Stories of Taxicabs and Such

I was watching HBO the other day and they had on "Taxicab Confessions" which is a show where people spill their guts to a chatty cab driver while hidden cameras soak up the whole thing. It was the New York edition which was hilarious to me. I mean if you get in a cab in New York and you have an American driver that speaks perfect English doesn't that tell you something is amiss?

I've been taking a lot of cabs lately so I wanted to start a new series of stories where I share some of my cab experiences.

I've been out late a lot recently. I hate it. I don't wanna take the train that late because the wait is unbearable and i'm afraid i'll fall asleep standing and wake up on the tracks. So I do this magical thing called taking a cab home. Its magical because it turns 20 dollars in my wallet to 3. Ooooh. Aaaaaah.

Most of the time I can usually fool a yellow cab into taking me home late at night, but sometimes I'll be leaving home and i end up in a Gypsy Cab. For my non NYC readers let me explain...a Gypsy Cab is usually a run down vehicle or a town car in which the driver makes up a exhorbitant price to take you somewhere he doesn't know how to get to.

I once was running late to a gig in Crown Heights, Brooklyn so I hopped in a Gypsy cab with friend and cohort Josh Grosvent. We went from Queens to Brooklyn, but something felt wrong. The driver asked what street I was going to and I said Eastern Parkway. So he became fixated on finding Eastern Parkway not realizing that streets are long and can go across a whole city. Finding one part of it doesn't really get me to where I wanna go. "Yeah driver, just any part of that road will do. Doesn't matter where. You know what? Anyway part of a road that has a similar name will do." Josh and I knew something was wrong when he got on the Long Island Expressway and we passed Shea Stadium. Once again, for you non-New Yorkers, its like if you were in Louisiana and wanted to go to Florida, but you were headed toward Pennslyvania and you see the Liberty Bell and are like "huh?" (look at a fucking map)

So we're in a part of NY we've never been to and do not know. Josh and I are looking around seeing people wearing burquas and parkas. It was very confusing. Street signs aren't even words just cave drawings of mythical beasts shot up with arrows and spears. We have no clue where we are. The cab driver finally asks someone directions which he didn't understand so the nice (but frustrated) man said, "Just follow me. I'm going that way!"

So we finally got to where we were going after being taken a half an hour out of our way. The best part though is being charged $30 to get lost. I paid it. I didn't want to argue. I just wanted to get out that nasty hot ass cab and get to a place where everybody knows my name and they're always glad I came. So the moral of the story is...well, there is no moral...just FUCK Gypsy Cabs!