but actual soap! filled to the brim! and the entire unit was clean too!! You don't know how many times as a cab driver I've had to open front and back doors to act as a barrier, and pee in the alleyways, or there was a time the week before, when I had to climb over a chain-link fence to get into the unlocked porta-potty. Who locks up a bathroom, in the middle of the day!

Ahhh, sorry about that rant, hopefully the photo above can take you back to serenity.

Yes this was my rental car. It was fantastic. I marveled every single day at how tiny it was. Each time I parallel parked it seemed like the hood was going to be a foot, or two, or three longer, but then I'd open the door and get out, and there would be 3 feet, of space in front and in back. That car did everything right. And all the drivers were sooo polite. Although seeing how terrible driving really is now, I wonder if it had a lot to do with the car being grey, rather than yellow.

Part 2 of pictures is up and ready, I just need to add captions to that blog, it'll be up tomorrow. Stay tuned for the desert.

Three weeks after the vacation- in summary

2010-09-20T16:45:00.004-04:00

I assure you, I'll post something soon. I suppose I have stories to tell, but I guess it drains a lot of energy for me to vent my frustrations of this job. Stories of cab life always seem to focus on the sour side of things, but I assure you these stories are only outstanding because they don't happen so often, for the most part people are really well mannered. I'm not sure if I want to divulge much info but lets see, in the last few weeks, since I have returned to the job from a vacation in L.A.: I came inches away from my mirror slapping a 5 year old child in the back of the head (the parent's weren't holding the child's hand, and they as well as 50 others were walking along side the road which happens to be a highway entrance ramp), there was just this last Tuesday when I decided to snap and shout the F word at this Russian bitch about 10 times because she asked me if I had a problem after I didn't have a problem, all I did was sigh, and I was stuck in traffic with her, and she had no idea where she was going, a Wells Fargo bank? doesn't exist, not on 57th and 3rd, not on 58th and 3rd, and not a nice thing to take a cab there from 62nd between 2nd and 1st, making me go east then south then west then north then east, and what would have been east and north and then west again, but the trip ended there, as I was fed up with her, and she couldn't make up her mind, s I wasn't sure which lane i should use to optimize my chance of being in the right lane for where I would go. She got out without paying, "good," I said, "Get the fuck out!" I explained to her the way it works on a Tuesday morning, I get a ride every 2 minutes for 5 dollars, I don't waste a half hour of my time with someone who doesn't know where they're going in the most congested area in New York City. She told me she'd report me, you know what, she was a hazard to taxi drivers, it is unsafe to drive her around because every minute you hear another demand from her, making you change lanes and fuck up traffic all around you.

Lets see, that said, I had some really nice fares of late too: I took some people from Norway down to Battery Park from Chelsea. They asked me how tall the Trade Towers were
, and because we had such a friendly banter already, they told me they saw a Jets game to see what our American brand of football was like, and also, they saw the Redbulls play too, our local professional soccer team. I told them I'm not a football fan, too violent. And the Redbulls? What's up with naming the team after a Thai beverage? Anyway,
I told them the Trade Center was 110 floors high, and immediately switched the topic over to the Empire State Building, that building is 84 floors high.

"But," I said, "The needle must be accounted for. All these buildings really have their height added by their needle. The Trade Center had a very large needle atop one of the two towers, built in the late 70's possibly as late as 78' and the Empire State building's needle is massive, that building was built back in the 30's, the depression," I continued, "Back then all the rich guys wanted to compete for the biggest tower, who could grow the tallest. It was such a competition, "I kept going, and they seemed genuinely fascinated, and so I tripped myself up and got confused, then I gained traction in my mind again. "The Chrysler Building was almost taller than the Empire State. First the Empire State Building completed itself with a bulb at the top in order for Zeppelins, you know, blimps to dock, tie themselves up, drop anchor at the top of the building. You see they thought that was gonna be the next big thing back then. But then the Chrysler had a secret needle within their building. once the Empire State building claimed completion, the Chrysler raised their needle from the inside, and for one week it was the tallest building, until the Empire state building then added on more needle to theirs, and thus, this is the skyline you see today."

So that was fun, weather it was the absolute truth, or a bit of a storied version, it was fun to drop something akin to knowledge. Oh and just yesterday I had a fantastic ride to Ridgewood from the East Village. They were bartenders, and the last one of the 3 part trip was a former cabbie, we talked about shit, I told him about my angry Russian bitch, which I brought up because he mentioned that he hates Russians, he works at a bar owned by Ukrainians and swears that all other nationalities produce fine people, but Russia, always rudeness. He told me to stop by his bar sometime and he'd give me a free drink, and you know what, I think I'm going to take him up on that, especially since this week is United Nations week, OI!!!

That was some storm we had on Thursday eh? Driving on Saturday I saw a car parked on Flatbush Avenue in Prospect Park with its roof completely caved in, windshield smashed. Beside the car lay a sawed off tree trunk of what must've been a massive tree that lay across the Avenue at one point. This tree must've been at least 130 years old. What happened in Brooklyn was the result of a few mini Tornadoes. My friend's sister had the roof above her apartment fly off. poor family, it was earlier this year that their apartment burned up, due to a neighbor's carelessness of plugging in way too many devices into the limited fuse capability of a tenement building in SoHo still somehow standing. We'll see how long that lasts. They have hired a lawyer so they'll sue if their apartment isn't ready to move back into by next year. You have to hold on to what you can, especially when you pay 600 dollars a month for a railroad flat walk up in SoHo, across the street from a new building that used to house the likes of Courtney Love and Lenny Kravitz. But in Queens? Oh My God, I tried taking the short cut through Forrest Hills around the Grand Central Parkway to get somebody to JFK who wasn't going to make his flight anyway. I ran into trees, everywhere. it reminded me of that glorious day (I apologize), that day when everyone didn't go to work 9 years ago and walked around taking pictures of the travesty around them. Big, huge trees clogged all the streets in the neighborhood, and everybody was on a tour with their point and shoots.

Well that is all, happy trails y'all.

Back in NYC part two, east vs west.

2010-09-09T16:53:00.010-04:00

Well as I type this post I'm awaiting my new computer, hooray! everything has been getting used and abused to their limits recently. My phone has a battery that only lasts for 4 hours when on minimal use, and if I make a phone call it will only last for 2 minutes at best. My camera died in the Moreno Valley desert. And what I feel I needed more than ever was a new computer before my current one dies and loses all my valuable pictures I haven't edited yet. Anyways we will be on a mini photo hiatus. On the plus side I'm getting a new computer!! This could lead to some new directions for my blog. Eventually when I have the 2009 and 2010 taxi photography up here and organized into a best of portfolio, I could switch the blog to video!!! I'll see if I can keep making enough money and trimming my budget down even more so that I can afford some amateurish video device and edit together some clips of cab driving by the end of 2011. Meanwhile I have more to talk about from L.A. experiences and the comparative headaches of New York City life.

Ermm... enjoy?

More things from L.A.-

Stories Told-

I was able to share a story of mine from a New York of a few years ago to some classmates of my friend I was staying with. They all worked on some short films together. So who knows maybe it'll be a short film soon.

Maybe I'll tell you that story sometime in the near future, it's a goody, but I haven't posted on the blog nor any of the other gritty stories of growing up here because they all came pre-taxi life. I've always held a belief that you can't actually get an in depth perspective on a place from only one angle. Growing up in the city leaves somebody with far more stories and perceptions, knowledge etcetera than driving a cab. Although driving a cab definitely adds a very thick soupy layer to street smarts, cab driving gives more of a peripheral or an upgrade, to an already dense knowledge of the city. If you don't already have that knowledge, the cab life isn't going to give it to you from scratch.

And I feel I also had a rare opportunity for extremely good karma or mitzvah, as the friend took me to a dinner with some family members of hers who were from New York, and one of them goes on the air daily for Bloomberg News Radio at about the same time that I start my shift. She asked me about the credit card thing. The question was specifically: "Didn't you cabbies have a problem with the machines at first?" And so it gave me a great opportunity to educate someone in the media on what the real issue was.

And so I said:

"The machines are actually extremely convenient and so it was never the actual machines I had the problem with. The major problem lay in the percentage charged to the driver, not the garage, nor the customer, from credit card charges. For every fare I get that a passenger pays for with a credit card, I have to pay 5% of that back. And I realize that without the convenience of a credit machine I may not even have those customers. Business is definitely very good with the credit card machines, but to be charged 5% for every charge which includes the tolls and the tips does not seem fare when every corner grocery store pays only 1.8%.

I think, though I am not sure, that this stems from the verifone and all other companies that make these systems charging for their machine, the ad companies also needing revenue, and of course the garages. All of this doesn't really add up when the garages are already making money from ad revenue and the credit machine companies are making money from both the credit companies, the ads, and perhaps the drivers. So that is the real problem. Also I should add that there was an article cited in The New York Times that used not enough sources, which stated that tips have more than doubled since the credit card machines were installed. This of course is completely bogus because before credit card machines, tips were never reported or recorded, so of course tips were doubled, tippled, whatever."

So that was a tangent if ever there was one, but hopefully I like to think I did good, now one person who actually reports news might have a somewhat more well-rounded grasp on the taxi and credit gps system, so if she ever gets into that topic, she might pull some more strings and grasp at better sources to get her information.

Driving: East Versus West:

Oh, My, God. What a difference there is between driving mannerisms east coast verse west coast. Even pedestrian behavior is different. In Los Angeles I saw a man who looked like he was on five different drugs, high upper type stuff like crack or something, and his strange behavior was that he was pounding the button on the traffic light, which gives him the signal to go and cross the street. He pounded this button with his fist about 10 times within 3 seconds. Now if this man were in New York City, he would've already crossed the street only to find himself in the middle of the street facing traffic coming at him from both directions. And from the point he would've shouted curses in the general direction of a few specific cars, perhaps even thrown some garbage at each passing car, sticking middle fingers at those who honked at him. Not In L.A. though, in L.A. even the crazed drugged out oddballs wait for the light to turn green.

Oh and driving, oh driving was such a joy, not the least of it was the fact that I rented a Chevy Aveo, one of the smallest production cars available on the American market. In this car I could reach over and roll down the right side window while at a stop light, or if I was a great enough distance on a straight enough road from the car in front of me. If I was driving alone I could grab the roof handle on the right side of the car when I made a tight right turn. Oh it felt so good to drive a car that actually responded with a sharp turning radius and intuitive feel. Granted it wasn't specifically a G.M. car, but really a product from Daewoo, which is a Korean company bought out by G.M. and used internationally by other companies, such as Suzuki. It was so simple, so perfect, and it had a jack for my ipod, and a pretty decent sound system too. I looked around the road and I saw no other car that matched this in looks and simplicity.

Where was I?... Anyway the driving: when I signaled, people 98% of the time let me in front of them: that alone is phenomenal for an east coaster, it says everything about the two different mentalities. They might be less inclined to think only of themselves, less likely to start confrontations, keeping a bigger picture in mind, the southern Californian will realize what is for the greater good, or more likely what the appropriate driving behavior should be. People for the most part stuck to their lanes and went crazy with lane changes only at the moments of merges, and when they had to get off the highway. People for the most part with their higher level of driving experience were able to deduce when people were desperately unfamiliar with their surroundings and needed to change a number of lanes, and let them do so. Also people seemed less likely to use cellphones and eat their breakfast, and read their papers while driving, again because they've been on the road so much that they have realized what accidents are caused by this behavior. It was all just so amazing to me. Granted L.A. needs a better transit infrastructure, but it is mind boggling that they've managed to work so well for this many years on automobiles. All the traffic congestion problems that everyone talks about are only delays compared to New York. In New York you can't just sit in your car and wait out traffic, you have to negotiate to the best lane, which is always changing, because everyone else is changing lanes. I often will find myself on an avenue in the middle lane and saying to myself what could possibly be happening to make this lane stop? Back in New York there is always a car changing lanes, and people marvel at how traffic actually manages to move despite nobody ever sticking to one lane, ever.

Case in point we went to a dodgers game, from the 405 to the 110 I think it was. and the traffic went down to about 10 miles an hour, maybe even 5, but you see, it still moved. and nobody found better lanes, they all were the same. Nobody had to fear about getting cut off, it was so impressive. On tuesday I returned my cab and had to wait on Second Avenue from 64th street to 59th street for about 15 minutes. If that distance were walked it would take about 4 minutes. all the lanes in the right started to move, and all the lanes in the left went nowhere. The lanes on the right of this 5 lane avenue cut over at 59th to the lower roadway of the bridge, leaving a hundred or so cars in the left lane stuck for countless lights. I eventually made my way to the right lanes to get to 58th to use the upper roadway, and even then it was a struggle to meet into single file (nothing is ever single file in New York streets anymore) to get to that bridge entrance.

Now are you ready for the scary part? Sorry to do this, but the post is getting long and I'm gonna spend a night on the town, and come back to type a horrifyingly stupid tale of what we have to endure on an all too regular basis... I'll post part 3.. later tonight? or tomorrow. Give me a small tip for this post, as it is obviously garbage.

Back to NYC

2010-09-01T12:39:00.003-04:00

Ah could there be anywhere better to be? I'm in SFO airport right now with 2 hours until my connecting flight to JFK. Things are just fantastic out here on the left side of the country, I'm having a Pete's coffee with soy milk and enjoying a free wifi connection, no strings attached, completely free. The rental car situation was about the least pleasant of the whole vacation experience, but still even that made me feel like a winner in the end. Do you believe that they try to get renters to take multiple insurance plans, and a pre-pay gas plan too? It all winds up totally to an extra one hundred dollars for the week. Fortunately I realized that the price quote they wanted me to leave the lot with was 299, versus the 191.82 I was quoted on the internet. That said, it was the most fantastic rental car I've had ever. They gave me a Chevy Aveo, which looks a lot like a Kia Rio (it is probably the same car). The spunky little puppy could really bob and weave through curves, and it had some real good brakes too. Everything was manual except for the transmission, and I just loved all of it. I couldn't help but feel sorry for everyone else on the road, because with all of their premium options in their mint cars, they couldn't possibly be having such a care free awesome driving experience. The car was quite hilarious too, eager to always rev it's engine to excruciating decibel levels, only to pull into just about the same speed as everyone else. Yeah it didn't have that much power, but its little size, and the loudness of the engine was just as good.

And the trip! oh the vacation was fantastic, not a day went by that wasn't filled to the brim with destinations, new people, and fantastic scenery. Yesterday I drove up and down Mullholland Drive and stopped at the top of Runyon Canyon National Park. It was a rare moment in my vacation that I had to myself and I just randomly found this park without any plans whatsoever. Seeing a bunch of cars parked on the side of the road, I followed suit and then proceeded to walk down a mountain trail with what seemed like the entire neighborhood, their dogs, and their friends, and their friends' friends. despite it being crowded, it was still so low key, so relaxed, so diverse, so perfect, that I wasn't bothered. The trail just kept going, down all the way to the bottom of one of the Hollywood Hills and then right back up to the top. The sun went found its way to the horizon by the time I got back to my car. Oh and the dogs, wow, I've never seen so many well behaved dogs in my life. The trail had on leash zones, and off leash zones, but the owners mostly kept them off leash through the whole trail, and not once were their dog altercations with people. once or twice a few dogs growled at each other, but even then they quickly mellowed out. The dogs weren't cute little fashion pieces either, I'm no dog expert, but I'd say a few of them may have been pit bulls, some of them were extremely tiny little pocketbook dogs. Anyway, the sunset over all of Los Angeles and I had optimal views. The red skies, blurred with the blue, and the white, so much so that I was willing to assume it was a smog related beauty, not as sharp as the contrasts of colors in an east coast sunset.

Later that day while I had a few minutes to kill before picking up a friend at some classes she was taking at the community college, I decided to walk to a nearby coffee shop, but of course I didn't know where I was going. It was an interesting walk. I went for maybe 2 miles and found nothing, in the city. There were Thai Restaurants and Mexican Restaurants, an "entertainment" place, but nothing hip and trendy. I apparently was in a bad neighborhood, but it didn't feel particularly bad, it was just un-gentrified. The only chain restaurant nearby was a McDonalds, which would've totally ruined the cool experience of just seeing brand new stuff everywhere I went. Lets see over the course of the week I'd been to Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach, Westwood, Downtown, Hollywood, West Hollywood, Santa Monica, and Venice. There's more, there had to be more. I put massive miles on that little car.

To some extent I'm a little worried that I didn't really relax at all on my vacation, but then I thought that perhaps I just do everything backwards from the ordinary person. I think I try to relax as much as possible when I'm not on vacation, and so when it comes vacation time, I pick-up the pace and go gang busters. Or it could've been my friend who was nice enough to let me stay at her place with her parents, she's a little bit gung-ho. She was born and raised in Los Angeles, but doesn't believe in staying put, and when she walks it is at this frantic pace that I can't keep up with. I told her in oder to walk with her I have to imagine that I am 10 minutes late for a very important doctor's appointment.

Another friend of mine, oddly enough moved back to his hometown from L.A. back to Maine yesterday. So all week long while being a little stressed about packing stuff up and getting movers to take his boxes, he also had already quit his job and was basically free to hang out. One of my more memorable days was when we drove out to the desert on a whim. I looked at google maps and found national wildlife refuge called San Vicente, either that or it was Lake Perris. Now might be a good time to explain that when I am having the time of my life, really just being enthralled with all the fantastic scenery, the destination tends to be established only to get the ball rolling. In other words, we never really got to our destination, nor did we really know what our destination was. The pictures were fantastic, and I will post the shortly. They very well could have been the last pictures my Canon Rebel xti had taken. If I was a camera, I too would've wanted to end my life in such a place. Well sadly, the camera might have died at the Starbucks we went to later. You see, the desert was about 115 degrees, then the car was air conditioned, then I took the camera with me out of the car and into the Starbucks which attacked its customers with a hard wall of cold air at the door. My theory is that too many temperature changes might have totalled the camera.

I'll still be posting those Shift Shots as there are so many pics I haven't edited down, a little bit left from 2009, and then all of 2010 left, and then I'll find the best of those best and put portfolio posts up from those years. Well, NYC, I'll see you soon, and I hope you aren't having any rumbling downtown stomach problems caused by the controversy that shouldn't even be a controversy. I just can't believe that Americans are so stupid that they can't tolerate one more stupid religion. I really hope all that garbage is just stirred up in the media, because I just can't imagine most New Yorker's caring about how somebody else chooses to worship.

Shift Shots 11/15/09

2010-08-27T03:38:00.003-04:00

South Ozone Park, Queens

I don't know where this is, but most likely somewhere in The Bronx

East Village

The Cloisters

Shift Shots 11/8/09

2010-08-25T14:20:00.002-04:00

Greetings! I send this post to you from L.A. I'm on my vacation. I did the photoshop work on these on the plane as there was a plug under the seat!! Hazzahh, life is, well not spectacular, but quite nice. And now I finally have an internet connection. And yes I still have pictures from 2009 to post here.

59th Street Bridge/A.K.A. Queensboro Bridge - From Manhattan

Grand Central Station

Upper West Side

Grand Central Station- Park Avenue bridge

It must've been really bad on the bridge between Park Avenue to the south of 40th Street, and Park Avenue north of 46th Street, as these cars were steering their large turning radius vehicles as tight as they could go to make the U-turn.

Astoria, Queens

Shift Shot of 11/7/09

2010-08-19T08:40:00.000-04:00

Harlem

Upper West Side

Shift Shots 11/2/09

2010-08-18T12:19:00.000-04:00

Upper East Side

I was still trying to keep the Metrocard at the meter to remind people of the added 50 cents for this second day since the M.T.A.'s (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) toll per ride. Fortunately nobody asked any questions, and so I haven't bothered to remind people with the card by the meter as a visual aid since. Sometimes people still ask, or pay too little, but when I tell them it doesn't spark much debate.

Queensboro Bridge: Long Island City, Queens

Shift Shot of 11/1/09

2010-08-17T08:13:00.001-04:00

Stuyvesant Town

November 1st was the first day the new M.T.A. Surcharge of 50 cents was added to every ride. I thought it'd be a helpful reminder if people saw a metro card when they looked at the meter, though some people may have thought I was tampering with it. I didn't initially rig this card on to the meter until one guy tried to tell me all about how I shouldn't be charging an extra 50 cents after 6am, I told him the MTA thing, and then he felt dumb, still didn't give me more money though, he was prepared with a certain amount to start his day, a typical New Yorker set in his ways, though quickly adapting, come the 2nd of November he'd be ready.

Sometimes people still don't understand the extras on the meter. Tourists think extras means tips, rather than taxes, rather than tolls, rather than the night and the prime-time surcharges. It is the system's fault for making it look so complicated. The meter shouldn't say extras, it should say tolls, and all other charges should be included in the fare section on the meter.

Shift Shot of 10/31/09

2010-08-16T03:42:00.001-04:00

Chelsea

Shift Shots 10/19/09

2010-08-15T09:44:00.000-04:00

West Village

Manhattan Bridge. Approaching Chinatown

Shift Shots 10/18/09

2010-08-14T02:05:00.001-04:00

Fort Greene, Brooklyn

Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn

taxi worlds apart

2010-08-13T10:55:00.005-04:00

it has recently been released by some study or other that London Cabbies are ranked the best in the world, Italians are at the bottom. The latest post by this London taxiblogger should shed some light on this: He talks about the unwritten rules of picking up and how the drivers shouldn't steal each others fares. In addition he had just purchased the credit card machine and it charges the passengers an extra 10%. in comparison New York yellow cab drivers have to pay 5% of the total cost of each ride paid with a credit card, this 5% is taken not just from the metered rate, but also from the MTA tax, and the road tolls, so actually we are paying more than 5% of the cost of our rides paid with credit cards. I don't think 5% is so terrible, but it is the principle of the matter, our credit card machines have become so popular lately, that i think the credit card fees should be paid for by our passengers and not us anymore. And in addition could you ever imagine a taxi world where drivers don't steal rides from each other??? Occasionally it happens here, a driver waves a passenger to the proper cab and tells them that the other has been waiting longer, but for the most part nobody has time to be so polite here. Anyway here is the link I'm referencing:

All In A Days Work: A London Cabby's Musings

NYCTAXIPHOTO

And I don't have to go right now

the radio and time - a pointless post.

Happy New Year!

Only 34 hours to go

Jinxed!

tide change

Mercedes-Benz

A day @ J.F.K.

it was a normal day, oh right, then this happened:

A wonderful thing

Idioteque

Reckoner

9/10/2011

new taxi

Iceland Trip, part 2

The Iceland Trip, part 1

I'm sorry

has it been 5 years or longer.

Men In Black -take us back in time. part2 -video

Men In Black -take us back in time. part1 -photos

Shift Video - today

Shift Video - 2/8/2011

May 14th: From BK to JFK

Shift Shots 3/15/2010

A decisive move early in the day can change the whole day's pay

Shift Shots 3/14/2010

Shift Shots 3/13/2010

Shift Shots 3/7/2010

Shift Shots 3/6/2010

Shift Shots 2/28/2010

Shift Shots 3/1/2010

Fulton Street

Shift Shots 2/27/2010

Shift Blues-

Shift Shots 2/22/2010

bytes from behind the wheel:

First recording with the meter on:

Today's Video Progress:

Moving Along -first post from new camera

Shift Shots 2/21/2010

Shift Shots 2/20/2010

a little history-

new camera coming soon

sorry for the posting delay.

not above a twenty

more video shots with the phone.

2011- My resolutions are resolved.

Happy New Year! Shift Shot 2/16/2010

Shift Shots 2/15/2010

Shift Shots 2/14/2010

Shift Shots 2/8/2010

NYCTAXI-VIDEO: From the blizzard

Shift Shots 2/7/2010

Shift Shots 2/6/2010

Shift Shots 2/1/2010

Shift Type and Snapshots -12/13/2010

Shift Shots 1/31/2010

Shift Shots 1/30/2010

Shift Shots 1/25/2010

Shift Shots 1/24/2010

Shift Shots 1/23/2010

Shift Shots 1/18/2010

Shift Shots 1/17/2010

As we head to the future, a link to the past

Shift Shots 1/11/2010

Shift Shots 1/10/2010

Shift Shots 1/9/2010

Return of the tips! some good ones, some bad.

No Tipper

Shift Shots 1/8/2010

interactions update:

2009 Portfolio: re-edit

The 2009 Portfolio

Shift Shots 12/07/09

Shift Shots 12/06/09

Shift Shot 12/05/09

Shift Shots 11/29/09

Shift Shot 11/28/09

Shift Shots 11/23/09