The days of laughing at tourists while they try to signal an off duty cab may finally be coming to an end. The Taxi and Limosine Commission recently proposed to eliminate the tiny “off duty” lights, which are always a drag anyway, and replacing them with a single unit. That should make things even more dummy-proof for John Public, while eliminating a taxi driver’s reflex-like ability to engage them when people ask to go to Brooklyn. (Photo: Mark Zastrow/flickr)
When I was just a young’un on the Upper East Side (yeah, fuck you too), I’d always see one of the rare Mercedes Benz cabs either parked on the street or driving right by the few Black people in the neighborhood who tried to hail him. Read more »
A few weeks back, I hailed an on-duty cab around 11PM in the East Village. The taxi driver pulled up, rolled down the window, and asked me where I was going. I of course refused to answer until I got in and when I said Williamsburg, that’s when an argument commenced. Read more »
Despite the grumblings of taxi fleet owners, the city is steadily moving ahead with its plan to have only one type of yellow cab zooming through the streets. The finalists are Ford (bottom left), Nissan (top left), and Karsan (top right), a Turkish company that has no chance of winning in the current political climate. Not that it matters, since all the designs look alike anyway.
Taxi-fleet owners are banding together to reject the city’s “Taxi of Tomorrow” plan to have only one type of yellow cab darting around the streets. They say that depending on a single vehicle manufacturer for parts, service or whatever, is not the smartest move and one important taxi guy called it “too risky.” As long as they can figure out how to make them not smell, I’d be happy either way.
Nothing to see here folks, just a cabbie and a pedicab driver brawling in a Midtown Manhattan street right in front of David Letterman’s Ed Sullivan Theater, so just move along, okay! Read more »
Though New York City cab drivers are banned from using cell phones, even the hands-free variety, a quick survey by the Times found more than a third of drivers making calls. It’s not surprising considering the NYPD barely ever enforces the law, issuing less than two tickets for every million cab rides. |NYT|
It doesn’t take much to excite out of towners: “Until you get used to it, riding in a New York cab can be harrowing. There’s an aggressive style of jackrabbit starts and abrupt stops, a “that’s my lane” attitude and a strange ability cabbies have of veering left and right across lanes in synch. Gets the heart going the first few trips.” |Freep|
While most reasonable New Yorkers would probably agree that news anchors shouldn’t be dropping f-bombs at will, the idea of fining and suspending cabbies like Zbigniew Sobczak for it is more repugnant than the worst explicatives. “The Taxi & Limousine Commission promised to slap big fines on cabbies who swear and possibly revoke their licenses, The Post has learned. Sobczak was suspended for 30 days and fined $1,000 – even though he was found guilty only of verbal harassment, not assault, after a hearing before administrative-law Judge Alessandra Zorgniotti.” |NYP|
This designer Asprey pill case was found in a cab yesterday afternoon packed with a colorful assortment of pills. Not being big on legal prescription drugs we have no idea what the pink and blue ones do, but they look the most effective. We can only assume that someone must have had a pretty stressful afternoon without their trusty case and the only one who made out in all of this was the therapist.
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