OVERVIEW: “And WHY is he doing this?”

JANUARY 1, 2010


THANK YOU FOR FINDING YOUR WAY HERE. -- Brad

We normally think of history as one catastrophe after another, war followed by war, outrage by outrage -- as if history were nothing more than all the narratives of human pain, assembled in sequence. And surely this is, often enough, an adequate description. But history is also the narratives of grace, the recountings of those blessed and inexplicable moments when someone did something for someone else, saved a life, bestowed a gift, gave something beyond what was required by circumstance. --Thomas Cahill

I STARTED DRIVING A SAN FRANCISCO TAXICAB ON JUNE 8, 1985. Twenty-five years ago. I enjoyed it from the start, but right away discovered that -- for me, at least -- the worst part of the job was driving around empty. After just ten empty minutes I would start scolding myself for all of my poor life choices, would start questioning my worth as a person, my reason for living, etc. But find my next passenger and, ah, well, suddenly everything was just fine.

After considerable stewing, I eventually stumbled upon the thought, “Next time I’m in one of those demoralizing empty periods, I should just pull into a bus zone and offer someone a free ride. At least I won’t be empty.”

And at some point, empty and frustrated, I impulsively swept into a bus zone and offered a free ride to whoever was standing there (the exact memory escapes me). Before long I began to do this semi-regularly, and doing so almost always broke whatever bad mood I’d talked myself into. With a passenger in the backseat, any mini-depression would invariably vanish. Here we were, a couple of human beings, talking -- what could be better than that? Almost always, my day became more fun. Better. It was like magic. And the key was always at my fingertips.

Over the years, things evolved, and for at least fifteen years now (it might actually be closer to twenty) I have consciously given away (at least) one free ride per shift. I don’t tally them, but I’m sure I’ve given away more than a thousand so far.

For the past decade or so, I’ve celebrated my final shift of each year by giving away EVERY ride for free -- and this has become my favorite day of the year. After ten or twelve rides, after just two or three hours of basking in the surprise and delight and the smiles of all my free-ride passengers, I feel like I’ve been injected with a drug more powerful than anything I’ve ever known. Just imagine driving around San Francisco, sharing happiness with everyone you encounter! Think about it... Please.


EVERY CAB DRIVER I KNOW gives away an occasional free ride (I don’t know any others who do it as a practice), but I haven’t heard any of them spell out their criteria. Nor do I have any particular criteria. I’ve given free rides to people who’ve made me laugh, to newlyweds, honeymooners, people who’ve told me it was their birthday, or people who have somehow made me feel good about life. Also to people who tell me about a bad turn their day has taken, or who simply look like they could use a break. To people whose life stories make me feel sorry for them, or who are obviously underprivileged or underfunded. People on crutches, people with limbs embedded in casts, people in wheelchairs.

I’ve given free rides to people who have just arrived in San Francisco and are enduring the frustration of trying to find an apartment. To people I spot wandering the street with heavy backpacks and lost looks on their faces. To people who prattle on and on about how much better taxi service is in New York or Chicago (or wherever) than in San Franicsco -- and I love hearing these people say, if they do, “Well, this certainly never happened to me at home!”

I’ve given free rides to members of the military, to people who can barely speak English, to people who have suffered through one of my many long stories or who have laughed at one of my attempts at humor. And sometimes, when I find myself revolted by someone, when I catch myself despising him or her, I decide to blow my own mind by making their ride free -- and I almost always learn something surprising about them, or about myself, this way.

Sometimes I give my ride to the first person who gets into my cab, just to get things rolling. Sometimes, late in my shift, if I remember that I haven’t yet given away my ride, I give it to the next person to climb in. And if it’s getting way late, there’s always the stranger in the bus zone, minding his or her own business. In November 2008, during the two weeks immediately following Barack Obama’s election, I pulled to the curb each time I spotted an opportunity to offer a free ride to a black person -- and was that ever fun!


I’VE ALWAYS ENJOYED CAB DRIVING, but this daily, free-ride practice has made it even more enjoyable, made it a bit of a game, added an element of play. And sometimes I suspect that it has transformed my whole relationship with Money Itself (but that’s another story).

For years, this practice was not something I talked about very much. It was my own little secret. But lately I’ve been talking about it more. And in late 2009 I decided that during the year 2010 I would keep a journal of each day’s free ride. My intention is to keep it up all year long, but we’ll see...

My sense is that cab stories are a bit like potato chips -- tasty at first, but they can become less-interesting if you eat (read) too many. I would recommend reading a few at a time, maybe a month’s worth. I intend to post them as soon as possible after each shift, but you might be better off coming back here about once a month. Or maybe not.

However you approach these stories, thanks for reading even this far. And for those of you who have been encouraging my writing for years -- and for some of you it’s been decades now -- thank you doubly. Triply. Freely.

AND to the first person who mentions this journal to me from the back seat of my cab (I drive Green Cab #914, roughly 4 AM to 4 PM on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays), well, YOUR ride is definitely free!

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FROM KENTUCKY (First fare of February)

Shift # 13

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 3 -- 10:55 a.m -- 20th Av & Geary to Haight & Fillmore -- $12.10


A SLIM YOUNG WHITE GUY in a gray sweatshirt flags me down. His hood is up, but his face is clearly visible, and I can see his tame but alert eyes. A longer-than-fashionable beard, red and whispy, dangles from his chin. He reminds me of my own unformed self at about age twenty-five.

“From Kentucky... I’ve been out here two years… Iron work, but that’s not really what I’m into... I’ve got a line of clothes in stores, mostly back in Kentucky, but I’m trying to get established out here. I figure five years ought to be enough to get established, wouldn’t you think…?

Me: "You’re probably wise to think that way."

“A lot of my friends had been out here and said San Francisco would be a better place for my clothes. Better than Kentucky. I’ve been taking them around to stores. Good reception. Better than in Kentucky. They’re made mostly out of recycled material. Most of them are made with 69 percent recycled cotton -- the rest is new cotton. All the recycled cotton is manufactured in the US. It really helps to be able to put Made-In-USA on the tag -- everyone loves seeing that. I also use some P-E-T -- the stuff that comes from recycling plastic bottles… It’s easier out here. In Kentucky people say, ‘What’s recycling?’ Here you don’t have to sit every single person down and explain it to them… Back in Louisville they do have some recycling places now, where you can drop stuff off. I think it’s just to appease us. I actually think they take it and dump it all in the regular trash. But there’s nothing you can do. Well, you can have committees and keep pushing stuff, and maybe eventually it’ll change...”

I ask, “Is Louisville near Owensboro, Kentucky?”

“Not too far. Same part of the state.”

“I played basketball with a guy from Owensboro…”

My fare: “They do like basketball in Kentucky.”

“Actually, he took my spot on the team. I was a senior in college, a starter, and I was looking forward to a glorious last year. He was a freshman -- Lanny Falls -- an all-state high school player from Owensboro, Kentucky. He could run, he could shoot, and he just showed up and took my spot. And it was the correct move for the team -- dammit. With him in the lineup instead of me, the team ripped off to a twelve-and-oh start…”

My fare: “Twelve-and-oh!”

I glance in the rearview. His hood is back off his head now. He’s smiling. He seems to be liking my story.

“I didn’t like sitting on the bench, but what could I say?”

My fare chuckles. “Twelve-and-oh. I guess you just had to get over that…”

“Another thirty years and I think I’ll be fine...”

He laughs. “Thirty years?”

“1971. Almost forty now. The worst part…” I tell him, “Lanny Falls was a great guy.”

“You got along?”

“Everyone got along with him. Everyone loved him.”

My fare: “Twelve-and-oh makes a lot of happy people.”

Two or three times already this morning, I’ve thought about popping the free ride. But I checked with my body each time, and each time the feeling just wasn’t there. Over the years, I’ve learned to trust Body’s feedback. I’m not sure how to best describe the feeling -- settled? satisfied? complete? or maybe silent? None of those exactly really capture it, but however it’s described, at the end of this ride with the hood-up guy from from 20th and Geary, the feeling just simply is there, and the four of us -- me, Body, my fare, and his body -- we all know it.

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She is Dazzling!

Shift #14

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 5 -- 6 a.m. sharp -- Fourth/Bryant to Clay/Front -- $6.70


A bonus ride:

A CHICAGO LAWYER has just spent two nights at the Westin-Market Street, his base for an (unsuccessful) attempt to induce a settlement between several parties who have squared off in an $8 million Sonoma County construction lawsuit. Even though he hadn’t been able to inspire any happiness among the bickerers, he certainly brings me much joy by resisting the Westin doorman’s attempt to steer him into one of the five waiting “house limos.” Instead, he walks proudly past all of them, through the darkness of the early morning, out to my cab, where I am hunched under the dim bulb of my interior light, reading my Sun Magazine. I put it aside and thank him warmly. (There is an eternal tension between us cab drivers, limos drivers, and hotel doormen. You can bet I'll write about that as this year goes along...) He’s going to SFO, and he’s not going to be my free ride, but he’s already made my day: a $34 fare, a pleasant conversation (he, like me, is very sympathetic to single-payer health care and to the precarious situation in which President Obama finds himself), and a $10 tip.


The free ride:

THE CITY IS STILL DARK as I return from the airport and take the Fourth Street exit ramp off of Highway 101. Even though I’m in the far left lane of the ramp’s four lanes of traffic, and despite the darkness, in my peripheral view I notice, across the tops of the roofs of four lanes of cars, I notice just a female hand and the sleeve of a tan raincoat waving animatedly from the far side of Bryant Street. I weave a nifty three-lane change through traffic (safely enough, however, that I don’t trigger a single driver’s horn reflex) and brake to a stop in front of Chavo’s Restaurant on Bryant. How have I never noticed this place, Chavo’s, before?

My fare rewards me with a, “Nice move, Mister!”

She has overslept, and even though it’s just 6 AM she’s already late for work.

“What were you dreaming about?” I ask her.

She laughs. “I was dreaming it was the weekend already.”

“What’s your work?”

“I’m in finance… these crazy market hours… even after four-and-a-half years of getting up early my body still hasn’t adjusted… on weekends I sleep until noon….”

Five years ago she came to San Francisco from Alexandria, Virginia -- the very town where I grew up! I ask what it was she came to San Francisco for?

She laughs her lovely laugh again. “For a summer.”

“Must have been a great summer.”

“It was!” she says. “My degree is in science, but I also went to law school, and I came out here for an internship that summer. I loved this city. So when this job in finance came along, I took it…”

“What’s your niche?”

“Well…” She pauses, seems reluctant, and then: “I’m in the bank credit area...”

Me: “The not-so-popular-these-days area…”

She laughs. “I started in 2006 when things seemed really good, and now I’ve been through some wild swings.”

Me: “Do you understand these financial instruments we hear about?”

She: “I do think I have a pretty good understanding, but the other day I was trying to explain derivatives to my mother, and I realized I really have some work to do before I try that again.”

At her destination, just opposite the towering Embarcadero Two, I punch off the meter. “And now...," I say, "the favorite part of my day…”

I turn around and quickly explain to her all the nuances of my personal, not-so-complicated financial instrument, my daily free-ride practice. Starting back in the darkness of Fourth Street, and then on through the hurry of this ride, all I’ve actually seen of my fare is her one hand and the sleeve of her raincoat. Her voice floating over the backseat has been gentle, easy, amused, and now that I’m looking at her young, shining face (in a moment she will tell me her name is Carly), I can’t help noticing that she’s fairly dazzling. But who doesn’t look better with an electric smile on their face?

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* * Herbert Gold * *

Shift #16

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 10 -- 10:35 a.m -- a street flag -- $6.25


SHE’S STANDING ON THE CORNER of O’Farrell and Leavenworth wearing mirror shades -- maybe she’s smiling, but I can’t tell for sure. She says she’s headed “over near Francisco Street, at the other end of Leavenworth.”

I start climbing the flank of Nob Hill, aiming toward Francisco, but we’ve only gone a block -- we’re stopped at the signal at Sutter and Leavenworth -- when a DeSoto Cab pulls up alongside us on the right. “Oh, no,” my fare says. “I just got out of that cab two minutes ago.”

I can feel the tentacles of the DeSoto driver’s hairy eyeballs trying to grip the side of my right cheek, but I don’t look over. The light changes, I pull away. “What happened?” I ask my fare.

“Well, I jumped in, told him where I was going, and then just a block later we ran right into some police action that had all the traffic stopped. I didn’t want to just sit there with the meter running, so I said, ‘Sorry, dude,’ and I jumped out. I didn’t pay him anything. I thought we’d be sitting there forever, but it looks like he got out of it o.k. That was just two minutes ago.”

In the rearview I see the DeSoto driver turn off down Bush Street, and now the weirdness is behind us. “Well,” I say, “other than that little snafu, how’s your day been going?”

“Fine,” she says. “Class... Painting…”

Me: “You had a class and now you have to do some painting...? Or you have a painting class...?”

She: “I have a painting class. I’m headed to the San Francisco Art Institute. Do you know it?”

Me: “I’ve picked people up there plenty of times. And I ate lunch in the cafeteria once, a long time ago. Does the cafeteria still have a great view?”

She: “There are these great windows looking out over the Bay. Is that how it was twenty years ago?”

Me: “I don’t remember the windows so much... I think we sat out on the deck… Is there a deck?”

She: “There is.”

We’re quiet for a few seconds… But then, what the heck, people want to hear stories from their cab drivers, right?

Me: “Do you know of the writer Herb Gold? Herbert Gold?”

She: “No…”

I’m not surprised -- my fare is in her early twenties. “Herb’s kind of famous,” I tell her. “He’s in his eighties now, and he’s written about twenty books. Back in the 1950s and 60s he hung out with all the Beats in North Beach -- Kerouac, William Burroughs, Ferlinghetti… And twenty years ago he flattered the heck out of me by inviting me to lunch. I had just had a book of my own published, and my agent called me and said Herb Gold liked it and wanted to take me to lunch. He was a very nice guy. He took me to the cafeteria at the Art Institute. I do remember a great view, but mostly I remember sitting there, thinking, ‘Herb Gold… I can’t believe it…’”

(I also remember this: After lunch, while Herb and I were saying good-bye on the sidewalk outside his nearby flat, I asked him, “Can you tell me, the young wannabe writer, how to make a career out of this?” And Herbert Gold gave me some advice which I wish I had followed more diligently. “Just keep writing. Every day. Keep writing.”)

My fare: “What was your book about?”

“A trip around the world I took…” But I’ve talked about myself enough -- too much, probably. I ask her, “What painting are you working on today?”

She: “It’s a figure.”

“A…person?”

She: “Yes.”

“Is it someone you know?”

She: “No… just someone that came to me…”

Me: “I guess that’s the best way sometimes -- ‘Well, where did YOU come from? Nice to meet you...’”

She chooses to play. “Hey baby…” She’s dropped her voice a notch -- it’s not man-deep, but I get the drift, especially when she continues, and I quote: “Nice tits!”

When we’ve both finished laughing, I tell her about my free ride and she actually squeals. She tells me her name...was it Danielle? I can’t remember now, but I do remember that the rims of her mirror shades were covered in tiny rainbow stripes.

“You wouldn’t believe how great this is!” she says. She holds up a twenty-dollar bill for me to see. “Just this morning I took this out of the rent jar!”

“Well,” I tell her, “go put it back.”

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PROFESSIONAL SKYDIVER

Shift #17

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 12 -- Clay and Montgomery to BART


“AND WHAT’S YOUR WORK?” I ask them, after I’ve dragged them into my cab and they’ve asked me a few questions about my own work.

(They’re locals, headed to BART and then the airport for a flight to a weekend in Las Vegas… Moments earlier they were standing on the sidewalk just a few feet from the looming Trans-America Pyramid Building, fully engaged in a private conversation while waiting for the traffic signal to indicate WALK. The man had a duffel bag strapped to his back, the woman a suitcase on wheels on her feet. And suddenly a cab driver at their right elbows called, “Excuse me -- looks like you’re headed to BART. May I offer you a free ride?”)

The woman says she works in PR in the world of hi-tech. “A year ago, in the middle of the downturn, we were acquired by a bigger company, and for months we were all afraid we were going to lose our jobs, but now we’ve got the big Hewlett-Packard account, and it looks like we’re safe…” A year ago everyone in my cab seemed worried about their jobs; these days everyone seems to think they’re safe.

“And you?” I ask the man.

“I’m a professional skydiver."

I turn and look at him. He’s smiling confidently. He looks like he's never worried about a thing in his life.

Me: “I’ve been asking that question for many years, and that’s the first time I’ve heard that answer…”

He laughs. “I first jumped as a teenager, and right away I was hooked…”

I ask the woman if she’s ever skydived.

“Once,” she says. “I really liked it, but I didn’t get hooked.”

I say, “Me, too. Once. Thirty years ago. Really liked it. Never did it again. Thirty years ago you pretty much dropped from the sky and hoped you could figure out a way to land without breaking an ankle.”

“Duck and roll,” the man says. “That’s what the old landing technique was called. But now, with all the new gear, even first-timers can float right in and land standing up.”

I want to ask more questions -- for instance I’d like to know if there’s a parachute tucked away in his duffel/backpack -- but here we are at BART, and now they’re gone.

In 1979, 27 years old, I wrote an article about my one sky-diving experience. The last line went something like this: “If I ever need another serious adrenaline rush, I know where to find it.” And now, at 58, I remember the pounds and pounds of bulky gear, the furious rush of air, the tiny-looking meadow 3,000 feet below, and I ponder my fare’s words -- “float right in and land standing up” -- and I wonder: Is it time again?

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* * Valentine’s Day * *

Shift #18

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 14 -- Octavia/Market to Geary/Webster -- $6.70


AROUND 10:00 AM, as I’m parking across from Noah’s Bagels in Pacific Heights, I notice a middle-aged woman sitting on a bench in the nearby bus shelter. She’s wearing sunglasses and a pink scarf. Her legs are crossed. Despite her shades, I can see that her head tracking back and forth to study me and my cab. When I emerge from Noah’s a few minutes later, second cup of coffee in hand, she’s still there, legs still crossed, still studying me. I get behind the wheel, pull to the end of the block, do a U-turn, stop directly in front of her, and call through my window, “Every day...free ride...” Etc.

“Oh, thank you very much,” she says, with a thick Latina accent. “But here comes the bus right now.” She nods toward the street behind me.

In the rearview I see a MUNI bus huffing its way down Fillmore, just a block away. MUNI recently installed cameras on the fronts of all its buses, and now $88 bus-zone tickets (mailed-conveniently-to-one’s-home) have become a routine complaint of cab drivers (and civilians, too.) “No problem,” I tell her, and I’m gone.


ALL MORNING I have been feeling a little weird. Until two nights ago, the existence of this journal was my own little secret. I had enjoyed nursing it along, getting the feel of it, but there was bound to come a time when I would share it with others. Two nights ago, in an e-mail to a few friends, I mentioned its existence and asked for feedback.

Reactions have been lukewarm -- no one has raved about my little experiment, but on the other hand no one has said they found it a waste of their (or my) time. A few people wondered if I have a book in mind, but I really don’t. I’m a writer. I’m a cab driver. For years now, the free ride has been a major factor in my work day. Why not take one year and keep a journal? Might be fun... I’m not aware of any specific ambition here, but doesn’t every writer nurture the hope that an audience will ignite around him or her like a grassfire? In any regard, it’s not the tepid feedback that has me feeling weird: ever since I “outed” myself, I’ve had the uncomfortable feeling that I’m under some sort of imaginary spotlight...

I created this, there’s certainly no one I can blame, but this morning everything feels different. Scientists say that the very act of observing something causes a change in behavior -- sometimes subtle, sometimes not subtle at all -- in both the Observer and the thing being Observed. I’m not sure there’s a direct analogy between that phenomenon and my journal experience, but this morning I’m aware of a jangling self-consciousness, a sense that I am somehow both Observer and Observed. And I’m mourning the loss of my secret.


AT THE CORNER OF CALIFORNIA AND VAN NESS, a couple in their late twenties flags me down. When I offer, they each choose a chocolate from a bag of assorted Valentine’s Day Hershey’s chocolates I picked up earlier at Walgreens. The couple is meeting a bunch of friends for brunch at a Castro District restaurant named Lime. “The food’s great," the woman tells me. “They serve bottomless mimosas for seven dollars. And the music is good and loud.”

Me: “I’m 58. I can remember liking restaurants with music that was good and loud, but when I go out these days I want a place where I can have a conversation without having to raise my voice or lean forward. I wonder where the cutoff age is?"

The woman: “I’m guessing 35.”

The man: “I think it’s probably having kids. I’ll bet you’re a parent, right?”

It’s a fun ride, but when I check in with Body at ride’s end, the free-ride feeling just isn’t there -- and I don’t know why. Body and I are off our game. The glare of this damn spotlight is throwing weird shadows everywhere.


AT OCTAVIA AND MARKET I pick up a late-30s Latino dressed in black from his engineer’s cap to his motorcycle boots. He says he is going to “Chopantown.” With a grunt, he accepts a chocolate and tucks it into the pocket of his black bombadier jacket -- but I’m not sure he understands my English all that well. When I ask what he’s up to today I receive a one-word answer -- “Restaurant” -- and then we are silent. It’s a short trip (my waybill shows that it lasted six minutes and ticked up $6.70 on the meter), and midway I start wondering whether or not I can possibly make it my free ride. The whole thing is feeling like a burden today, and I can’t wait to get rid of it.

As I’m having this thought, I notice 11:11 showing on my dashboard’s digital clock. In recent years I have developed a fondness for this number, and for some absolutely illogical reason (I do like the way the digits all line up neatly) I have started assigning quasi-mystical weight to its every sighting. (A quasi-mystical aside: When I was buying my chocolates at Walgreens this morning, I noticed a young African-American woman wearing an enormous, powder-blue sweatshirt proclaiming Judgment Day -- November 2, 2010. What? I thought we had until 2012...!)

When we reach Japantown I turn and tell my fare, “Free ride.” He seems to have absolutely no trouble understanding this two-word pronouncement. He folds up his wallet, nods once, and...poof -- he hustles out of the cab as though he’s afraid I might change my mind.

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FIRST FARE OF THE YEAR

Shift #1

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 6 -– 5:52 a.m. -– Mission/Third Street to California/Kearny -- $4.90


I HAVE SPENT THE PAST HOUR inching my cab to the front of the cab line in front of the Westin-Market Street. For a while, I did some stretching out on the sidewalk, but it’s cold out there, so I’m behind the wheel, reading The Power of Now, and now my first fare of the year walks out of the hotel and says she’s going to 101 California Street, about ten blocks away.

She’s from Connecticut -- she’s in the insurance business -– she had good holidays -– she’s glad to see 2009 behind her, behind all of us. She loves coming to San Francisco, especially in the winter, because it’s so warm here compared to Connecticut… And barely three minutes later, here we are, pulling to the curb in front of 101 Cal.

“You are my first ride of the year,” I tell her, “and I’m going to start off my year with a free ride, if that’s all right with you -- and I hope it is.”

A smile creeps across her face. “Well,” she says. “That’s very sweet. Thank you.”

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* * “I'M NOT GIVING UP MY I-PHONE” * *

Shift #7

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20 -- 2:30 p.m. -- (Bus zone)


IF IT’S GETTING LATE in the shift and if I haven’t yet given away a free ride, I sometimes have to take matters into my own hands. I don’t actually have to -- no one’s keeping score, this practice is entirely my own creation -- but if I’m going to say I give away a free ride every day, well, hey, shouldn’t I actually do it?

At 2:10 PM I drop a passenger at SFO and head back to town. Today I have to pick my daughter up at the Rockbridge BART station in Oakland at 4:15 PM, so quitting time for me is around 3:45. Before I clock out, I have to gas up and vacuum out the cab for the next driver, so I’ve got about an hour left.

Returning from the airport I can sometimes catch a lucky radio order out near the city limits, but today’s dispatcher, David, is absolutely silent. I take the Army Street exit and thread my way over to Potrero Avenue. I scan the bus zone at 24th Street, but it’s crowded. I have found that it’s awkward to slide into a crowded bus zone and single out one or two people for a free ride (my pretty little Prius holds a maximum of four). A person considering a weird proposal from a cabdriver doesn’t really need the added complication of an eavesdropping crowd around him or her.

At the 21st Street bus stop I see two young men talking. They have happy expressions on their faces and I’m just about to swing over when they both raise lit cigarettes to their mouths…

But at the 16th Street bus stop, there he is, my free ride for the day, standing all by himself. “Well, sure,” he says. “Thank you very much.” He’s headed over to Market and Church. He works for the federal Food and Drug Administration. His job is to determine the “admissibility” of foreign container shipments coming into the Port of Oakland. “This time of year most everything comes from Asia. It’s like a fast-flowing river -- lots of things get in that probably shouldn’t, but you can’t catch everything.”

He does not own a car. Mostly he takes the bus, but every now and then he finds himself in a cab. “I love riding cabs, but they are an indulgence. I prefer to save my money for my only real vices, my television and my iPhone. I have a 40-inch HDTV.”

Me: “My family has a small, 20-year-old television at home, but when we visit friends, we see some jaw-dropping setups.”

“Mine is so worth it to me,” he says. “Once you get used to this new world, you just can’t go back. My cable/internet bill every month is $160, but it’s worth it to me. And my iPhone -- that’s a whole new world, too. I pay $130 a month for that, and it’s so worth it. Altogether I’m paying $290 a month for communications and entertainment. If I don’t go out to dinner ever again, that’s fine with me, but I’m not giving up my TV or my iPhone.”

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Cameras in Cabs

Shift #8

CASUAL FRIDAY, JANUARY 22 -- 12:32 p.m. -- Beale/Folsom to Montgomery/Pine -- $5.35


HE WALKS OUT OF THE BRIDGESIDE (an apartment tower at 400 Beale Street, just a few blocks from the Giants baseball stadium) carrying a complicated folder/clipboard-looking sort of thing and a Blackberry. He’s wearing a goatee and Dockers and a checked, long-sleeve, “Casual Friday” dress/sport shirt. Like me, he is white and middle-aged, but I imagine that he still thinks of himself (especially on Casual Friday) as a young guy. I gave that up a while back.

He’s going to 473 Pine, right in the heart of the Financial District. Mentally I plot my route -- a quick U-turn, a right onto Folsom, a left onto Main and then another onto Market, a right at Pine and four and a half-blocks up...easy. Coming out of my U-turn I start to ask him “What’s your day hold?” -- but a quick glance in the rearview shows him tapping away, grinning down at his Blackberry...

On NPR a professor from the University of Texas is talking about the proliferation of cameras in public life. People in the big cities of Britian and the United States are now photographed approximately 40 times per day. Recent advances in both digital photography and facial-recognition software have allowed for the creation of huge databases enabling authorities to scan train stations, streets, shopping areas, airports -- any place a camera might be mounted -- and to identify anyone who is in the database and also within view. Many states now take digital photographs for drivers licenses and share those images with other states. Already, people passing through Customs in Australia step in front of a machine that scans their facial features and compares them to the digital photos in their passports.

Is all of this good, bad, a combination? I’m not sure. But...


IN 1994, AS THE HEAD of a group of (barely) organized San Francisco cab drivers (United Taxicab Workers), I saw all of the San Francisco Police Department reports involving cab drivers. That year, there were approximately 100 robberies of cab drivers, which was a pretty typical year back then.

Cab robberies used to come in waves: some punk would get it in his head that he could make a little easy money just by flagging a cab -- and usually he was right. One serial robber would reach around from the backseat and snap a chokehold on the driver: “Give it up, motherfucker.” A police artist sketch of The Choker’s face appeared on the front page of every paper, but, somehow, cab drivers still kept picking him up. In the space of six weeks he robbed he managed to knock off about thirty of us. But the police do have their ways, and they soon figured out exactly which lowlife was causing all the mayhem, and one night when The Choker was in the city they tailed him. When he caught on, The Choker tried to jump a BART train out of the city, and that’s when the police moved in. I think he’s still in jail.

Finally, in 2002, after a years-long debate about driver safety, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors decreed that every cab in the city would be equipped with an onboard camera. And now, whenever the door of a San Francisco taxi is opened or closed, an in-cab camera with a fish-eye lens snaps a photo of the entire interior. (It also snaps photos under certain other circumstances, but those details are highly-guarded information, and if I revealed them to you I would have to... well, I would have to at least snap a chokehold on you and make you swear not to tell.)

About a month after their installation, one of the cameras snapped a photo of two young punks sitting in the backseat of a cab; one of them is holding a great big handgun and aiming it at the driver, whose face, in the photo, shows unmistakable terror. The two punks are sporting smug, confident grins. The cops who downloaded the images said, “Hey! We know those guys.” They rolled by the punks’ houses and picked up both of them. When word got around, the number of cab driver robberies plummeted, almost overnight, from approximately 100 per year to approximately fifteen per year, a number which has held steady ever since.

“It’s just here!” There is alarm in my passenger’s voice.

“Ooops…!” Lost in my head, I’ve almost driven past 473 Pine. “I forgot you were back there,” I tell him, and pull over.

He laughs, and extends his credit card toward me.

I punch off the meter, turn around, look him in the eye, and say, “Every day I give away one free ride, and I’d like this to be my free ride today.”

“Really?” His face contorts with two waves of confusion -- one wave cascades from top to bottom, the other rips from side to side -- and then settles into a tentative smile.

“Yes,” I say. “If that’s all right with you.”

“That’s just great,” he says. “Thank you.”

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