You know the joke about taxi drivers in China or Russia or Hungary or Bulgaria or Ukraine or …: never trust the one who asks you ‘Taxi?’ at the station door or even inside, for sure enough you will be led – as I have been – around the back, over a fence and into a car that has at least once been used as a car bomb. And then the ‘driver’, who plonks a light on the top and wires it up for the trip, will then charge you Yom Kippur rates. The sage advice is to go to a recognised taxi rank and get in line, or better still phone a reliable number. At least those cars have meters, licensed drivers, four wheels, brakes, doors …
Not so in the USA anymore. Dodge the ‘taxi drivers’ at the station or terminal door, line up, get in a yellow-looking vehicle with a sign that says ‘Taxi’ on the top and I guarantee it will be worse than those ‘illegal’ taxis mentioned above. The dashboard warning lights flash like a Christmas tree, meters have been dumped as so much unnecessary paraphernalia, the regular thunk, thunk, thunk on the rear right-hand-side sounds distinctly like a missing tyre, and on the off chance that a receipt is available it will be a piece from the year-old burger wrapper lying on the floor .
It’s one thing to ponder the politics of decline from a distance, but quite another to experience it first hand.
18 November, 2010 at 5:08 pm
2 Timothy 3This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. 2For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, 3Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, 4Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; 5Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. 6For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, 7Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. 8Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. 9But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was.
10But thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, charity, patience, 11Persecutions, afflictions, which came unto me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra; what persecutions I endured: but out of them all the Lord delivered me. 12Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. 13But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived. The taxi drivers are only the tip of the ice burg of deceivers,and evil men,and those that would seduce humans to whore after their vain wicked deceiving wicked ways, death follows them like the wide path of destruction of war as being one of them.
18 November, 2010 at 5:31 pm
Are you going to see Jan Rehman in NY? If you go to Union, look out for my friend Jeremy Kirk who has been reading your stuff and would love to talk with you.
18 November, 2010 at 11:43 pm
I’ll see if one of them is around 25 Nov when I’m back in NY from Atlanta. I tend not to come here very often, so I should make the most of it.
18 November, 2010 at 5:45 pm
Roland, in America what you’ve experienced is called ‘freedom’. ‘Freedom’ doesn’t really exist when an authority (= the ‘gummint’) can prevent someone with rocks in his cerebellum from driving a rusty tin can with an engine in it, and calling this a ‘taxi’.
The result is that in America one is frequently conveyed in this rusty tin, while in most major European cities a taxi is usually a spotless Mercedes Benz driven competently (there are exceptions of course, such as the kamikaze taxi drivers in Paris, the probable reason why Paris will never hold another Olympics, though this ‘failure’ is invariably a blessing in disguise).
18 November, 2010 at 11:45 pm
I think the difference I have noticed this time around is that the supposedly recognisable taxi companies – those yellow vehicles with stuff like ‘Montclair Taxi Cab Co’ scrawled on them – used be OK, but now they are worse than the ‘illegal’ taxis in Budapest or Sofia or wherever.
18 November, 2010 at 6:01 pm
dear:Rob L Says,I am not anywhere near NY.I am on the west coast.Wish I could be there.
19 November, 2010 at 5:34 am
I thought the worst part about US taxis is the fact that many drivers a) create small shrines to their families out of their dashboards which makes you feel like you’re invading their privacy and b) talk on the phone with their taxi-friends or family non-stop which, again, makes you feel like you’re interrupting something as opposed to being driven somewhere.
19 November, 2010 at 5:48 am
Add to that the tendency to write texts and operate with a vague notion of how much a trip costs, invariably in mutltuples of $20.