Shift #41
SUNDAY, APRIL 25 – 16th/Bryant to 22nd/Shotwell -- $6.70
A YOUNG WOMAN with black hair and peanut-butter-brown skin, and carrying a cylindrical tube slung over her shoulder, flags me from the bus zone. I would guess she’s from India, but when she asks if she can pay by credit card I note that her accent is dead-center mainstream modern American. She says she would usually walk the ten blocks to her home, but today she has to complete a project for school and she’s feeling pressured for time. Her tone is apologetic.
I tell her, “You should always...take a cab.” It’s one of my old, practiced lines, and I try to deliver it in a mirthful, grandfatherly tone, even though I can not imagine myself ever being a grandfather.
She tells me she is just about to graduate from the California College of the Arts (CCA). Her cylindrical tube contains a poster, the school project she is working on. I tell her that my family lives about half a mile from the Oakland campus of CCA and that my wife and I tease our daughter by saying she is welcomed to go to any college she wants to as long as it’s CCA. My fare laughs and says that she grew up in Portland, Oregon, just a few blocks from Reed College, and her parents used to tease her the same way about Reed. I ask where did she wind up going to school? “All the way across the country,” she says. “To Bates College in Maine!”
Nearing her house, I employ another old, practiced line of mine: “My grandparents came from Slovakia. May I ask what your ancestry is?”
“I was adopted from a small village in India. My adoptive parents were not Indian... No, I’ve never been to India, but I’m hoping to go soon.” I wish the ride were longer -- I wish I had the chance to dazzle her with some of my grandfatherly India stories -- but we’re in front of her address now. When I tell her not to bother getting out her credit card, she says, “Really?” and then tips her head to the side the way I saw many, many people do in India. She smiles and says, “Oh, you have made my day.”
IT IS ALMOST NOON NOW, and I aim my cab toward the baseball stadium. The cab driver to whom I gave my tickets for today’s one o’clock Giants game against the Cardinals handed them back to me yesterday, said he couldn’t use them after all, and now I still have them -- they’re tucked up under my sun visor.
I cruise for about a mile and a half down Mission Street, scanning the sidewalks for some likely couple to surprise, but it just doesn’t happen. At Fourth and Howard I’m flagged by a young man and woman headed to First and Harrison; they say they appreciate my offer but have other plans. At Spear and Harrison I see my first scalper -- hanging from his neck is a red placard with neat white lettering: BUY AND SELL TICKETS. I consider just giving him my pair and going on about my day, but Body says No.
It’s another beautiful, still, cloudless, windows-down, perfect San Francisco day -- it’s even warm! -- and streams of tee-shirted people are strolling along the Embarcadero esplanade, heading toward the ballpark. Scalpers are everywhere here, bunches of young and middle-aged men, almost all of them black, holding tickets overhead or flashing Sharpie-on-cardboard signs (Need Tickets!) or barking “Who’s got extra?” None of these guys pay any attention to me -- Why bother with a cab driver?
The vehicle traffic is game-day thick, and I crawl down the Embarcadero past Brannan and then sit through two full cycles of the signal at Townsend without moving an inch. I want this part of my day over with. The tickets cost me just ten bucks each, and now I’m wasting time trying to find a home for them. Maybe I really should just hand them to one of these guys, or just forget about them, let them go unused. It’s not like I’m going to be able to use or give away all of the eighty-one pairs I bought for this season…
“Rod...-NEEE! Got two?” It’s a scalper on the far side of the Embarcadero yelling to a colleague over on my side, Rodney sprints through traffic and has a short conversation with his colleague and a couple of folks who look to be about my age. All parties flap their hands in the air for a bit and then part ways, all heads shaking, all faces frowning.
I squeeze my cab out of the right lane and over into the left lane, then dart quickly into the left turn lane. The light goes green for me exactly when I need it and I pull through the intersection and skid to a stop in the driveway that leads to City Kayak, the Java House Restaurant, and the Bike Hut. I’m blocking the sidewalk, right in the path of the would-be buyers. They’re five feet from my driver-side window and have to break stride to avoid walking smack into my cab. The man is sucking on a cigarette. The woman is the nearest to me, and her face shows surprise as she glances at me, this Green Cab driver who has suddenly cut her off.
The two of us speak at the same time. As I’m blurting, “You’re looking for tickets?” she’s blurting, “Weren’t you in that commercial?”
She looks down at the tickets I’m holding out, takes them, and begins to study them. Pedestrians stream around my cab. A car behind me is honking. “They’re all yours,” I say.
“Well…thanks!” she says. “But weren’t you in that commercial?”
I’m sure she knows the truth -- my smile says I have never in my life had quite this much fun -- so I don’t feel bad about giving her a line I invented at a party just last night, a line which got me a great big laugh: “That was my better-looking, more-articulate brother.”
She calls after me, “Well, you look just like him!”
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Thursday, April 1, 2010
* * SHOOTING STAR * *
Shift #42
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27 – W. Hotel to Van Ness and Myrtle -- $7.60
IN THE DARKNESS OF 5 A.M, the full moon hangs over the city like an aluminum trash can lid nailed halfway up a garage wall. By 8:30 it’s already a distant memory, replaced by a skyfull of high cauliflower clouds, warm wind gusts, and occasional sprinkles. I’ve just dropped a fare at St. Mary’s Hospital, right on the edge of Golden Gate Park, and one block away, on the unlikely corner of Hayes and Shrader, I’m flagged by a white guy who has a vaguely ghost-like air. He’s about forty, and strands of brown hair spill from under his “US Marine Corps” baseball cap and hang down on either side of his face, like window curtains.
When I start with my questions, he says, “My grandmother has recently gone blind from diabetes and I just stopped by the hospital for a few minutes to give her a kiss.” Now he’s headed to 16th and Valencia to meet a buddy for breakfast. He works nights as a stage hand at the Fillmore Auditorium, running cables and doing whatever else needs done. He grew up near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
That last tidbit jars loose something I haven’t thought of since last night: “After breakfast with your buddy,” I ask, “what does the rest of your day hold?”
“Well, I’ve got no plans, really…”
Me: “I’m not one hundred percent positive, but I think I have two tickets to today’s one o’clock Giants game in my trunk, and if I do, and if you want them, there all yours. Free… No, I’m not kidding… They’re playing Philadelphia.”
He: “The Phillies! I grew up watching the Phillies. Oh, man -- and you don’t want anything for them? Are you sure?”
Me: “I’m working. I can’t use them. Like I said, I’m not absolutely sure I have them, but if I do, really, they’re yours.”
“Oh… Oh… You can’t believe how wonderful that would be… I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve been to a baseball game…” Something catches in his throat; he pauses, and I feel certain that if I turn around I’m definitely going to see at least a tear or two. Then he continues: “This would be so perfect. I have never been to the new stadium. And I’ve been having such a rough time lately…”
“Your grandmother?”
“That’s just part of it all… I was in Tikrit…”
Me: “You were in the Marines?”
“Army Air Corps, but I was with the Marines in Tikrit (Saddam Hussein’s hometown in Iraq) -- they gave me this hat. We were on a patrol with some of the Air Corps' Stinger missiles, and we got hit. Four of my guys died but by some miracle I lived. I spent two and a half years at Stanford Hospital…”
We’re stopped for a red light at Masonic and Haight, and my fare extends his hand between the two front seats, palm up, and pulls back his sleeve. At first glance the hand looks pretty normal, but then he points to a couple of places where, yes, I can see some crooked joints. And the skin of his forearm is bumpy, extra pale, and dotted with odd dark spots. “The doctors took tons of shrapnel out of my body, but there’s still a lot left. I’ve got a half-grapefruit size tumor near my spine, but it’s too hard to get to, at least for now... I’ve been out about a year... Just a few months ago I lost a good buddy, he died... And now my grandmother…”
At Haight and Central I pull to the curb: “Man, I gotta get out and make sure I have those tickets.” A moment later, very much relieved, I pass them into the backseat. He whimpers several thank yous and I think he might cry again.
He: “These tickets are my first break in a long time… I joined the Army at 17, but I never expected that by forty I’d be this beat up… While I was at Stanford I read the book Halliburton’s Army. You wouldn’t believe what our government is doing… They’ve got this whole rigged system -- completely, completely corrupt. Bush, Cheney, all those guys, they’re just part of a long line that goes back all the way to Lyndon B. Johnson... There’s this whole network of people who are getting rich off the war. It’s not really even a war -- it’s just a big business, biggest in the world. I had no idea how it all really worked, but now it all makes sense. They don’t even have military people serving food any more. No one cooks, no one cleans toilets. That’s all done by some private company with a big contract. Haliburton's Army -- you read that book, you won't believe it! They're making money by the shipload, by using up guys just like me...”
ALMOST THE ENTIRE REST OF MY SHIFT is dominated by The Commercial. It’s not that everyone in the world has seen it, but in each of the four shifts I’ve driven since It started airing, there have been at least ten or fifteen mentions. Today, bright and early, as I leave my cab, in search of coffee, a man on the sidewalk -- he’s about my own age, a nice-looking, gray-haired guy wearing a blue blazer and tie -- looks me briefly in the eyes, glances behind me toward my cab, then back to my face. Then his head tips back and his face breaks into a smile. To myself: Don’t jump to conclusions -- this is San Francisco… But I’m pretty sure…
At Post and Lyon, I pick up one of Citywide Dispatch’s regular callers. Right off: “Hey, it’s you -- they ran you on Channel 2 again this morning.”
Downtown with my window open, I hear people, sometimes twice in one block, call out to me: “Something-something tv!” And: “Something-something commercial!” An hour before the ballgame, two men wearing Giants jerseys wave me down. “Green Cab! I just saw an ad on tv about these Green Cabs!” It goes on and on… Sitting at a red light at the corner of Sacramento and Drumm, I find myself looking down at my clipboard, feeling self-conscious, avoiding eye contact with the ranks of pedestrians stopped just outside my window, waiting for the WALK signal. I know I asked for this, the limelight -- on some level I’ve ached for it forever -- but the reality can be unnerving.
When I drop her near St. Mary’s Hospital, I stop for three people clearing a crosswalk. One of them is an elderly, white-haired woman whose head slowly swivels to track my cab, and then, satisfied that it’s a confirmed sighting, she stops, grabs the elbows of the two men on either side of her, and points at me -- it’s the same motion moonlight strollers use when they’ve just seen a shooting star. Her lips move -- I can’t read them, but I don’t need to…
In the mid-1990s, during the same shift in which I drove the actor Danny Glover to the airport, I also gave a lift to the political consultant James Carville. I recognized Carville because on election night in 1992, I had watched a broadcast of Bill Clinton addressing a whooping crowd in Little Rock, Arkansas; for a full 30 seconds the camera lingered full-frame on Carville’s beaming face, while the network commentator gave him full credit for engineering Clinton’s victory. In my cab, I asked Carville if fame had been problematic for him. “The only problem,” he said, “is that every damn cab driver in the world recognizes me now... And out at the airport yesterday, I’m having an argument about my ticket -- is there anyone who hasn’t sometime or other found himself yelling at some poor clerk at the ticket counter? Only now, I notice there’s a crowd gathered around me, people going, ‘James Carville… James Carville… That’s James Carville making a damn fool of himself…’”
I’d be a damn fool to overblow my one tv commercial -- and I know this little storm will pass all too soon and I'll wish for it to come back -- but the Commercial is a reminder of how attention can make one’s head spin. Show me the cab driver, show me the person, who doesn’t believe that his or her views on the world are at least as valid as the views of those people whose voices and decisions actually shape events, actually change the world. When the signal on Drumm goes green I turn left onto Sacramento. In motion again, my composure returns. Unnerving or not, it will be just fine with me if this commercial somehow gives me permission, gives me a platform from which to dispense some of my views on things beside my Prius. I hope that sucker goes national. I hope it goes global.
AT THE W HOTEL I pick up a woman who for a decade lived in the Piedmont Avenue section of Oakland, just a couple hundred yards from the house where I’ve lived for the past fifteen years. Six years ago she moved up into the Oakland hills. Since the housing meltdown started, her new home has lost about $40,000 in value, but that’s okay, she says -- her job as a nurse has kept her fairly insulated. She’s five years from retirement and now she can smell it. She likes her new place -- it has a view. The only drawback is that she needs to get into her car for everything now. Back in the old neighborhood she could walk to the grocery, the dry cleaners, the movies, half a dozen coffee houses, a dozen good restaurants… At the end of the ride, Body doesn’t even consult me. He’s sick of all the preoccupation with The Commercial, and he’s pleased to see the boy from the ‘hood back again. Body turns toward the backseat. Body says, “Every day I give away one free. Today this is my free ride...”
My fare smiles. She likes this quite a bit, it seems, but...gifts from strangers... -- it’s tricky. “Well, thank you very much,” she says. “But will you let me at least give you a tip?”
I feel my shoulders slump forward. Body and I really don’t want to bully anyone with our free ride thing. If someone has to tip, ok, we do understand. But Body wants to have some fun. Body smiles. I hear gentle pleading in Body’s voice. “Go on, just take a free ride… You can take a free ride, can’t you?”
And that does it.
(UPDATE: At shift’s end, as I head back across the Bay Bridge, I flip on the baseball game. The Giants’ two-time Cy Young Award winner, Tim Lincecum, has pitched eight innings of eleven strikeout, three-hit baseball. But in the top of the ninth, with the Giants leading 4-1, Lincecum starts off by issuing a four-pitch walk. Manager Bruce Bochy pulls Lincecum and brings in the Giants All-Star closer, Brian Wilson, who loads the bases, and then, with two outs and a full-count on the batter, induces a pop fly that heads toward the right field stands. But a gust of wind -- a gust which seems to take even the announcers by surprise -- blows the ball back toward the field, back just far enough so that it finds a spot on the right field line on which to land, kicking up chalk dust. Fair ball! Three runs score. The game is tied, 4-4. As much as I hurt for my Giants, I can’t help smiling for that guy up there in my seats, way up above the right field line, blowing with everything he’s got, blowing that ball back toward fair territory.)
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WEDNESDAY, APRIL 27 – W. Hotel to Van Ness and Myrtle -- $7.60
IN THE DARKNESS OF 5 A.M, the full moon hangs over the city like an aluminum trash can lid nailed halfway up a garage wall. By 8:30 it’s already a distant memory, replaced by a skyfull of high cauliflower clouds, warm wind gusts, and occasional sprinkles. I’ve just dropped a fare at St. Mary’s Hospital, right on the edge of Golden Gate Park, and one block away, on the unlikely corner of Hayes and Shrader, I’m flagged by a white guy who has a vaguely ghost-like air. He’s about forty, and strands of brown hair spill from under his “US Marine Corps” baseball cap and hang down on either side of his face, like window curtains.
When I start with my questions, he says, “My grandmother has recently gone blind from diabetes and I just stopped by the hospital for a few minutes to give her a kiss.” Now he’s headed to 16th and Valencia to meet a buddy for breakfast. He works nights as a stage hand at the Fillmore Auditorium, running cables and doing whatever else needs done. He grew up near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
That last tidbit jars loose something I haven’t thought of since last night: “After breakfast with your buddy,” I ask, “what does the rest of your day hold?”
“Well, I’ve got no plans, really…”
Me: “I’m not one hundred percent positive, but I think I have two tickets to today’s one o’clock Giants game in my trunk, and if I do, and if you want them, there all yours. Free… No, I’m not kidding… They’re playing Philadelphia.”
He: “The Phillies! I grew up watching the Phillies. Oh, man -- and you don’t want anything for them? Are you sure?”
Me: “I’m working. I can’t use them. Like I said, I’m not absolutely sure I have them, but if I do, really, they’re yours.”
“Oh… Oh… You can’t believe how wonderful that would be… I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve been to a baseball game…” Something catches in his throat; he pauses, and I feel certain that if I turn around I’m definitely going to see at least a tear or two. Then he continues: “This would be so perfect. I have never been to the new stadium. And I’ve been having such a rough time lately…”
“Your grandmother?”
“That’s just part of it all… I was in Tikrit…”
Me: “You were in the Marines?”
“Army Air Corps, but I was with the Marines in Tikrit (Saddam Hussein’s hometown in Iraq) -- they gave me this hat. We were on a patrol with some of the Air Corps' Stinger missiles, and we got hit. Four of my guys died but by some miracle I lived. I spent two and a half years at Stanford Hospital…”
We’re stopped for a red light at Masonic and Haight, and my fare extends his hand between the two front seats, palm up, and pulls back his sleeve. At first glance the hand looks pretty normal, but then he points to a couple of places where, yes, I can see some crooked joints. And the skin of his forearm is bumpy, extra pale, and dotted with odd dark spots. “The doctors took tons of shrapnel out of my body, but there’s still a lot left. I’ve got a half-grapefruit size tumor near my spine, but it’s too hard to get to, at least for now... I’ve been out about a year... Just a few months ago I lost a good buddy, he died... And now my grandmother…”
At Haight and Central I pull to the curb: “Man, I gotta get out and make sure I have those tickets.” A moment later, very much relieved, I pass them into the backseat. He whimpers several thank yous and I think he might cry again.
He: “These tickets are my first break in a long time… I joined the Army at 17, but I never expected that by forty I’d be this beat up… While I was at Stanford I read the book Halliburton’s Army. You wouldn’t believe what our government is doing… They’ve got this whole rigged system -- completely, completely corrupt. Bush, Cheney, all those guys, they’re just part of a long line that goes back all the way to Lyndon B. Johnson... There’s this whole network of people who are getting rich off the war. It’s not really even a war -- it’s just a big business, biggest in the world. I had no idea how it all really worked, but now it all makes sense. They don’t even have military people serving food any more. No one cooks, no one cleans toilets. That’s all done by some private company with a big contract. Haliburton's Army -- you read that book, you won't believe it! They're making money by the shipload, by using up guys just like me...”
ALMOST THE ENTIRE REST OF MY SHIFT is dominated by The Commercial. It’s not that everyone in the world has seen it, but in each of the four shifts I’ve driven since It started airing, there have been at least ten or fifteen mentions. Today, bright and early, as I leave my cab, in search of coffee, a man on the sidewalk -- he’s about my own age, a nice-looking, gray-haired guy wearing a blue blazer and tie -- looks me briefly in the eyes, glances behind me toward my cab, then back to my face. Then his head tips back and his face breaks into a smile. To myself: Don’t jump to conclusions -- this is San Francisco… But I’m pretty sure…
At Post and Lyon, I pick up one of Citywide Dispatch’s regular callers. Right off: “Hey, it’s you -- they ran you on Channel 2 again this morning.”
Downtown with my window open, I hear people, sometimes twice in one block, call out to me: “Something-something tv!” And: “Something-something commercial!” An hour before the ballgame, two men wearing Giants jerseys wave me down. “Green Cab! I just saw an ad on tv about these Green Cabs!” It goes on and on… Sitting at a red light at the corner of Sacramento and Drumm, I find myself looking down at my clipboard, feeling self-conscious, avoiding eye contact with the ranks of pedestrians stopped just outside my window, waiting for the WALK signal. I know I asked for this, the limelight -- on some level I’ve ached for it forever -- but the reality can be unnerving.
When I drop her near St. Mary’s Hospital, I stop for three people clearing a crosswalk. One of them is an elderly, white-haired woman whose head slowly swivels to track my cab, and then, satisfied that it’s a confirmed sighting, she stops, grabs the elbows of the two men on either side of her, and points at me -- it’s the same motion moonlight strollers use when they’ve just seen a shooting star. Her lips move -- I can’t read them, but I don’t need to…
In the mid-1990s, during the same shift in which I drove the actor Danny Glover to the airport, I also gave a lift to the political consultant James Carville. I recognized Carville because on election night in 1992, I had watched a broadcast of Bill Clinton addressing a whooping crowd in Little Rock, Arkansas; for a full 30 seconds the camera lingered full-frame on Carville’s beaming face, while the network commentator gave him full credit for engineering Clinton’s victory. In my cab, I asked Carville if fame had been problematic for him. “The only problem,” he said, “is that every damn cab driver in the world recognizes me now... And out at the airport yesterday, I’m having an argument about my ticket -- is there anyone who hasn’t sometime or other found himself yelling at some poor clerk at the ticket counter? Only now, I notice there’s a crowd gathered around me, people going, ‘James Carville… James Carville… That’s James Carville making a damn fool of himself…’”
I’d be a damn fool to overblow my one tv commercial -- and I know this little storm will pass all too soon and I'll wish for it to come back -- but the Commercial is a reminder of how attention can make one’s head spin. Show me the cab driver, show me the person, who doesn’t believe that his or her views on the world are at least as valid as the views of those people whose voices and decisions actually shape events, actually change the world. When the signal on Drumm goes green I turn left onto Sacramento. In motion again, my composure returns. Unnerving or not, it will be just fine with me if this commercial somehow gives me permission, gives me a platform from which to dispense some of my views on things beside my Prius. I hope that sucker goes national. I hope it goes global.
AT THE W HOTEL I pick up a woman who for a decade lived in the Piedmont Avenue section of Oakland, just a couple hundred yards from the house where I’ve lived for the past fifteen years. Six years ago she moved up into the Oakland hills. Since the housing meltdown started, her new home has lost about $40,000 in value, but that’s okay, she says -- her job as a nurse has kept her fairly insulated. She’s five years from retirement and now she can smell it. She likes her new place -- it has a view. The only drawback is that she needs to get into her car for everything now. Back in the old neighborhood she could walk to the grocery, the dry cleaners, the movies, half a dozen coffee houses, a dozen good restaurants… At the end of the ride, Body doesn’t even consult me. He’s sick of all the preoccupation with The Commercial, and he’s pleased to see the boy from the ‘hood back again. Body turns toward the backseat. Body says, “Every day I give away one free. Today this is my free ride...”
My fare smiles. She likes this quite a bit, it seems, but...gifts from strangers... -- it’s tricky. “Well, thank you very much,” she says. “But will you let me at least give you a tip?”
I feel my shoulders slump forward. Body and I really don’t want to bully anyone with our free ride thing. If someone has to tip, ok, we do understand. But Body wants to have some fun. Body smiles. I hear gentle pleading in Body’s voice. “Go on, just take a free ride… You can take a free ride, can’t you?”
And that does it.
(UPDATE: At shift’s end, as I head back across the Bay Bridge, I flip on the baseball game. The Giants’ two-time Cy Young Award winner, Tim Lincecum, has pitched eight innings of eleven strikeout, three-hit baseball. But in the top of the ninth, with the Giants leading 4-1, Lincecum starts off by issuing a four-pitch walk. Manager Bruce Bochy pulls Lincecum and brings in the Giants All-Star closer, Brian Wilson, who loads the bases, and then, with two outs and a full-count on the batter, induces a pop fly that heads toward the right field stands. But a gust of wind -- a gust which seems to take even the announcers by surprise -- blows the ball back toward the field, back just far enough so that it finds a spot on the right field line on which to land, kicking up chalk dust. Fair ball! Three runs score. The game is tied, 4-4. As much as I hurt for my Giants, I can’t help smiling for that guy up there in my seats, way up above the right field line, blowing with everything he’s got, blowing that ball back toward fair territory.)
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No-brainers
Shift #43
FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 2010 -- Priceless
UPON EACH OF OUR DEATHS, I suspect we’re going to discover that our just-completed lives were in fact no-brainers, that everything would have worked out pretty much the same even if we’d devoted a lot less time and energy to worrying about all of it. I actually used to worry about my free rides -- did I have permission to do this? was it ok? was I being a fool? -- but now that seems ridiculous, not worth a single thought.
Today’s first free ride requires no mental activity whatsoever -- it's pure Body. Sixty seconds after I leave the yard, she flags me from the bus zone at Fourteenth and Mission. I tell her I’m on my way to pick up a pre-scheduled airport customer, but maybe we’re both headed in the same direction…? She says she’s just going four blocks, right along my intended route. She’s running late to her new job at the Martha’s Coffee shop which opened nine days ago at Tenth and Mission. The lights are all green, we’re there in two minutes. She loves the free ride, and says if I have time to stop by later, the coffee’s on her…
THAT FIRST RIDE is not flavored by The Commercial, but the rest of my shift is marinated in it. Ten days after It began airing, I’m starting to relate to Bill Murray's character in the movie “Groundhog Day.” At least once an hour I find myself having the same Ad-centric conversation, and rarely is it initiated by me, but by my fares -- or by sidewalk pedestrians or other cabdrivers or, say, by the two lunch-eating guys sitting in the cab of a furniture delivery truck parked at the corner of Sutter and Sansome around noon today: “Hey, that was you in the Green Cab ad -- right?” I forget about The Ad for increasingly shorter stretches of time, and then, there I am again, addressing the two main comments, “How did you wind up in it?” and “I hope they’re paying you a shitload of money?” [NOTE: It wasn’t until ten days after the ad began saturating the airwaves that the ad agency and I had any sort of discussion about money. A woman from the ad agency telephoned me and apologized for having forgotten to get my permission and payment papers taken care of in advance. Now she had put sent them in the mail to me, and could I please sign and return them as soon as possible. I told her I was having the time of my life, and I would be absolutely happy, in fact, I’d really prefer, to do the ad for free. Over the phone I heard her gasp, an intake of air. “Oh, we have to pay you. We actually...have to pay you!” In the end, I received a total of $4,500 and an invitation to join the Screen Actors Guild.]
Late in the day I’ve completely forgotten the Ad, but then at Sacramento and Hyde a young man jumps into the backseat: “Hey, that was you…!” He repeats a head-spinning comment, variations of which I’ve grown accustomed to hearing during the past twelve days: “Man, I’ve seen that ad too many times to count now! And for days I’ve been scanning the streets, looking for Green Cabs, and hoping maybe I’d see you at the wheel.”
As we head downtown I tell my increasingly polished story: How I recognized the huge disconnect between the headlines -- “Toyota Unsafe!” -- and the things people in real life were saying: “Man, I love my Toyota, and I’ve never had a single problem with it!” And how I approached Toyota’s ad agency and suggested they interview the grizzled, veteran Prius cab drivers of San Francisco, with the drop-dead-gorgeous city as a sexy backdrop.
My fare says that, in retrospect, it looks like a pretty obvious idea -- actually, he calls it “a no-brainer” -- and all that was lacking was someone to point it out. We talk further about what an incredibly powerful medium television is; about how visible this little Green Cab venture has become (we started three years ago this month with one Prius -- today we have thirteen); and about how much fun this whole thing is on so many levels for so many people -- “We’re all into the green movement,” he says -- and perhaps most especially fun for me.
At ride’s end I see that I’ve forgotten to start my meter. Free ride, I tell him. “Oh, man,” he says. “I gotta take your picture -- do you mind?” He aims his cell phone, and I don’t have a bit of trouble working up a smile.
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FRIDAY, APRIL 30, 2010 -- Priceless
UPON EACH OF OUR DEATHS, I suspect we’re going to discover that our just-completed lives were in fact no-brainers, that everything would have worked out pretty much the same even if we’d devoted a lot less time and energy to worrying about all of it. I actually used to worry about my free rides -- did I have permission to do this? was it ok? was I being a fool? -- but now that seems ridiculous, not worth a single thought.
Today’s first free ride requires no mental activity whatsoever -- it's pure Body. Sixty seconds after I leave the yard, she flags me from the bus zone at Fourteenth and Mission. I tell her I’m on my way to pick up a pre-scheduled airport customer, but maybe we’re both headed in the same direction…? She says she’s just going four blocks, right along my intended route. She’s running late to her new job at the Martha’s Coffee shop which opened nine days ago at Tenth and Mission. The lights are all green, we’re there in two minutes. She loves the free ride, and says if I have time to stop by later, the coffee’s on her…
THAT FIRST RIDE is not flavored by The Commercial, but the rest of my shift is marinated in it. Ten days after It began airing, I’m starting to relate to Bill Murray's character in the movie “Groundhog Day.” At least once an hour I find myself having the same Ad-centric conversation, and rarely is it initiated by me, but by my fares -- or by sidewalk pedestrians or other cabdrivers or, say, by the two lunch-eating guys sitting in the cab of a furniture delivery truck parked at the corner of Sutter and Sansome around noon today: “Hey, that was you in the Green Cab ad -- right?” I forget about The Ad for increasingly shorter stretches of time, and then, there I am again, addressing the two main comments, “How did you wind up in it?” and “I hope they’re paying you a shitload of money?” [NOTE: It wasn’t until ten days after the ad began saturating the airwaves that the ad agency and I had any sort of discussion about money. A woman from the ad agency telephoned me and apologized for having forgotten to get my permission and payment papers taken care of in advance. Now she had put sent them in the mail to me, and could I please sign and return them as soon as possible. I told her I was having the time of my life, and I would be absolutely happy, in fact, I’d really prefer, to do the ad for free. Over the phone I heard her gasp, an intake of air. “Oh, we have to pay you. We actually...have to pay you!” In the end, I received a total of $4,500 and an invitation to join the Screen Actors Guild.]
Late in the day I’ve completely forgotten the Ad, but then at Sacramento and Hyde a young man jumps into the backseat: “Hey, that was you…!” He repeats a head-spinning comment, variations of which I’ve grown accustomed to hearing during the past twelve days: “Man, I’ve seen that ad too many times to count now! And for days I’ve been scanning the streets, looking for Green Cabs, and hoping maybe I’d see you at the wheel.”
As we head downtown I tell my increasingly polished story: How I recognized the huge disconnect between the headlines -- “Toyota Unsafe!” -- and the things people in real life were saying: “Man, I love my Toyota, and I’ve never had a single problem with it!” And how I approached Toyota’s ad agency and suggested they interview the grizzled, veteran Prius cab drivers of San Francisco, with the drop-dead-gorgeous city as a sexy backdrop.
My fare says that, in retrospect, it looks like a pretty obvious idea -- actually, he calls it “a no-brainer” -- and all that was lacking was someone to point it out. We talk further about what an incredibly powerful medium television is; about how visible this little Green Cab venture has become (we started three years ago this month with one Prius -- today we have thirteen); and about how much fun this whole thing is on so many levels for so many people -- “We’re all into the green movement,” he says -- and perhaps most especially fun for me.
At ride’s end I see that I’ve forgotten to start my meter. Free ride, I tell him. “Oh, man,” he says. “I gotta take your picture -- do you mind?” He aims his cell phone, and I don’t have a bit of trouble working up a smile.
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Monday, March 1, 2010
Earthquake country
Shift #23
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 3 -- Westin-St. Francis on Union Square to the Marquis Marriott, barely four blocks, barely two minutes -- $4
FIRST RIDE OF THE DAY. First ride of the month.
She is from Chile, which four days ago (while I was skiing in the Sierras with my daughter) was ripped by an 8.8 earthquake.
"My family is fine," she tells me. "Everyone is fine."
Nonetheless, she seems very touched by my very small, very inexpensive gesture.
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WEDNESDAY, MARCH 3 -- Westin-St. Francis on Union Square to the Marquis Marriott, barely four blocks, barely two minutes -- $4
FIRST RIDE OF THE DAY. First ride of the month.
She is from Chile, which four days ago (while I was skiing in the Sierras with my daughter) was ripped by an 8.8 earthquake.
"My family is fine," she tells me. "Everyone is fine."
Nonetheless, she seems very touched by my very small, very inexpensive gesture.
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INTERNET JIHADISTS
Shift #24
FRIDAY, MARCH 5 -- 101 California to Levi Plaza -- $6.70
I AWAKE AT 3:30 with an icepick headache centered behind my right eye. Three days in a row now. Coffee and aspirin have knocked it back each day, but, dammit, there it is again. A large vanilla-hazelnut latte from Peet’s and three aspirin take a pretty good whack at it, and two early $40 airports also help. Each of the airport passengers had come to San Francisco for a computer security conference held at Moscone (featured speaker: FBI Director Robert Mueller) and each of them tells me America is in grave peril due to hacker threats originating mainly from Russia and China but also from hordes of rabidly committed, freelance internet jihadists.
The second one tells me, “There are people out there trying to dynamite our financial system, and the public really hasn’t caught on yet. Imagine waking up one morning and going to the ATM or going online and finding your bank account has a zero balance. Imagine no gas, imagine no food in the grocery stores for three weeks, no way to pay for it. Imagine the civil unrest in the streets. The media have done some reporting on this, but no one really wants to think about it. It’s just like before 9/11 -- there were plenty of warnings but no one took them seriously enough. Everyone thought someone else would take care of it. But every day, right now, there are jihadists out there trying to destroy the whole Internet. What’s coming is going to make 9/11 seem like the good old days. The Russians want our credit card numbers and the Chinese want our military secrets, but these jihadists are doing everything they can -- every day, right now -- to try to blow up the Internet and bring the whole system crashing down. Oh, yeah -- we are going to wish for 9/11 again...”
After this, I need another large cup of coffee plus a Noah’s bagel just to get myself back to even. Well, not exactly even -- truth is, by 8:16 a.m., the needle on my personal buzzometer is jumping around in the red zone, and that's when I see my free ride for the day flagging me from the spot in front of 101 California where people with Levi Strauss employee badges can catch a free shuttle bus over to Levi Plaza. Right off she asks about the procedure for finding something left in a cab: “Late last night I took a cab to BART and when we got there someone standing on the curb wanted the cab so I kind of rushed and I thought I heard something fall but it was dark and I didn’t see anything and so I talked myself out of it and just paid the driver and went to catch my train. And that’s when I found that I had dropped my BART pass in the cab and also my employee ID.”
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FRIDAY, MARCH 5 -- 101 California to Levi Plaza -- $6.70
I AWAKE AT 3:30 with an icepick headache centered behind my right eye. Three days in a row now. Coffee and aspirin have knocked it back each day, but, dammit, there it is again. A large vanilla-hazelnut latte from Peet’s and three aspirin take a pretty good whack at it, and two early $40 airports also help. Each of the airport passengers had come to San Francisco for a computer security conference held at Moscone (featured speaker: FBI Director Robert Mueller) and each of them tells me America is in grave peril due to hacker threats originating mainly from Russia and China but also from hordes of rabidly committed, freelance internet jihadists.
The second one tells me, “There are people out there trying to dynamite our financial system, and the public really hasn’t caught on yet. Imagine waking up one morning and going to the ATM or going online and finding your bank account has a zero balance. Imagine no gas, imagine no food in the grocery stores for three weeks, no way to pay for it. Imagine the civil unrest in the streets. The media have done some reporting on this, but no one really wants to think about it. It’s just like before 9/11 -- there were plenty of warnings but no one took them seriously enough. Everyone thought someone else would take care of it. But every day, right now, there are jihadists out there trying to destroy the whole Internet. What’s coming is going to make 9/11 seem like the good old days. The Russians want our credit card numbers and the Chinese want our military secrets, but these jihadists are doing everything they can -- every day, right now -- to try to blow up the Internet and bring the whole system crashing down. Oh, yeah -- we are going to wish for 9/11 again...”
After this, I need another large cup of coffee plus a Noah’s bagel just to get myself back to even. Well, not exactly even -- truth is, by 8:16 a.m., the needle on my personal buzzometer is jumping around in the red zone, and that's when I see my free ride for the day flagging me from the spot in front of 101 California where people with Levi Strauss employee badges can catch a free shuttle bus over to Levi Plaza. Right off she asks about the procedure for finding something left in a cab: “Late last night I took a cab to BART and when we got there someone standing on the curb wanted the cab so I kind of rushed and I thought I heard something fall but it was dark and I didn’t see anything and so I talked myself out of it and just paid the driver and went to catch my train. And that’s when I found that I had dropped my BART pass in the cab and also my employee ID.”
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“It was better before...”
Shift #25
SUNDAY, MARCH 7 -- From a gas station out near Hunters Point to 13th/Folsom -- $10.30
“I HAVE THREE JOBS at three gas stations -- seventy hours a week -- I work twenty hours at a gas station out by the airport, twenty hours at another one in Daly City, and thirty hours where you just picked me up... They don’t let you work forty hours or else you are full-time -- they want to keep you part-time...
“Monday is my triple shift -- I work three shifts back to back… I would be manager at this station but I don’t have a green card yet. Almost. One more step to go, one more form -- just some papers... It is hard to get a green card. I have been working on it for six years. They want to make sure my marriage is for real. They come to your house at three o’clock in the morning to check... No kidding!
“I grew up in Mexico. Michoacan. I came here when I was fourteen. Student visa... and then I just stayed. Three kids -- ten and four, and one who’s just six months -- I started early, Latino style... My wife grew up here. Her mother came from El Salvador in the Sixties, so my wife was born here. I’m twenty-six, my wife is seven years older than me... When I get a green card I can get a good job and spend more time with my kids -- tow truck driver or maybe security guard -- people tell me those are good money... This gas station pays eleven dollars an hour, but in San Mateo County they pay only minimum wage, like nine dollars an hour...
“I could not go back to Mexico -- too crazy now. The government wants to fight the drug cartels. I suppose that is a good thing, but lots of innocent people are getting killed. Before, when they let the drug cartels alone, no one was getting killed... It was better before… people were safer before…”
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SUNDAY, MARCH 7 -- From a gas station out near Hunters Point to 13th/Folsom -- $10.30
“I HAVE THREE JOBS at three gas stations -- seventy hours a week -- I work twenty hours at a gas station out by the airport, twenty hours at another one in Daly City, and thirty hours where you just picked me up... They don’t let you work forty hours or else you are full-time -- they want to keep you part-time...
“Monday is my triple shift -- I work three shifts back to back… I would be manager at this station but I don’t have a green card yet. Almost. One more step to go, one more form -- just some papers... It is hard to get a green card. I have been working on it for six years. They want to make sure my marriage is for real. They come to your house at three o’clock in the morning to check... No kidding!
“I grew up in Mexico. Michoacan. I came here when I was fourteen. Student visa... and then I just stayed. Three kids -- ten and four, and one who’s just six months -- I started early, Latino style... My wife grew up here. Her mother came from El Salvador in the Sixties, so my wife was born here. I’m twenty-six, my wife is seven years older than me... When I get a green card I can get a good job and spend more time with my kids -- tow truck driver or maybe security guard -- people tell me those are good money... This gas station pays eleven dollars an hour, but in San Mateo County they pay only minimum wage, like nine dollars an hour...
“I could not go back to Mexico -- too crazy now. The government wants to fight the drug cartels. I suppose that is a good thing, but lots of innocent people are getting killed. Before, when they let the drug cartels alone, no one was getting killed... It was better before… people were safer before…”
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“SOMETHING’S FISHY”
Shift #26
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 10 – Hotel W to UCSF Medical Center -- $13.00
SHE IS AN OFFICE MANAGER in a hospital department that deals with AIDS patients. She woke up this morning in the North Bay and caught a “casual carpool” ride to Second and Howard. At 7:17 AM she jumps into my cab and says, “I’m running late. I need to open the department at 7:30. Do you think we can do that…?
“Hey, is this a Prius? I don’t buy what they’re saying about Toyotas. This morning before I left home they played the 9-1-1 tape of that guy in LA who said he was in his Prius and the accelerator was stuck and he was going 90 miles an hour on the freeway. I’m sorry -- that was fake! Did you hear it? He tells the operator, ‘My car is going 90 miles an hour!’ and the first thing she says to him is, ‘Is it a Prius?’ Now that was a setup. Sounded so phony -- why would she say that, first thing? No, I’m sorry – uh-uh, that ain’t right. Something’s fishy there…”
I tell her that we drivers at Green Cab are pretty mystified, too: “We’ve been driving these Toyotas -- Priuses mostly -- for three years now, and we’ve been singing their praises. These are great cars. But ever since January, when Toyota started getting all the bad publicity, we’ve all been standing around the cab lot scratching our heads and asking each other, ‘Have you ever had any problem?’ "Nope -- have you? And none of us ever have."
I tell her that a couple of weeks ago I borrowed a neighbor’s camcorder and filmed five of my Green Cab colleagues (youtube link below) driving their Priuses single file down Lombard Street, the “crookedest street in the world.” I sent it to Toyota and told them they were missing a great opportunity -- they should send a film crew to interview the grizzled, veteran cab drivers of San Francisco, and use the city as a sexy backdrop while we gave our heartfelt testimonies about how much we love our Prius cabs.
“That’s right,” my fare tells me. “Everybody knows that something’s fishy on this. It ain’t right. In the end, you’ll see. Something’s fishy.”
My fare likes 1) that we reach UCSF at 7:28, and 2) that there is a surprise little twist at ride’s end.
YOUTUBE link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DazIe4QXqjY
NOTE: You can skip the first 1:40 or so.
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WEDNESDAY, MARCH 10 – Hotel W to UCSF Medical Center -- $13.00
SHE IS AN OFFICE MANAGER in a hospital department that deals with AIDS patients. She woke up this morning in the North Bay and caught a “casual carpool” ride to Second and Howard. At 7:17 AM she jumps into my cab and says, “I’m running late. I need to open the department at 7:30. Do you think we can do that…?
“Hey, is this a Prius? I don’t buy what they’re saying about Toyotas. This morning before I left home they played the 9-1-1 tape of that guy in LA who said he was in his Prius and the accelerator was stuck and he was going 90 miles an hour on the freeway. I’m sorry -- that was fake! Did you hear it? He tells the operator, ‘My car is going 90 miles an hour!’ and the first thing she says to him is, ‘Is it a Prius?’ Now that was a setup. Sounded so phony -- why would she say that, first thing? No, I’m sorry – uh-uh, that ain’t right. Something’s fishy there…”
I tell her that we drivers at Green Cab are pretty mystified, too: “We’ve been driving these Toyotas -- Priuses mostly -- for three years now, and we’ve been singing their praises. These are great cars. But ever since January, when Toyota started getting all the bad publicity, we’ve all been standing around the cab lot scratching our heads and asking each other, ‘Have you ever had any problem?’ "Nope -- have you? And none of us ever have."
I tell her that a couple of weeks ago I borrowed a neighbor’s camcorder and filmed five of my Green Cab colleagues (youtube link below) driving their Priuses single file down Lombard Street, the “crookedest street in the world.” I sent it to Toyota and told them they were missing a great opportunity -- they should send a film crew to interview the grizzled, veteran cab drivers of San Francisco, and use the city as a sexy backdrop while we gave our heartfelt testimonies about how much we love our Prius cabs.
“That’s right,” my fare tells me. “Everybody knows that something’s fishy on this. It ain’t right. In the end, you’ll see. Something’s fishy.”
My fare likes 1) that we reach UCSF at 7:28, and 2) that there is a surprise little twist at ride’s end.
YOUTUBE link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DazIe4QXqjY
NOTE: You can skip the first 1:40 or so.
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