HACK

"You know it’s bad when you’re dreaming of your own bed."

2012-02-06T13:00:00.000-06:00

Early in the evening two couples—two men and two women—ask to go to the Girl and the Goat. They spend the whole ride from Ukrainian Village to the West Loop talking about sleeping habits. One of the guys tells about the heating pad they have that goes under the sheets. He says the mattress is ice-cold on winter nights despite the rest of the bedroom being balmy. One of the women goes on at length about night-sweats that leave her tee shirts soaked. Her girlfriend confirms this. The men suggest a solution:

"You should get Botox all over your body to block all your sweat glands!"

***

A bit later five Hispanic girls—dressed as if on the way to the prom—squeeze in. Their boyfriends give them the address of the club and tell me to go, waiting in the street for the next taxi to happen by. There’s a lot of laughter, the kind only a group of girls on a night out can make. One starts telling the others about her boyfriend, Aldo, being stuck talking to her father all night,

“So you know how my fathers kind-of racist, how he’s always making those awful jokes? He kept talking about how he only goes to Hooters for the food and Aldo had to play along, the poor guy. He just kept nodding, you know? Agreeing, right?

“Then my dad starts talking about how he likes to slice guatemalans and Aldo doesn’t know what to say, but that’s how my dad pronounces ‘watermelons,’ you know?”

The other girls are howling. One of them says,

“I know exactly what you mean. My dad says ‘marshmallow’ when what he means is ‘mushroom’ !”

***

All night tour buses, limos, and other vehicles in town from the ‘burbs for a Saturday night pay homage to Marilyn Monroe. The awful statue in Pioneer Court looks more like a female-impersonator than the blonde bombshell but that doesn’t stop the parade of pilgrims from lining up to have their picture taken posing between her legs. There was a promise that she’d be gone come spring and it can’t come soon enough. That thing makes me embarrassed to live here.

***

At a 7-Eleven in Lincoln Park a man dressed in a winter jumpsuit with shorts over the top of it is completely entranced by the rack of energy bars. He’s frozen there like a mime. His rapt gaze is about to burn holes through the tinfoil wrappers but when I pass close to him to get to the coffee machine he hurriedly moves over to the newspaper rack. He’s still trying to hypnotize it as I walk back out to the cab.

***

Back in Ukrainian Village two couples get in. The guy in the front seat looks at some passersby as we pull away and mutters, “Weird-beards. Fuckin’ hipsters...” then proceeds to discuss facial hair and favorite undiscovered dining spots with his friends for the rest of the ride to Lincoln Park. They even ask where I eat but are disappointed when I don’t answer, wondering instead why that could possibly matter. They get out at Clark and Wrightwood and go to the Wiener’s Circle.

***

The man that takes their place apologizes in advance for the short ride. He says he’s from New York and that cabbies there often refuse short fares. I tell him that short fares are the best if you can string a bunch together. People tend to tip better and you waste less time deadheading back from some remote corner of the city. To illustrate my point a weaving man attempts to open the cab’s door and get in before my passenger has even had a chance to reach for his wallet in front of his Surf Street address. The new guy wants to go back to within a block of the Weiner’s Circle. He’s either really drunk or really tired or a healthy combination of the two.

“Tired, man. It’s been one of those nights. Girl trouble. You know it’s bad when you’re dreaming of your own bed.”

I get distracted thinking about his words and almost miss the turn to his street.

“I’m not so fucked up that my internal compass is busted,” he chides me after correcting our course.

After that I call it a night as well.

Braggart

2012-01-31T12:17:00.000-06:00

The well-dressed man hailed me at State and Grand on Saturday night.

“Can you take me to 1520 North Damen? Take the Kennedy and get off at Division not North, I don’t want to get stuck dealing with that...How are you doing?”

“Alright. And you?”

“Couldn’t be better. I’m wonderful. I’m back in town for a few days and on my way to surprise a few friends. They have no idea I’m here. They’re going to be thrilled...What kind of vehicle is this?”

“A Scion.”

“Is it the xB or the xD?

“xB, I think.”

“I couldn’t imagine driving a car without a stick-shift. I’m an expert driver and I like to feel that I’m guiding the machine rather that it guiding me.”

“Well, you might feel differently if you had to do the kind of driving I do. Try driving eighty hours a week in stop-and-go city traffic and you’ll want to make it as easy on yourself as you can. I don’t associate driving with pleasure. It’s work.”

“I love speed. Last year I made it from LA to San Antonio in ten hours. TEN HOURS! That’s around thirteen hundred miles. I was in New Mexico for all of forty-seven minutes. That’s like a hundred miles. I saw the sun come up somewhere in Texas and I was lucky it had been a cool night or the car would’ve overheated. I was really pushing it.”

I didn’t respond or comment on his claims. The fact that the man had to boast of his prowess behind the wheel to a complete stranger baffled me a bit. Perhaps the fact that I was a cabdriver made him think his feats would impress me or that we could commiserate over shared interests. Neither was the case but my silence didn’t dampen his enthusiasm.

“I could never get a crotch-rocket. Can you imagine? Going 200-250mph? I’d break every law.”

Trying to get him off the subject of speed I asked why he’d moved away.

“I had to move to Dallas because of a family situation about seven months ago. It’s alright, I mean my apartment costs $550 and it’s right in the middle of town, you couldn’t do that here, no way. I’m bartending. Making $7-10K a month. You can’t beat that. But it’s just slinging drinks, it’s not the kind of bartending I like to do. I prefer to make quality cocktails.”

As we neared the 1500 block of Damen he pointed out the yellowish light over the hidden door of the Violet Hour and said that that was where he was headed to meet his friends, reiterating how thrilled they were going to be to see him. I had no doubt that they would be. He worried over his bills, settling on amount that included a tip that was midway between acceptable and insulting, bid me goodnight, and strode across the street.

Tramp Stamp

2012-01-18T12:22:00.000-06:00

It’s a frigid Tuesday night and Western Avenue’s a ghost town except for a woman in a fake fur and leggings desperately waving both arms my way from the bus stop at Augusta. I stop. There’s not much to lose on a night like this.

“You don’t know how happy I am to see you,” she says, “this is crazy-man weather. This is the type of night that if I was homeless, people would have to get sacrificed. I’d be all Jeffrey Dahmer out here to survive.

“Alright. I’m going to the 2500 block of Monroe. My brother’s there and he’s got my tax return for me. He got some Jew accountant who got us way more than we deserve...Believe me, I wouldn’t be out here if there wasn’t money to be made...

“Don’t worry now, I’ve got money. You’ll get paid.”

I tell her I’m not worried. It’s a short trip so even if she runs it won’t be much of a loss. She gets on the phone and says that she’ll be there in four minutes. She chatters to me about how the area’s in the process of getting gentrified, how most of the projects are gone now. I assume that this is to ease my fears about going there but she seems much more nervous about the whole thing than I do. She counts and recounts the crumpled bills in her hands.

The 2500 block of Monroe is mostly empty lots with a couple of forlorn-looking four-flats here and there to keep it from reverting to the prairie which was once here. We stop in front of one of these. A kid in a puffy jacket stamps his feet and hops to and fro to keep from freezing in place. This must be her tax guy. I turn off the meter and ask for $5.95 but she says to wait, that she’ll be going back in a minute. She runs across the street and, after exchanging a few words with the guy, jumps into the driver’s seat of a car parked out front while he gets in on the passenger’s side. She’s out seconds later and running back toward the taxi. She opens the door, then squats down with her back to me and asks me not to look while she urinates, “Good thing I got a tissue,” she mutters before plopping back inside and giving an address on Cortez, a couple blocks from where I picked her up. As we pull away the kid across the street looks like he’s about to piss himself laughing. “This is the time of night and place to get killed in Chicago,” she says.

She gets on the phone again and says to have $10 ready for her when she gets there for the cab. It sounds like whoever she’s talking to needs a bit of convincing. She hangs up with a deep sigh and complains, “My husband. He’s such a Jew. He’s telling me to make sure and get a receipt for the ride. Jesus.” We stop and I see a basement apartment light go on. She hands me $4, then runs out and reaches through the chain-link fence and grabs a $10 bill from the window and returns with it. The fare is $11.95 and she asks for a dollar back, thanks me and runs back to the house only to turn right back around. She’s forgotten her receipt. Gotta keep careful records where taxes are concerned.

****

Back on Western, a couple immediately flags me from the Empty Bottle. “Where do you live?” he asks her. She gives her address in Lakeview and so we go north. They chitchat like any two people who’d just met might. Somehow the subject of tattoos comes up and he proudly tells her that he’s got four. One of which is a tramp stamp.

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“Well, you know, it’s where a tramp stamp would be. It’s my, like, statement of feminism, you know?” he explains.

“Huh. What is it?”

“It’s kind of like a symbol. Like an ankh cross. It’s part of my philosophy...See, I’ve got a whole philosophy based on, like, this thing I wrote once. It’s about providence. Where things are just gonna, like, happen to you, you know?”

It’s hard to say whether she understands or not, though I know I’m pretty damned confused. We pass the Viaduct Theater and there are band vans being loaded up after a gig.

“That’s what I love about it here. There’s like all these places that are holes-in-the-wall where there’s all this music. One day when I don’t have to, like, go to work, I’ll go out to see bands every night of the week. Theater too. I love theater. I go to Steppenwolf like all the time.”

“I totally get that. I like theater too. Back in California I had a subscription to the local theater so I went a lot. It’s good that way because you already paid so you kind of have to go, right?” she answers.

As we pass Schuba’s he points at it and says, “That’s where I saw Sufjan Stevens, who’s like a legend in my world. After the show we were hanging out and I think he, like, hit on me. I like his music and all but not, like, THAT much, you know?”

We stop at her place, a couple blocks away from Wrigley Field. He tells her he’ll take the ‘el’ back home, pays for the cab, and says, “Thanks, Boss,” before following her inside. I take a last look over and she looks back just then, holding my gaze for an instant as if asking for advice with her eyes, then she turns around and she’s gone.

Dear Mayor Emanuel

2012-01-10T12:01:00.000-06:00

I keep hearing about how you’re planning to overhaul the city’s taxi industry. Clearly there’s plenty of room for improvement, but some of what you have in mind keeps me up at night.

You want to restrict the hours that a cabbie can drive per day but that’s one of the few freedoms we have: we choose when we work and when we don’t. It’s not a 9 to 5 job and even if we wanted it to be it doesn’t pay well enough to make it worthwhile when limited to a set strict schedule. It’s a 24/7 business and it demands a workforce that can accommodate and bend with its ever-variable demands.

You want to better police reckless drivers as though all the tools to do so weren’t already in place. Instead of adding more bureaucratic hoops for us to jump through why not get the DMV to join the 20th Century (I know the 21st would be a stretch...) There’s no reason that the Department of Consumer Services (which regulates cabs and cabdrivers) shouldn’t have access to driving records, for example. As it stands, every year when I renew my Chauffeur’s License I have to go to the DMV and pay $12 for the cashier there to push a button on her computer and print out my Motor Vehicle Record, then I have to carry it back to Consumer Affairs and present it to them. This is just one of a dozen superfluous steps in the yearly headache every Chicago taxi driver is subjected to for the privilege of being a hack. There’s got to be some way to streamline the process a bit and let us get on with the task of getting by.

You want to know the kind of thing the police pull us over for over and over again? Let me share an anecdote: A few months ago I was stopped by an unmarked Crown Vic in Lincoln Park. The officer ticketed me because the little light over the license-display had gone out; two tickets—one of which I was to give to my cab company. He held on to my Chauffeur’s License, saying I’d get it back after I appeared in court.

At 400 West Superior a couple months later the court administrator kindly took pity and reduced my fine. When I asked for my Chauffeur’s License back he said they don’t handle that, that I’d have to go to Consumer Services for that. So after an hour in court for a light bulb that went out I have to drive fifteen minutes and wait in another queue. This was all irritating and unnecessary but it didn’t end there. Remember that second ticket—the one I had to give to my company? Well, guess what, I got to pay that as well! When a cab has equipment issues the city issues one ticket to the driver and one to the company. According to my friend, the court administrator, it’s to make sure they make the proper repairs but of course in practice the company just makes the drivers pay any and all fines. It's pay or go lease a vehicle from someone else. So I got to pay twice for a light bulb going out. About $200. Did that make the streets safer? Was my work environment improved? If you ask any veteran cabbie he’ll have dozens of stories like this and much, much worse.

You want us to work less? Why not raise the fare rates to at least keep up with the cost of living. I’m sure you know the statistics: Chicago has the lowest cab rates of any major city in America. I don’t expect New York rates but we’re killing ourselves for a pittance out there.

Some think the city should get out of regulating fare prices altogether. I don’t. This is a unique business because we provide public transportation—an alternative to the CTA—yet are not city employees. In fact we’re no one’s employees. All cabdrivers these days are either owner-operators or independent contractors. The city’s citizens deserve to have an idea what their ride will cost them. Leaving it up to the companies or individual cabbies would be utter chaos.

Don’t micromanage our every move; we’re not children. Ease up on the fees and nuisance traffic stops and give us a chance to earn a living.

Can you do that?

His Night to Get Twisted

2011-11-23T14:30:00.001-06:00

He crosses Clark from Wrigleyville Dog then turns around and raises one arm as far as he can without dropping all the to-go boxes.

"Can you take me to Randolph and Michigan please?"

He asks how my night is and when I reciprocate says,

"Well...I don't get many nights off so this was my night to get twisted...and now it's late and my old lady wants me home."

I ask him what line of work he's in and he says he's in the service industry. A bartender.

"Where?" I ask.

"Currently I'm unemployed but I was at Michael Jordan's just a few weeks back. Great food and good drinks. No, great drinks but the hours were brutal. Mondays were seventeen-hour days, Tuesday were another ten and I didn't make any money.

“It'd be one thing if I was still in my twenties but I'm about to hit forty and I can't keep putting in more than I get out of it. Know what I mean?"

Of course I do, I tell him. As we near the Randolph Street exit on Lake Shore he says,

"Look, I'm really going to 79th & South Shore, I was going to the Metra. Wanna just take me the rest of the way?"

I say I'd be happy to, surprised that there are still trains running at this late hour. He tells me that between all the buses and trains it can take him two-and-a-half hours to get from South Shore to Wrigleyville.

"It's absurd that we can't get around this metropolitan area any more efficiently. Know what else is crazy? I live ten minutes away from Indiana and if I go there to fill up my car with Premium it costs me 35-40 bucks. I go in downtown Chicago it'll run me $60. But you know that of course. I go grocery shopping there and two hundred dollars' worth lasts me two-three weeks; in the city it costs me $20 for food as soon as I walk out the door."

I still wouldn't want to live in Indiana, I say and he agrees. I ask what he'd like to do if he could do anything.

"I don't know, man, I just wanna do something to help people. Nursing's about the only thing that's hiring these days but I did that a bit in high school—volunteering in a hospital—and I couldn't deal with all the blood, piss, and vinegar.

“I saw Bill Clinton on the Daily Show and he was talking about how the whole system now is set up for the Republicans and Democrats to just fight and not get anything done. I don't understand it at all. Back when he was running it it was good. Surplus, jobs, all of it. I was at the House of Blues in those days, bringing home like $800 a night...I was in grade-school during Reagan and Bush, I remember it was a total shitshow then. It was good during Clinton. I don’t know where it all went wrong. I've got no idea what happened. I'll probably end up going into nursing anyway..."

I tell him he's hardly alone in wondering what comes next. It's the way it is now.

"Me and the old lady been trying to have a kid but I'm sort of glad we haven't had luck yet. Kid's are money-suckers and besides why would you want to put more of them into this world now. The old lady's not happy though.

"I wanted to have a kid when I was in my twenties. My girl got pregnant and aborted it without telling me. I'd have a, let me see, a seventeen-year-old daughter now. I've used protection since then."

We're approaching the end of Lake Shore Drive now where it turns into South Shore and merges back into the neighborhood. Not many on the streets at 2am on a Tuesday save for the occasional wildly-gesticulating homeless man or an inconspicuous older lady huddled in a bus shelter.

"What I really want to do is travel. I want to go to Asia if only for the food. I want to eat scorpion and grasshopper; shit you can't get here. You can get almost any kind of food you want in Chicago except one kind: Polynesian. When I was younger there used to be a place right on Wabash, remember it?"

I remember the sign for it: Pago Pago with the Easter Island heads, faded on the side of a building at Van Buren and Wabash, though something about the lettering made it look more like Dago Dago.

"Me and my girl went there and we ordered Doctor Zhivagos. It was great."

We get off South Shore and stop on a side street. The fare comes to $33.45 and he takes a while figuring out how to assemble his pocketful of bills into the amount he'd like to give me. Finally, he hands over three crisp twenties and asks for $7 back. I thank him and wish him luck getting to all the places he wants to go.

"Thanks for listening to my bullshit," he says and walks towards his house.

Business Trip

2011-11-18T17:14:00.001-06:00

If you wait for a fare in the turnaround by Pioneer Court you watch for two things:

1.) Cop cars that will ticket for stopping at the curb (as this isn’t a legal cabstand.)
2.) Suits with rolling luggage in tow trudging across the plaza from 401 N. Michigan.

It’s worth risking the first to hopefully attain the second: a possible trip to the airport. Of course, more times than not, after you’ve loaded their suitcases into the trunk they’ll announce that they’re going to Clark and Lake. They choose the El over a taxi in the afternoon, likely thinking they’ll get there faster and be able to fly standby on that earlier flight back. Many of them spend much of their lives in transit, switching from plane to train to car and then back, going into skyscrapers in one city or another, then gathering their things and moving onto the next city. I don’t know what they’re doing but I keep listening, watching, sometimes even talking to them to get some clue.

An older man settles into the back seat and says, “O’Hare,” so we merge into northbound Michigan Avenue traffic. I hear him rustling around and making himself comfortable for the forty-five minute ride. He’s a talker. He starts with the weather then moves on to describing his work. He travels the world marketing devices that measure pollutants in the air. He looks out at the Kennedy Expressway gridlock and estimates a number that doesn’t sound good at all. He recalls measuring the mass of particles on a runway directly behind the engine of a jetliner: they were sequestered in a trailer with millions of dollars of high-tech equipment and weren’t allowed outside because it was too dangerous—between the wind generated by the engine and the air quality.

“I did some back-of-the-envelope math and it looks like I’ve spent close to two full weeks just up in the air flying around this year. And I went down from Platinum to Gold this year, guess I’m just used to traveling,” he tells me, though it sounds more like he’s just thinking out loud. At the Delta terminal he thanks me warmly and pays with a credit card, leaving $45 on a $40 fare. This isn’t unusual: anything over 10% from a suit feels like a victory.

At Midway an elegantly-attired gent asks to be taken to the Renaissance Hotel on Wacker. He spends much of the trip on the phone making appointments and barking out directives to the subordinate on the other end, all with a Southern lilt. By Soldier Field traffic halts due to an accident and he relates his annoyance at the delay into the cell. When he hangs up, just as we pass by a totaled sedan facing the pinched flow of inconvenienced motorists, he hears a snippet of the radio report about Occupy Wall Street and asks, “Y’all don’t have any of that foolishness going on here, do you?” We do, in fact, I answer. “It’s crazy. We even had some of it in Nashville but it didn’t amount to much...” I make some sort of sound to acknowledge hearing his words. There’s no way that we’ll be discussing this subject. Not if we want to get to his hotel intact. A few minutes later we pull into the Renaissance’s drive and he hands over a $50 and tells me to keep the change. The fare is only $30; sometimes they’ll shock the shit out of you, though maybe just keeping my mouth shut in this instance actually paid off. So often I have no idea what goes on in their minds much less what makes them do what they do.

A woman gets in at O’Hare’s Terminal 2 and asks to go to Roscoe Village. Her first call is to a friend who had to put her cat down. She tells her friend to come spend the night if she’d like and that she can be a cat for her instead, even meowing to reinforce the point. “That’ll get me a lot of dates, being into weird animal shit,” she says, before hanging up. The next call is to a man and seems to straddle the personal and the professional. She goes to great lengths to set a time to meet him the next day then starts talking about business matters, lapsing into corporate-speak. She wants him to show up at some meeting and pretend not to be her friend so as not to cause any appearance of impropriety. His marketing expertise would give her a leg up with the clients. There’s something about trying to understand “verticals” and another thing about the “culture” of some office (though this sounds to me more like the bacterial kind of culture rather than the kind that people make.) I’ve had other business folk admit to loathing what their work does to the way they speak yet feeling powerless to just stop and talk like human beings to their colleagues. When we get to Belmont and Damen she thanks me—the only words she’s aimed my way since leaving the airport—and leaves a 25% tip. Once more I’m surprised as I’ve done nothing unusual to deserve her generosity.

I don’t envy these corporate itinerants. I don’t know whether what many of them do is of value to the world or not but the glimpses of their everyday reality that I’m privy to don’t make me want get out from behind the wheel. I’ll keep picking them up in front of that hideous Marilyn statue in Pioneer Court and from other office buildings around town and keep hauling them onto their next appointment and I’ll keep wondering what it is that they’re doing and why.

Bourbon Girl

2011-10-02T12:44:00.000-05:00

At a red on Fullerton, I look over to see the peroxide-blond girl, who’d been walking a dog with a grubby, tattooed guy, run over my way. “Can you take us?” she asks uncertainly. When I nod, she turns back and motions the guy with the dog over. She climbs in, then coaxes the cowering pitbull up onto the backseat; he’s last in, shutting the door after.

“I just rescued her from some bangers down the street,” the kid announces with some pride. I look back at him and see face tattoos and piercings, a couple scabbed-over cuts and bruises, and a goofy grin. A crusty punk. The girl is a bit less thrilled with it all.

“You’re not bringing another damn stray home, I swear to God! I’ll put you out. It’s too damn much,” she threatens. He tries to placate her, pointing out what a good dog this is. The pit just stands up on the seat and accepts his love quietly, poking that brick of a head between the seats every now and then. She does seem like a sweet dog. The girl won’t stand a chance.

“Look at how her ears are clipped all the way back. They do that for when they fight ‘em. There’s a big vein that runs through their ears and they can bleed out if they get bitten. Her leg’s all fucked up too...What kind of person sells his dog for $25?” he asks me, though of course it’s meant to bolster the case to his lady.

“One that doesn’t care about the dog very much,” I answer. It’s hard not to take his side here.

“Do what you have to. I’ll sleep with her by the underpass if I have to,” he continues, feeling more confident by the second. Just then we stop at a light and see some guys waiting at a bus stop. One of them recognizes me and waves but the kid thinks the guy’s waving to him. He rolls down the window and holds the dog up for them to see. The guys all laugh and wave back, playing along, humoring another crazy cab passenger. They’ve probably seen it a million times in this city. The light changes and we roll on.

“We have two in the house already. Where are we gonna put her?” the girl protests quietly. She knows she’s already lost. He’s christened the dog Bourbon Girl and keeps using the name like it’s been hers for years. The punk and the pit jump out at Wilson and Kedzie and wait at the curb while the girl pays for the cab.

“Thank you so much for taking us. Most cabbies don’t like dogs. We really appreciate it,” she tells me wearily, handing me $7 over their $10 fare and crawling out. I watch her squat down and pet the pit’s head in the rearview as I drive away.

Joe the Cabdriver

2011-09-02T16:57:00.000-05:00

An American United taxi pulled up behind mine at 3am by the Continental a few nights ago. The headlights cut out and the engine quit its groaning. A few seconds later an out-of-shape middle-aged white guy with thick glasses and an odd, off-kilter helmet of hair emerged from the driver’s seat. He gave me a quick once-over, then continued on, disappearing into the bar.

He came back out a few minutes later and headed straight for me. In his hands were two bottled waters, one of which he held out toward me.

“This is for you. I know them in there,” he said, pointing back at the Continental. I thanked him.
“You don’t mind I talk to you, do you?”

He waited a beat or two, not bothering to acknowledge my lack of response before continuing.

“My name is Joe. Joe the Cabdriver. I been doing this a long time. What’s yours?”

“Dmitry.”

“Well. You do this for awhile and they’ll start calling you Dmitry the Cabdriver, you mark my words. How long you been driving?”

“Eleven years.”

“Oh that’s nothin’. I been goin’ since the mid-’80s. Let me tell you something: Mayor Daley ruined the cab industry. Used be you could make some money in this business. I had some other jobs before but I like being outside since I’m fourteen-and-a-half years old so I been driving a long time.”

With each word he leaned in closer and closer, breathing on me with his stale breath when he wasn’t blowing Marlboro smoke right in my face.

“I work five days. You work seven? I work five. It’s just how I do it. Every day I got the same expenses: it’s $148 every day, no matter what. That includes my personal expenses, which is $22. No matter what I book, I gotta come up with that. I work ten hours a night. That’s the way it goes in the books. I work eleven, it goes in as ten; I work nine, it goes in as ten. See what I’m sayin’ ?”

By now I was merely nodding assent to whatever came out of his mouth and casting increasingly anxious looks toward the bar’s door, hoping to be rescued. At close proximity, I became fairly convinced the man was wearing a rug too. The hair just didn’t sit quit right on his head to’ve come out of it of its own accord.

Joe started walking back toward his cab as soon as a man from the bar took a couple steps my way. He didn’t say goodbye, assuming, no doubt, that he’d share more of his insights with me another night. I have no doubt at all that that wasn’t the last that I’ve heard from Joe the Cabdriver.

Homeland

2011-08-26T16:18:00.000-05:00

Closing time at Damen and Division.

A young Hispanic guy with a buzz cut runs toward my cab from the Rainbo Club’s sidewalk, where a half dozen exiled drinkers are pondering their next move. Most fares from the Rainbo at 2am end at the Continental, Estelle’s, or an apartment nearby. After asking me to roll down the passenger-side window, the young man takes a deep breath and asks, “How much to take me to Aurora?”

I look in the Chauffeur’s Guide to give him an estimate. This book—which contains listings of routes, fares, restaurants, hotels, and other useful info for cabdrivers—is published and sold by a middle-aged, chain-smoking Middle-Eastern man whose name I’ve never caught. Many an afternoon he can be spotted with the latest Guide in hand, Marlboro hanging off his lip, going up and down the rows of cabs queued out at O’Hare or Midway. The book estimates the trip from downtown to Aurora at $110, so I tell the guy it’ll be right around $100. He stands there thinking it over, then says, “Alright, let’s do this. You take credit, right?” I nod. He goes back to say goodbye to his friends then gets in the cab. We start south on Damen toward the Eisenhower. I explain that it’s straight meter to the city limits and meter-and-a-half thereafter. He seems cool with that, asking again to make sure that I’ll take plastic.

“I’m gonna tell you right now, I’ve got a gun. I work for Homeland Security. How often do cabdrivers get robbed? Does that happen?” he asks.

“It happens,” I answer, not knowing where he’s going with this.

“Don’t worry, man. I already told you I’m packin’. Hanging out with my cousin after work tonight and we stayed out drinkin’ too long. I was really considering crashing at his pad but my wife had been texting all night. She wants me home. You know how it is. You married?”

“Divorced.”

“So you know.”

“If you love her there’s no reason to start trouble. You’re doing the right thing going home.”

“Yeah, I love her. I’ve got a government vehicle but I usually take Metra in. I’m in no shape to be driving anywhere right now.”

He falls silent somewhere past the Harlem exit on the Eisenhower. As with most suburbs, I know how to get to them but once out there I’m lost. The book says to take the Farnsworth Road exit so when I see it’s a couple miles ahead, I glance back to rouse the kid, who’s passed out, leaning forward with his forehead resting against the Taxi TV screen on the back of the passenger seat. He looks around, disoriented, asking where we are and tells me after squinting about a few more seconds that we should’ve taken Rte. 59 a mile or so back. Seeing as he gave me no directions aside from “take me to Aurora”, there’s no way I could’ve known. Still, I ask how far off course we are and he says about five miles. I tell him I’ll take $10 off his fare.

Off the highway now, we pass gas stations, fast-food restaurants, shopping malls, and gated subdivisions with names like Stonemoor, Wood Edge, and multiple ones ending with -Haven, -Brook, and -Shore. They all run together, unless it’s the one you live in, I suppose. My passenger goes in and out of consciousness throughout this stretch so we end up making several more wrong turns before finally finding the subdivision he lives in. We settle on a total of $115 (which takes into account both my missing his exit and his failure to stay awake.) He hands over his card and just as I’m about to swipe it the system goes down. We’re thirty-five miles outside the city so this isn’t entirely unexpected. I wait a bit but there’s nothing but “not receiving data” displaying on the terminal, so I take out a carbon slip from the glove compartment, lay it on top of the card, and rub my ballpoint pen over it to get an impression. It’s feint and distorted, like music on a third-generation cassette, so I write out the numbers on the slip as well. I should really get a manual swiper but $35 seems a steep price to spend for a situation that only occurs when I’m out in the boonies, and rarely even then. He doesn’t really know what’s taking so long but is relieved when I hand him back his card. He shakes my hand and stumbles toward a darkened little house.

As soon as I turn around to head back toward the highway, the Gandalf springs to life and I input the credit card data without any problem. I find my way back to the toll road fairly quickly. When heading back to Chicago my sense of direction rarely fails the way it does on the way out to the hinterlands.

I’ve lived here long enough now that I know which way home is and it’s almost always a relief to return.

Postal

2011-08-15T17:58:00.000-05:00

A well-dressed woman waves from across Milwaukee Avenue. It’s a Saturday afternoon, so the streets of Wicker Park are barely passable and swinging the cab around isn’t an option. I look away from her and start considering whether to turn onto Damen or North when the light changes. She crosses through the now-moving traffic and takes her time about getting in, making the motorists behind me convey their displeasure loudly.

“Marina City,” she commands.

A hard right puts us east on North Avenue, inching toward the expressway and downtown.

“Which way you going?” she barks out, as if outraged about something.

I explain the fairly standard route I have in mind: take the Kennedy to the Ohio feeder, then, depending on traffic, one of several southbound streets to Kinzie, go left to State Street, and a right to her destination. We’re moving at a snail’s pace and I can practically feel her frustration like hot breath on the back of my neck. Her tone is brusk enough that I have to point out that a bit of politeness wouldn’t hurt. I also wonder whether she’s turned around in an unfamiliar neighborhood.

“I’m just asking a question. It’s my right to do that,” she snaps.
“Perhaps you’d prefer to take another cab,” I suggest.
“No. You’re going to take me where I say.”
“You know you’re really rude?” I ask.
“That’s just the way I talk. You ain’t the first to say that. It’s not personal. I work for the Post
Office and gotta put up with a lot of foolishness,” she answers.

I just start laughing. The tension’s broken for a spell as she tells me a bit about her twenty-six-and-a-half years on the job. I ask about all the cuts coming to the postal service but she seems confident her job’s safe. We empathize with one another for having to put up with idiots day in, day out.

“Just gotta make it three-and-a-half more years and I’m outa there.”

We’re on the Kennedy now and she groans loudly every time we’re slowed by the (very typical) Saturday afternoon congestion. She mutters half-audibly about not making it on time to wherever it is she’s headed. Then she starts telling me how she would’ve never taken the expressway.

“I’m a driver and I never get on the highway. I can’t be having this. No.”

I explain to her that in my eight years driving a taxi in Chicago, I’ve tried every possible route from Wicker Park to downtown and that I have no possible interest in having her in my taxi even a moment longer than is absolutely necessary. The good thing about some people is that they don’t ever catch on when they’re being insulted. She just keeps talking.

A couple times before we reach Marina City, she questions what street we’re on (usually moments after ordering me to take said street.) After what seems like hours, we finally climb the steep ramp between her building and the Hotel Sax. The fare is $12.25. She hands me a $20 and says, “Take off $13.” It’s more than I expected. I wish her a good evening and she grunts something not-entirely-unfriendly in response, gathers her shopping bags and climbs out. I watch her walking, shaking her head at whatever slight the world’s thrown at her in the moments since leaving my taxi, then I drive down the ramp to Dearborn and away.

She was one I wish I hadn’t stopped for.

Wrong Ballpark

2011-08-09T16:43:00.000-05:00

It’s 6:45pm on a Monday as I pull up to the corner of Addison and Clark. Wrigley Field sits silent, free of fans that would be crawling over every available surface were it a game night. Two girls in full-on White Sox regalia come running my way. I roll the passenger window down and one asks,

“Are we close to Sox Park?”
“Nowhere near,” I answer.

The game is starting in fifteen minutes and they’re all the way across town. They ask if I can take them and I say, “Of course. It’s what I’m here for.” We make our way to Lake Shore Drive and turn south while they tell me how they ended up at the wrong ballpark.

“He dropped us off in front of Wrigley and that’s when I started to think something was wrong. He was like, ‘See? I get you here fast!’ He didn’t say sorry or nothing. We don’t really know our way around the city too well...”

He’d picked them up at Union Station and insisted on a flat rate of $20 when they asked to go to Sox Park. (For those not from around here: Sox Park is about four miles south of Union Station, while Wrigley’s five miles north.) Not only had their cabdriver overcharged them by a couple dollars, but he’d taken them in the exact opposite direction.

“I think he went the wrong way down a few one way streets and he kept screaming at all the other cars while going 60mph. It was scary.”

They’d come in from Naperville to meet some guys at the game. Instead they were now late and paying for a second (unnecessary) cab ride. I tried to make them laugh about it. My opinion of their other driver was even worse than theirs. Guys like that make all of us look bad. I told them to make sure and take down the cab number and call the city the next time they thought something was off.

“Do they still charge full price if you show up to the game late? Our friends are already in their seats,” one wants to know.

“Well, it’s Monday, so it’s half-price night already,” I say.

“We know. That’s why we came down.”

I suggest they tell the guy in the box office their story and maybe throw in a few tears. What guy wouldn’t want to help out two pretty girls? They laugh, saying they like that idea, telling me they know how to cause a scene.

We pull up just past 35th Street on Wentworth so I can run their credit card. Their first driver refused to take it. I wondered whether the guy did anything right at all. They say this was their best cab ride ever. I thank them and suggest they call the city to let them know that. I watch them run to the park’s gates. Not all cabdrivers are crooks; some of us even know how to get to the right ballpark on the first try.

Four Fares

2011-07-07T14:38:00.008-05:00

It’s early evening and I’m stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on North Avenue near Damen. A woman across the street reaches her arms out desperately enough that I make a very tight U-turn (making many new friends of my fellow motorists) to pick her up.

“Broadway and Melrose, please, and can you take Ashland?”
“Sure thing,” I say.

We make it east to Ashland after getting off North and detouring down Wabansia. Unfortunately, 6:20pm is not a time to get anywhere quickly in this town. I can sense her fidgeting as we sit waiting below the Kennedy at Cortland.

“Let me ask you one question. How long until we get there? Is Ashland the right
way to go? I ask because I’m pretty new here and it feels like the cabbies have
taken advantage, taking me roundabout routes a lot.”

I tell her that generally Ashland’s the way to go but that there’s no helping the backup at this hour, then ask when she needs to be where she’s going.

“Oh, I was supposed to be there at 6:30 but I couldn’t get out of work, you know
how it goes.”

She gets on her cell to reschedule her appointment after I tell her that there’s no way we’ll make it. She sighs and tells me to take her a few blocks further up Broadway to where she lives.

****

Back on North Avenue a few hours later, two women walking a dog hail me. They kiss goodnight and one of them gets in.

“Belmont and Lake Shore, please.”

We go past the teeming bars and restaurants of Wicker Park and turn north on Ashland. A few blocks on she rouses herself and asks,

“Are we on Ashland? Do Ashland and Belmont cross?”

I ask whether she’s new to the city and she says she’s been in nursing school here for nearly three years. She just got confused. (Anyone who’s lived in Chicago more than a few days will know that Ashland’s a north-south street, or so I’d hope.) She tells me about having drinks with her fellow students earlier that night, a bunch of girls getting together to bitch, and about how she’s had it with Chicago. She’s from Portland and misses the friendliness and the “activities”; it’s all just drinking here, according to her. I ask whether she’s been to the East Coast. She hasn’t. I assure her that she wouldn’t care for it.

“It’s not so bad here, I guess,” she smiles, thanking me for the ride, and let’s the doorman at the high-rise open the door for her.

****

At 1am or so on Milwaukee Avenue a woman dressed all in black stands on a corner waiting. She doesn’t raise her hand but I’ve done this long enough to know that she needs a cab, so I swing around and she gets in. She gives an address in Greektown.

“I just got into town and I’m documenting the city at night. This is my second
time here this week. They asked me if I would be willing to come back and I said
yes.”

When I ask whether this is for a newspaper she becomes tight-lipped, asking instead whether there will be people out and about where we’re going. She tells me about all the people she’s met so far, including Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips a couple hours earlier at Debonair Social Club.

At Jackson and Halsted, she looks around and says she’d have loved to’ve seen the area in the daytime. When I ask why she couldn’t come back, she tells me she can’t because she’s not up during the day. Then, she asks if she can take my picture. After I smile for the camera, she holds out her hand—covered in rings and bracelets, nails a bright teal—for me shake and tells me her name. I wish her well with her mysterious project and keep driving.

****

At 2am outside a 4am bar the girl leaves her friends and gets into the cab.

“They’re all mad at me now because I’m drunk and I want to go home.”

I tell her she’s doing the right thing, that nothing good happens at a 4am bar.

“Right! Why do they just keep drinking like that? And then everybody’s always
making fun of me for living in Lakeview.”

I ask why and she explains that all her friends think she should live in a hipper neighborhood like Wicker Park. I assure her that whatever cachet Wicker Park had is long, long gone.

“I know...anyways I’m done with this place. I moved here a year ago to be with my
sister because she was going through a bad time. I left my whole life in New
York...”

I wait for her to go on, but a quick glance back shows her making sleeping arrangements, eyes already shut, head tipped back, mouth open slightly.

At Halsted and Diversey she suddenly wakes up enough to direct me to take a left, thereby adding several unnecessary blocks to the trip. I know better than to argue routes at 2:30am and we stop outside her door minutes later. She apologizes for having to use a credit card,

“I spent all my money getting drunk.”

I tell her I won’t hold it against her and watch to make sure she can find her keys and that the door closes behind her.

I take Broadway south, back toward the bars, to squeeze out the night’s last few dollars.

Astrovan

2011-06-28T15:19:00.003-05:00

Friday afternoon I woke to a voicemail from the Yellow Cab garage informing me that my car had to go to City Inspection. This meant I had to drop it off and drive whatever was available for a couple days. I dutifully showed up at the appointed time—just before 6am Sunday morning—and traded in my four-month-old Scion for a Crown Vic with no more than 303,000 miles on the odometer. I wasn’t planning on working much in the next couple days so how bad could it be?

Several Sunday trips to O’Hare and Midway passed without incident. Then, sometime around 1 am, while transporting a particularly loud and irritating bunch to Boystown, I saw smoke rising from around the right front wheel. I went another block or two until there was a telltale odor accompanying the smoke; the cab was leaking coolant all over Ashland Avenue. I unloaded my passengers near Fullerton, made a quick u-turn, and hauled ass back to the garage hoping to avoid the tow truck. I made it in just as the jalopy was about to give up the ghost. The mechanics just looked my way and laughed. “Good job!” one yelped, which would’ve been found funny had it happened to someone else.

All they could offer to replace the replacement was a handicapped van. No one wants to drive the handicapped vans. They sit at the end of the lot, unwanted, except for times of dire shortage or emergency. It was the van or sitting and waiting for god-knows-how-long. I took the van, but after a couple fares decided to call it a night and headed to a bar.

I stayed ‘til last call and was gonna go straight home but of course fellow patrons needed rides home so I obliged. After dropping off the drinkers I pointed the van southward on Western toward home. Besides rattling and shaking in all manner of ways, there were a variety of warnings constantly taunting me from the van’s dash. Messages like SERVICE TRACTION SYSTEM, SERVICE ABS SYSTEM, and, worst of all, SERVICE STABILITY SYSTEM (which I couldn’t help but take as some negative commentary on my mental state.)

It was probably the bourbon that made me stop to help. Near Hirsch, a man was trying to push a dead, rusty white Chevy Astrovan into a parking spot. A few wisps of smoke escaped its hood. “Help push car and take to Cicero and 290?” the man asked in a thick Polish accent. I put the blinkers on and got out. Putting my right hand between the windshield and the open driver’s door I began to push. The door swung back and bounced off my hand, leaving several marks and hurting like a motherfucker. I shook it off and we more or less got the car situated into the middle of the lake of gray-black water that bordered the curb there.

He took a few bags and other things and climbed into the back of the van. He was a truck driver on his way to pick up his rig. He’d be going to New York, Boston, and Baltimore. He’d be gone a week. We were near Grand when he told me to turn back, “Forgot keys for truck in car,” he said.

After doubling back, we were on our way south to the expressway again. Nearing the Laramie exit, he asked how my hand was. I told him it was fine (I was more embarrassed for the clumsiness than anything.) He wondered whether he’d get a ticket on the Astrovan when he returned and also whether the thing would even start. It’s probably just overheated, I said, trying to be hopeful for his sake.

We turned left onto Laramie, passing over 290, then left again onto Congress and then right, into a dead-end alley of a street with a chain-link gate where it stopped. He paid with a credit card and asked for my business card. I told him I didn’t have one and wished him well. He was opening the gate as I turned around and got back on the Eisenhower toward home with no other detours this time for sure.

I didn’t work again until the garage called to tell me my regular car was back.

Father's Day

2011-06-20T17:07:00.000-05:00

A squat figure waves her cane my way at Milwaukee and Fullerton. She labors to climb into the cab, takes a deep breath, and asks to go to the 5700 block of North Clark. We drive east on Fullerton, then turn north on Ashland before she breaks the silence.

"How was your Father's Day?"

“You're looking at it. I don't have any kids anyway so it doesn't matter. And you?” 

"Well, I'm not a father either, but it was okay...I haven’t been feeling well, in fact I just got out of the hospital a few days ago. My father, he's not, well, I called him to wish him a happy Father's Day and he said it was just like any other day to him." 

“A real charmer, eh?”

That makes her laugh a little.

"He broke his glasses today and I remember when I broke mine he asked if I'd sat my fat ass on them. He said, 'You'd better watch it. You take after your mother's side of the family. They're all fat....”

There’s no clever response to make to that.

"I realize I wasn't the daughter that he could take around and show off. I got scoliosis, I'm only 4"4, I got all kinds of health problems....I just wanna make him proud for once, so I'd rather be sick and throw up every other day than be a 350lb. sow, y'know?"

I have nothing I can tell her. We pull up to her address, on the northern edge of Andersonville.  

"God, you're so nice, here I've spilled my guts all out to you," she says.

It’s a good thing she doesn’t really know me.

A man in a yellow t-shirt stands waiting in her doorway. He comes up and pays for the taxi. He's got just the right amount without even asking. I wish her a good night, then make a U-turn and head south on Clark.

Mood Director

2011-06-15T12:38:00.002-05:00

Two weeks ago I answered a call in Humboldt Park. It was one of those new-construction condo buildings. The ones with the fake-brick façade with the wrong shade of red and cinderblock the rest of the way back to the alley. A young well-dressed man came out hauling two oversized vinyl bags. I opened the hatch to load his cargo and he said, “Don’t worry, it’s a mascot costume.”

I took him to a nightclub just off the Ohio feeder in River North. The fare was about ten dollars and he asked for eight, then seven dollars change from his twenty.

“Do I hear six?” I deadpanned, making him laugh.

****

River North is overrun with nightclubs. The epicenter is the intersection of Ontario and Franklin. On a weekend night the normal four lanes leading to the highway are choked down to one due to a glut of outsized four-wheeled monstrosities waiting to be valeted or just idling in order to preen in front of one another. Clubs with names like Crescendo, Ontourage, and Tsar open, burn bright for a bit, then close, every few years. I’ve never had the slightest temptation to go into any of these places. I don’t know what goes on inside, save that a lot of money is spent.

A couple years ago, I took a balding and tired man named Dmitry and his two much-younger, barely-clothed female companions to Crescendo. He seemed bored and they were grimly cheerful. Likely as not, the girls were on the clock. They all spoke Russian, thinking they wouldn’t be overheard, but even in my mother tongue what they were talking about didn’t really register. They were each going through the paces of a “wild” night out. Perhaps they were trying to live up to something they’d seen on TV.

****

Late one night last week a couple guys got in at Dearborn and Illinois, obviously coming from Underground, up the block. They asked for an address in Boystown and went back to their argument.

"Why do you always act like you don’t even know me when we go out?”
“What are you talking about? Give me a break, one of my celebrity crushes was there. What did you want me to do?”

They were quiet for awhile, until we exited Lake Shore at Belmont.

“I’m gonna wake up Shel.”
“Why?”
“Because I met Joe Jonas tonight...or, I...touched him.”
“I wish I could still make you feel excited the way meeting him makes you excited.”

At Halsted and Roscoe one got out and slammed the door, not waiting for his boyfriend, who paid without thanking me for the ride and slammed his door as well.

****

At 5:30 Sunday morning, I was on Ontario, headed toward the Ryan and home after a long night, when another taxi pulled up in the lane left of me at a red light, just past the Rock-n-Roll McDonald’s. Two women were in the backseat and the one nearest asked how my night was. Fine, I said, And yours?

“Would you like to see my friend’s tits?” she asked.

I didn’t answer one way or the other, but the friend yanked her halter-top down anyhow. I thanked them as the light turned green, wondering how many times she’d done that, or something like it, in the hours before her cab ride home.

****

Last night a radio call brought me back to the cinderblock condo in Humboldt. The guy recognized me right away, “You got a card? It’s a real bitch getting a cab around here.” I told him I didn’t. He gave me his though. It had his name and Mood Director underneath.

“Remember that mascot costume? It’s a bear suit and in the place I work at there are go-go dancers up behind the bar and they’re getting sprayed with water, like they’re taking a shower. The guys eat that shit up...I sneak up behind the ladies, in full costume, and pretend to be doing ‘em,—‘Uh, uh, uh,’—you know, it’s my job to make sure everyone’s having a good time. Thinking next I’m gonna be a gorilla and I’ll get one of the other guys to dress like a giant banana and I’ll chase him all over the club. Awesome, right? We have pillow fights, all sorts of crazy shit...I do one of these stunts and you should see all the cameras come out, flashes all over the place, click, click, click!”

I pulled over in front of the club. He even remembered the bit about “Do I hear six?” from last time. All the while he was selling, inviting me to stop in, to ask for him by name. I thanked him and gave back his seven dollars change.

There’s no doubt that he’ll go far. Confidence like that is a gift of sorts. I still don’t understand what’s being bought and sold in these places. There’s a sick decadence to it all—bored people looking for something to shake them awake, some novelty to make them feel alive. They’ll all be at it again next weekend and I’ll be out there too, wondering why.

Her Birthday

2011-05-26T18:56:00.001-05:00

A large woman waited for me to pull up to the head of the line at the Midway Airport taxi-stand. She was glad to see my Scion, “ After being jammed into that airplane seat, last thing I want is to be in the back of one of them cop cars.” I moved the passenger’s seat all the way up but it was still a tight fit. She exhaled and asked to go to 45th & Woodlawn.

“So where’s this weather that made my plane four hours late?” she asked. I told her it was really coming down earlier. She was unhappy because it was her birthday and the delay had made her have to cancel her dinner reservation, “How am I gonna get my $75 lobster tail now?” We were going east on Garfield now and she pulled out her phone, put it on speaker, and dialed to check her messages. A succession of voices wished her a happy birthday, many making her laugh, a few making me laugh as well. Calling one back, she spoke into the phone like it was a mic, “Thank you, Lumpy Earl...you’re the first one who sang for me!” After she was done she explained that he was an uncle who’d been dropped on his head as a child, leaving lumps in his head, and that the nickname had stuck, “ A forty-five year-old man named Lumpy, yup.”

The next message she checked made her even happier, “Oooooh, Ernesto’s back. I got some work for him!” She explained that Ernesto had decorated most of her house but had left to take a full-time job. “People come over my place and see the Venetian marble and think it’s for real, but I tell them, ‘No, it’s just painted.’ They can’t believe it. The man is so good...Took me about five years to save up to pay him to do all the rooms in my place. He’s a perfectionist too. All my neighbors are so jealous...” See, I pointed out, it’s not such a bad birthday after all. She didn’t disagree.

She told me how hard it was for a woman to get work done around the house and not get ripped off, “What they don’t know is that I work with contractors all the time. I know what things cost. Just the other week we were having the bathrooms redone at the office. It was a million dollar job and they didn’t wanna put full-length mirrors in the ladies’ room. I took it all the way to the top. Us women need to be able to look at ourselves. You’d think it was all single men making these decisions. It pays to complain. It’s how things get done.”

She looked out the window at the men hanging around outside a liquor store and shook her head.

“It’s been a tough one this year though. My mother passed on a few months back. It was just shy of my folks’ fiftieth anniversary too, so that five grand I’d been saving up to throw them a bash went for the funeral instead...it’s not the same not getting that call from her at 6:22am, telling me that was the time I was born. Guess it was just her time.”

We cut north through Washington Park to 51st. A couple blocks east, we passed the hulking black SUV permanently installed to guard the block of President Obama’s home. “He sure makes it tough on us when he comes back here with the security and all,” she commented. “I met him back when he was a congressman and he was real down to earth, called me back personally one time when I had a complaint too. A few years back a friend said she was having a fundraiser for him and I ask, ‘For what? He already a senator.’ I couldn’t believe it. Thought they’d kill him for sure. He ain’t done nothin’ for me personally except freeze my pay. I work for the government. B’s a good man though, I’ll stick with him.”

It was $21.45 on the meter (plus $2 Airport Charge and $1 Gas Surcharge), when we stopped in front of her house. “Huh. A lot cheaper coming back than going to the airport. Guy took me up Lakeshore. It was quick but, dang...” I explained how taking Lake Shore Drive from her house to Midway actually added several miles and more than a few dollars to the trip. I wished her a happy birthday and watched as she crossed the street toward the gate of a townhouse on Woodlawn. It was one in a row of identical others, but I knew hers stood out because of all she’d told me. The fog was really rolling in as I pulled away from the curb.

The Past

2011-05-19T18:03:00.005-05:00

The two girls were laughing before they even got in the cab. They were at the corner of Division and Western and wanted to go to Belmont and Clark. Neither could be too far into her twenties. “Ridiculous. Whenever you and I get together it’s like this,” one said to the other, barely able to keep a straight face. “That’s why we belong together,” the other answered.

They told me they were running late for The Cars concert at The Riviera. Belmont and Clark’s not where the Riv is, I remarked. “Yeah, we forgot the tickets at home,” one of them answered. I told them they were about twenty-five years too late for The Cars. The art of fading away has been long forgotten these days. Every band gets back together now and if you weren’t around the first time it’s understandable that you’d want to hear those songs you’ve loved since you were little, coming out of the mouths of the people that wrote them, while you jump up and down, reliving a past you weren’t even part of.

“We went to the Devo show at The Vic last year and we were totally the youngest ones there.”

“I hope there’s some old guys there who want to buy us everything!”

I assured them that there would be no shortage of those. One of the reasons I can’t go to too many of these nostalgia shows is those old guys. Unlike these girls, they were there the first time and apparently left something there that they’ve been trying to retrieve ever since. It’s that high-school reunion business and you can find it at concert halls in any town, most any day of the week now.

“What else are we supposed to do on a Wednesday night?”

So you’re really into that ‘80s music, eh? I ask. “ Of course! Night Ranger, Toto, that shit’s the best,” was the giggling answer from the back. It’s because you weren’t alive during that decade that you like it, I offered. “So, like, it wasn’t the cool people that liked The Cars in the ‘80s, it was the dorks, right?” one wanted to know. I couldn’t even remember. They started talking about what they’d be doing if it was the ‘80s now, “We’d be wearing business suits and doing blow right now!” “I’d totally be doing that one-armed drummer from Def Leppard!” They were scream-laughing now. I wanted to tell ‘em that that guy didn’t lose his arm ‘til ‘84 but I didn’t.

“Okay, so here’s the plan: run up and get the tickets, throw some paint on my face, roll a spliff or two, and smoke it on the way to the show. Cool?”

"Man, I hope Toto's opening for The Cars..." We were about a block from Belmont and Clark now. I asked where they wanted to be dropped off and they said their place was right above the L & L Tavern, “It’s a really cool place, by the way,” one said helpfully. I knew it was a cool bar, having gone there for the first time some twenty years ago. “Keep listening to rock-n-roll, sir,” one said, as they bounced out. I promised them I would.

Take a Chance

2011-05-06T18:50:00.002-05:00

I’m parked at the bus stop on the corner of Chicago and California at 3:30am. After 1am or so this bus stop becomes the unofficial cabstand for The Continental which is open until 4am. Because there’s no other late-night bars nearby, it’s often a reliable spot to get a fare at this hour. Sometimes people that come out at last call want to keep the party going. Some will go long distances to make that happen.

“I’m gonna take a chance,” he says in lieu of a destination. When I ask where this “chance” might be, he explains: “No, now wait. I’m thinking of going to this one location and knocking on the door and if this individual isn’t there, I’ll need to go right back here. Otherwise I go home to my wife. I live just up the street.” I ponder what he’s saying for a moment. It’s been a slow night and there hasn’t been much trouble as of yet, so, what the hell. I’ll need you to pay me before you get out of the cab to knock on that door, ok? I tell him. He agrees and we head east on Chicago. Less than two blocks pass before I hear him feeling about on the seat and he says, “Oh no, we gotta go back. I forgot my dissertation at the bar. I’m a PhD candidate at DePaul. I’m dead without that thing!”

After retrieving a small zippered case from the bar, we’re back on track, en route to the Eisenhower. Our destination is 49th and King Drive. He asks if he can smoke and I tell him I’d rather he didn’t, explaining that it’s a new cab and I’m trying to keep it that way. “What if I really have to?” he persists. I’ll take you back and you can take another cab, I answer. He’s quiet, then wants to know, “Can I take a leak before we get on the highway?” We pull in back of the darkened Popeye’s on Western and he relieves himself. We catch the Eisenhower at Congress and go east, then switch to the Dan Ryan. He’s passed out now which is just as well because I have no desire to talk about where he’s going.

There’s not much stirring on 47th Street at this hour. A gas station near Wabash seems the only thing open. We keep on to King Drive, then turn south. I tell him we’re almost there in a raised voice and he stirs awake. King Drive is a boulevard from McCormick Place all the way to 51st Street, so we swing around to the access road and stop in front of a shuttered-looking greystone. He’s growing a bit agitated now. He hands me his debit card and I run it for $25. He sprints up the steps and knocks on the door. A light goes on and the door’s opened a crack. He comes back and I hand him his card and receipt. “Now I gotta go in there and I’ll be out in like five minutes,” he says, digging through his pockets and coming up with two $5s and handing them over. “You’re not hearing any of this are you? You’re gonna take off, aren’t you?” he looks panicked. It’s now 3:55, if you’re not out by 4:00, I’m gone, I say. He starts back toward the house, looking over his shoulder twice before disappearing inside. I pull into a parking spot with unobstructed views of the doorway, as well as the sidewalks in either direction. He’s back within three minutes.

“Well, that was a waste. Can you take me back where we came from? Can we stop to get cigarettes on the way too?” he says, then puts on his headphones and tilts his head back. His music’s loud enough that it’s audible over my stereo. It’s all about niggaz and bitches and it’s punctuated by multiple rounds going off. Better into his ears than through my windshield. We head north on the highway.

We exit at Augusta and go west to Western and pull in at the BP. Turning on the light rouses him, his eyes now wide open as he pops out to get smokes. His place is a few blocks further west. He hands me the debit card again and I run it for $22 as he thanks me for being cool and taking care of him. He waves and gives me a thumbs up while lighting his cigarette and crossing the street. I hope the chance he took was worth it.

American United

2011-05-03T00:12:00.004-05:00

A few weeks back, I stopped at the Marathon gas station at Belmont and Western for a coffee and to use the facilities. The coffee was free for cab drivers after midnight. The car wash was as well. Out front, a mustachioed hack puffed out his gut and quoted the bible to illustrate his travails behind the wheel to the clerk, who made a good show of paying attention. I drove away without absorbing much of his wisdom except to note how much the place had changed.

Ten years ago when I tended bar at the Blue Light just up the street, a couple of the regulars worked for American United Taxi. Their offices and dispatching center were housed in the triangular corner building that came to a sharp point at the corner of Belmont and Clybourn. There had even been a diner on the ground floor called The Point at one time. Eric was a dispatcher who’d play video poker at the bar for hours, drinking nothing but Diet Cokes. Timmy was a driver who’d pop in several times a night during most of my shifts. He’d slam a short Old Style and go back to his cab, which he’d park haphazardly under the viaduct. On many of his visits, he’d try to mooch free ones from me or one of the barflies. His face was often scraped up or speckled with dried scabs and scratches, as if he had taken some of the brunt of the road’s asphalt with it to spare his taxi’s tires.

In 2003, I went back to driving a cab (having done it for three years in Boston in the ‘90s). I put down a $200 deposit with American United, choosing it because I knew where they were headquartered most likely. The cabs were dispatched from the back of the Marathon station. I signed on for the day shift, 6am to 6pm, so I could spend time with my then-wife in the evenings. Most of the drivers seemed to be grizzled, old, and white. They were still operating with two-way radios and each dispatcher had his own particular way that he demanded the calls to be read back to him. I didn’t stick around long enough to master their system. The night man regularly showed up hours late and was rarely penalized; neither was I often compensated for the time he’d cost me. The time they pulled me off the street in the middle of rush hour for an hour-and-a-half oil change was the last straw. I took back my deposit and went to Chicago Carriage, then to Checker.

Working for those other companies, I found out that there was plenty of business on the South and West Sides of Chicago. These were areas that American United shunned for the most part. Many of the American United drivers I’d encounter around town were of the disgruntled, Jim Ignatowski variety. Some of them looked like they lived in their taxis, others would tell odd, fantastic tales without much prompting. They were relics and I was glad not to be aligned with them.

Last year, Yellow Cab bought American United (as it had bought out Checker a few years before.) They remodeled the Marathon station, advertising free car washes and coffee for cab drivers, signaling a new era. There’ll likely always be crabby old white guys driving taxis. Hell, if I don’t play my cards right, I’ll be one of them. But, they won’t have a home at American United; it’s just a brand-name like Taco Bell’s a subsidiary of Pepsico now. No cabs are dispatched from there; I hear they’re all owner-operators now. I won’t miss the way the place used to be. I like the way it is now: I pick up my free joe, take a leak, and leave. That old American United is best left in the past.

The Regular Route

2011-04-28T15:12:00.001-05:00

An “O” next to a fare displayed on the Gandalf means that it’s a Time Order. More often than not it’s a trip to the airport and thus is snapped up seconds after it flickers across the screen. I’d just left the house to start work and, logging into the system, saw “500-1O” appear as the only currently available fare. The cab company divides the city into zones with odd numbers for the South Side and evens for the North. Zone 500 covers much of Bridgeport and south to the edge of where the Union Stockyards used to be. It’s within a couple miles of where I live, so I key in the bid and get the call.

It’s not an airport job. Instead, the screen displays an address on 38th Street, followed by: “Mon-Thur: 3pm Fri: 12:30pm //Please call with Cab#”. It all comes back to me. I haven’t driven him for several years; not since back when Checker was its own company and hadn’t been taken over by Yellow Cab. There seemed to be a lot more regular riders then. I spent most afternoons ferrying disabled kids home as part of the Mobility Program. To supplement handicapped vans, the city contracted cab companies to pick up developmentally-disabled teenagers and adults. When Checker went out of business and was swallowed up by Yellow, a lot of that business went away. Perhaps it was just coincidence or a change in city policy. Mr. Hall wasn’t a Mobility ride but reminded me of that time.

I pull up to the low building that houses Midwest Lighting on 38th Street right at 3pm. It’s a nondescript structure painted baby blue. Workers soon start to spill out, many pausing to light Salems, Marlboros, or Kools before walking away. Mr. Hall comes out a few minutes later. He’s a lot more bent-over than I remember him. What he says is just as it always was though: “Alright, we’re going to Ogilvie Train Station, but there’s a particular way that we need to take.” I have no doubt that he instructs every driver, every one of the five days a week that he takes this trip, in exactly this same way. “We’re going to go to the end of this block, then turn left on Halsted, then take your very first right.” He waits until I’ve accomplished this before resuming, “Now, we’ll keep going straight for four blocks until we get to Wallace, then we stay on that until 29th Street.” I’m not sure why I find him dictating the route endearing; there’s an assumption in his doing this that the driver doesn’t know the best way to get to his destination. I’ve been guilty in the past of taking quiet pleasure in getting stuck in gridlock because of a passenger’s insistence on a particular route I knew to be wrong. Mr. Hall isn’t wrong. How long has he been retracing these steps? Thirty, forty years would be my best guess. “At 29th Street you turn right and go down to the second stop sign, that’ll be Canal. Turn left. There will be two speed bumps coming up very quickly, one after the other. We go straight all the way to Madison Street now.” He’s quiet until we pass 18th, then advises, “There’s train tracks that are pretty ripped up just past this rise, so I’d slow down...The rest is up to you.”

We take the final left turn from Canal to Madison and stop in front of the train station entrance. The meter reads $11.25 (plus $1.00 in Extras for the gas surcharge). He takes out a baggie full of coins, holds it up to the light, and fishes out a quarter, then wraps a ten and three singles around it and hands it to me. “I thank you again,” he says before leaving.

There’s a certain comfort in being part of the old man’s routine.

Lube

2011-04-22T15:21:00.000-05:00

The couple stood outside Tuman’s at 2:15am in the rain. They had wine bottles, several half-opened packages, and both were sipping beer from pint glasses (most of which they thankfully poured out onto the sidewalk before getting into the cab). “Where we going?” she asked him. “My place,” he answered. “Alright, but I’m gonna need lube...Can you take us to the Jewel-Osco at Division and Ashland, sir?” she said to me.

From their unfortunately out-loud conversation, I learned that it was his thirtieth birthday and they were going to have anal sex. In front of the store, she repeated to both of us that she needed to go in and get lube, “Will you wait here?” she wanted to know. Where am I gonna go with the birthday boy sitting in here? I answered. She wavered her way through the sliding doors.

“Ever date somebody way younger than you?” he said, “I just turned thirty today and she’s...lemme see, she’s twenty-three. There’s good things and bad things about that. When they get excited about something, they get REALLY excited and you gotta kinda just go with it. Like, I don’t mean to be graphic or anything, but she’s in there buying K-Y because she’s on the rag and she wants to let me have anal sex with her...if you’ve got a woman like that, it really builds you up, you know?” I agreed and let him continue, “So, what’s your plan, man? Where do you see yourself in five years?” I told him I didn’t think about the future much. He paused a moment, then, ignoring what I’d said, went on, “I’m a general contractor. Pull down about forty-five grand after taxes, but what I really wanna be is an architect. It’s tough out there though...Guy I work for, he’d make four mil. on his own, but with what I do for him he makes six...but I’ll tell ya, without the love of a woman, it ain’t shit.” Just then, she appeared, clutching a shopping bag in one hand and a gallon jug of Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice in the other. She made it back into the cab with some effort, “Jesus, I’m really wasted,” she announced, plopping down next to him.

His place was only a few blocks away and he continued to list his ambitions (to her now) for the rest of the ride. “I KNOW you can be an architect, baby” she cooed. They took awhile to get all their things together. She wanted to pay with her credit card, but he slapped her hand aside and handed me some bills. “We’re really awful people, aren’t we?” she said. I don’t know if she was talking to me or not, but I didn’t answer.

Last of the Night

2011-04-19T13:54:00.003-05:00

I was second in line outside the Continental. It was 5am, Sunday morning and the bar lights were up all the way. The bar-back could be seen through the window sweeping up. There were no patrons left inside. A little bald man in an oversized white evening coat staggered out of the cab in front of me and toward the bar’s door. He had a bottle of Corona in each fist.

Turned away from the locked door, the bald man made his way down the sidewalk past my cab, to the one behind me. In the rearview mirror, he appeared to be bargaining unsuccessfully with the driver through the passenger’s-side window. He gave up and lurched my way. “You take me Montrose an’ Kimball?” he asked, eyes bulging out of his head. I waved him in.

Waiting to make a U-turn, the other cab pulled even with me and the driver shook his head frantically to indicate that I was making a mistake. Sometimes I’ll take the wrong people just to see what will happen. We were a couple blocks into Humboldt Park before the man stirred to ask where we were going. How about Montrose and Kimball? I suggested; his eyes rolled back up into his head. There was a trickling sound coming from back there. When I turned to look, thankfully, it was just one of the Coronas dribbling its contents onto the floor.

At the appointed intersection, I turned on all the interior lights and implored the man to waken. I removed the empty tipped-over beer bottle from his lap and shook him back to consciousness. He looked around and repeated the address. Telling him that we were already there didn’t seem to impress him much. By and by, he requested to continue on to Lawrence (some four blocks north). He protested loudly, as we drove north on Kimball, that it was the wrong direction. I’ve had these arguments at the end of the night with many drunks and there’s no way to ever convince them short of just arriving at the destination and paying them no mind.

At the corner of Lawrence, I pulled over and stopped the meter. Here? I asked. He looked around and pointed across the street. I swung the cab around to the west side of the street. He began digging through his pockets, holding various bills and cards up to the light. He handed over the fare and two singles for a tip, yet remained seated with no apparent intention of leaving. Time to go, pal, I suggested. He just stared through me. I tried it several other ways to no avail before he answered, “Hey, man, I no Mexican, call police if you wan’...I Colombian!” He told me how I’d made a mistake and needed to take care of customers instead of telling them to get out. Replying that I was the only one outside the Continental willing to take him made no impression. What I really wanted to do was punch him in the face and throw him out on the sidewalk. Instead I turned away, waited a moment, and told him that I was very tired and wanted to go home. A few minutes later he opened the door of his own accord and got out.

It was nearly 5:30am and he was certainly the last of the night.

Kids

2011-04-12T16:13:00.001-05:00

On Damen in Bucktown, a bug-eyed old hack leaned out of his taxi and jabbed his finger toward Armitage, barking that there was a lady and two kids needing a cab around the corner. Sure enough, there they were at the corner of Wolcott, three pairs of hands waving wildly in all directions. A curly-haired girl, followed by a boy, maybe a year younger, with mom bringing up the rear. “Thank you for stopping for us,” she said, settling in. “Can you take us to the Sheraton downtown? What’s it on St.Claire, I think.” North Water, I corrected, getting on the Kennedy inbound.

The little girl was the more talkative one. “Why did all those taxis drive by us and they didn’t stop?” she wanted to know. I suggested that maybe they had passengers or were on their way to pick someone up. She said there were lots of empty ones and didn’t seem satisfied with my explanation at all. “This taxi is all new. Did you buy it?”...Mom wondered whether it was because the other cabs didn’t want to put up with all the questions. “Bet you didn’t know what you were letting yourself in for, eh?” she laughed. The whole Chicago skyline was before us as we inched east through afternoon traffic. “My daddy works in the Searious Tower,” the boy announced. “Can we take taxis all day, Mommy?” She explained to him that Daddy had the car with him at the hotel, which disappointed him. “Do you want to eat hot dogs again for dinner?” she asked him. The woman was pretty worn down by the kids, so, seeing that they were occupied with the taxi and its driver, she got on her phone and turned away to look out the window.

“How old are you? Are you forty-five?” the girl asked. Forty, I answered. “My daddy’s forty-three and you look older than him. How come is that?” Getting no response, she turned to her mother and asked, “Is Mexico where aliens go?...I don’t like aliens.” The woman kept talking on the phone, paying the girl no mind. “I like aliens. There was an alien outside my window one time. He had a driver’s license. I don’t know how he got it because he’s too small,” the boy volunteered. Coming back to me, the girl said, “Do you have nightmares about E.T.? Because I do.” I told her I didn’t, genuinely surprised by this idea. The boy added, “Do you like aliens?” I’ve never me one, I answered.

We pulled into the Sheraton’s driveway and all the kids’ attention shifted to the doorman with his whistle, cap, and coat with epaulets, holding the door open for them. Mom thanked me but the kids were long gone without a goodbye. On to the next thing.

God's Gift

2011-04-04T15:22:00.004-05:00

He has an unlit half-cigarette between his teeth as he gets in on Elston, across from the Abbey Pub. "I turned the cigarette off, don't worry," he assures me. "Take me to Division and Pulaski, or somewhere close to there. I'll tell you. Normally, I pay like $17, but if it gets to be ridiculous, I'll just get out. I'm not makin' much money."

Then he notices the touch-screen playing ads, not two feet from his face, "What's with all the technology in this cab? I used to drive a cab like ten years ago and there was nuthin', just black girls in the back. Hahahaha..."

He turns to me next, "What are you, an American?" he wants to know. When I tell him I’m not from here, he takes a moment to ponder, then asks, "Wait. You're white; not like one of those Arabians. I started with American United, you know that? This must be your own cab cuz there's no shield." No, I answer, these new cabs don't have shields and shields won't protect you anyway. He doesn't agree, "You shittin' me? A nigger tried to rob me with a coathanger, I slam on the brakes and BASH! his fuckin' head goes into the shield. Nigger tried to hold me up with a real gun; same thing: BASH! right into the shield. I'm twenty-three years old, I ain't puttin' up with that shit."

"I'm on my way to see my black girlfriend, but I might stop and see my white girlfriend on the way maybe. She's gettin' old though, her pussy ain't what it used to be. The black one's cool, I'll go see her. Got a twenty-two-year-old one too; she's straight-up crazy. Don’t like the Spanish chicks, I just wind up beating them up. " We’re going south on Pulaski now, passing Armitage, and he starts complaining about the touch-screen again, "I can't stand it talkin' to me like this." When I suggest he look out the window instead, he says he’s all about talking to the driver. Just my luck.

"I'm Polish and Austrian and Irish, I'm all mixed up. My father drove cab for eighteen years, my roommate still does it. I loved it and I used to drive drunk as hell all the time. Got two DUIs. I'd have a beer in my hand, doing 70 up Lincoln. Bitches used to thank me, 'Oh, you got me home so fast. You want to come upstairs?' Fuck yeah, I did."
He’s quiet a minute, but as we pass North Avenue, remarks, "I been gettin' high since I'm sixteen. Ain't nothin' new there."

"Your meter's runnin' slow. Some guys, it runs fast, yours is slow, I'm just tellin' ya. I know these things." I thank him for the information and add that it meant he’d win out on the fare if he was right. "I don't wanna win. I want everybody to win. Except the Chicago Police. I don't want them to win, they got too many tickets on me...Get rid of that beard, better to be clean-shaven; you’ll look ten years younger. You'll get all kindsa pussy, trust me, but the beard's no good. Don't wanna look like some goddamn A-rab, do ya?" We pull up to a liquor store at the corner of Division amd Pulaski and he wants me to leave him there, "I'll go in here. The A-rabs, they like me in there. They're my friends...don't pick up no one out here. Nothin' but niggers out here."

The meter reads $10.65 plus the $1 Gas Surcharge, making his total $11.65. He gives me $12 and goes into the liquor store.

Scion

2011-03-21T17:10:00.000-05:00

In the eleven years that I’ve driven a cab, I’ve had the pleasure of dealing with a variety of vehicles. Cars with brakes that squealed so bad that by the end of a shift I felt like I had tinnitus. Cars with seats split so that I’d bring bits of padding with me (on the ass of my pants) every time I got out. Steering wheels so greasy from others’ hands that mine would be blackened after a couple hours. Transmissions that would cause bucking at every 10MPH increase. Cabs that had to be returned because customers complained about smelling gas in the back seat. One memorable heap which lost a water pump on the Eisenhower Expressway, as well as many others with more mundane problems, but none that had any less than 100,000 miles on the odometer. Until last Friday, that is.

I’ve been renting cabs from the same garage for about five years. As in most places, those that cosy up to the management will get preferential treatment. In this case, it means primarily getting the newer cabs. They claim to have a seniority system, but their friends always get the cream of the crop and I’ve never been their friend. A couple weeks ago I went out of town for a week. Before leaving, I went into the office and asked Ken, the shop manager, whether there was any way he’d let me have the car I’d been driving back upon my return. He looked up my file on his computer and said, with surprise, “Well, you sure got enough time with us for that. but it looks like you take a lot of time off. I’m in the business of giving new cars to guys who won’t drop them...Tell you what, poke your head in when you come back and we’ll see what we can do.” I thanked him without much hope for anything happening.

I came back to town and, after a day’s wait, was assigned a cab. When asking whether there was any news, Ken answered curtly, “You’re on my list.” The car I got was far from the worst I’d had, but nothing to get excited about: a 2007 Crown Vic with 217,000 on the odometer and all the squeaks and aches you’d imagine of a machine of that vintage. I made it through four days before starting to daydream about the next chance to take time off, then the phone rang. It was Ken, saying, “I got a brand new Scion. How soon can you be here?” I was at the garage within twenty minutes.

Transferring my receipts, street maps, Chauffeur’s Guide, phone charger, pillow, and other assorted gear into the Scion, it felt like moving into the corner office. This would mean paying a bit more in daily leases but saving at least $10-a-day in gas; in a Crown Vic, I was lucky to get over 10 miles to a gallon. I could also hook up my iPod into the stereo instead of using an FM adapter cable which made every tune hiss and crackle as if broadcast by a ham-radio operator. This car even had that new car smell.

The weekend’s passengers were impressed, many saying it was the nicest cab they’d ever been in. I had to tell them it was the nicest cab I’d ever been in as well. It’s been my policy to allow smoking in the two years or so since I myself had quit, but I had to say no in this cab. Those that asked didn’t put up much of a fight either. Perhaps because I’ve never owned many expensive things, it’s odd for me to care about this new car’s condition, but there’s a proprietary sense that’s definitely appeared. This is probably how they get you: get something nice and going back to the broken-down crap you’re used to is that much harder.

I’ve stayed with this company all these years because they have more cabs than any other and I could take time off and reasonably expect there to be a cab for me when I returned. This Scion changes the game. Drivers and cashiers at the garage would always ask why I didn’t have a regular car and my stock answer was that I liked to “date ‘em, not marry ‘em”. It’ll be difficult to give this one up. I may be stuck, but at least I’ll be stuck in comfort. If you see Checker Cab #429, that’ll be me.