At some point in time most of us have taken a ride in a taxicab. I’ve ridden in them periodically, with my last time being in a Prius in Chicago early last year.
Coincidentally, it was in Chicago I took my very first cab ride in the early 1980s. It was in a yellow Chevrolet Impala of this vintage; these were simply everywhere at the time. Thankfully the drivers I experienced were all good as they didn’t pull any shenanigans to make me remember them for all the wrong reasons.
Such cannot be said for a trip to Washington D.C. in the summer of 1989. With my parents and sister in the backseat, I was riding shotgun in the 1976 or 1977 Aspen wagon that was plying the streets of my nation’s capital.
We were staying at the L’enfant Plaza Hotel. The driver – who could barely see over the dashboard – was in the right lane of a nearby tunnel, the lane was about to terminate, and there was line of cars to our left, lead by a UPS truck. The driver tackled the throttle, giving us a spine tingling stereophonic concert of mechanical sounds only a Chrysler 318 can make, making the seams in the tiles along the walls become indistinguishable. My father later told me we had topped 100 mph in that tunnel to pass the lumbering UPS truck.
The driver had room to spare before the lane ended. Being sixteen at the time, I thought this ride was smoking hot groovy cool. If it happened now with my family I would strangle the driver.
Without a doubt my journey in that clapped out Aspen has been my most memorable taxi ride. What was yours? And what was the car?
Memorable, and not in a good way. I was picked up by a Dodge Caravan… I swear the thing was broken in the middle. Every time the driver hit a bump or pothole, the front and rear halves of the vehicle would bounce and flex in wildly different directions.
Mine was in a clapped out Corsica in St.John’s Newfoundland in 2001. We had a owned a great Corsica that had died early in a bad accident that my wife, myself and my basset hound Buckley had walked away from. The car for us had fond memories. To then ride in the cab was going to be our last ride in one. It was very memorable.
Most memorable was riding on one of the last remaining Toyota Crown taxis in Singapore a couple of years back. I can see why that was a beloved vehicle. Least memorable was a CNG powered Sentra in Cebu, Philippines. It was faster to walk up the hill than riding that poor Sentra.
I remember them, too. It didn’t matter how hot it was outside – the Crown Taxi was a refrigerator inside. Simply incredible airconditioning and a superbly smooth ride. Plus, Singapore Taxi drivers are like chauffers. They make every journey velevety smooth and trouble free.
April vacation 2000 when I was 7, and my mom took my cousin and I to Washington D.C. for the first time. Our taxi ride from the airport to the JW Marriot was a late-1980s B-body wagon (probably a Caprice) and our driver was from somewhere in the Caribbean with a thick accent.
We get one block from the hotel and stopping us from getting through the intersection is hundreds of protesters marching to protest against the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. As soon as he sees them, the taxi driver mutters, “Ohhhhh Nooooooo” in his thick Jamaican-like accent. My cousin and I started cracking up and it was a inside joke between us for years.
Mine was going across town to meet a date and my cab driver asked me out of the blue if I wanted to fool around. Sure I was flattered but no thanks.
My most “memorable” cab ride was during my one and only trip to The City of Lost Wages for a heavy equipment trade show with my boss. Here we are, two Christian guys sitting in the back, and the driver regales us all the way from the airport with tales of all the prostitutes who had invited him over for “a good time” in leu of fares. Sheesh!
Eww. Sorry you had to deal with that.
Ninety miles an hour up the FDR drive in New York in a brand new Slant Six equipped 1972 Dodge Coronet from mid-town to 145th street, a distance of about five miles, just to see what it would do.
Oh, yeah. I was driving, I didn’t have a fare in the cab and it wasn’t very scary at all. 😀
20+ years ago a friend and I hailed a well worn square Caprice for a ride from Pacific Heights to Market St in SF. I still remember thinking as we were flying down hill that if we really had to stop I’d be leaving SF in a pine box. That ride kind of reminded me of the chase scene is Bullitt. Yikes.
Having lived in NYC for many years, I could go on and on and on, but 2 come to mind, both involving Panther Crown Vics, at both ends of their lifespans.
In 2005 I was living in NJ, but my business and social lives revolved around Manhattan. One weeknight I drove in to the East 70’s to meet a friend at his apartment and catch a cab down to the East Village to see another acquaintance’s band play. I got stuck in traffic, pre-game cocktails at friend #1’s place were mandatory, so we hit the street with about 7 minutes to spare to make the trip downtown. We were lucky enough to hail a brand new Crown Vic in full livery, with the window sticker still affixed to the rear passenger glass (I don’t remember the bottom-line price, but I remember we were shocked by it). The young Middle Eastern driver didn’t grasp much without gestures and phonetic pronunciation, but he understood “Hurry” and was seemingly thrilled to oblige. I’ve never seen a cabby enjoy his driving the way this guy did, to the high-volume thumping of the local urban pop station he proceeded to weave and careen down the FDR Drive from 79th St to 14th in just a sliver over 7 minutes. We made it through the door traffic of the club, grabbed drinks at the bar and found our spot without missing a note of the first set, as predictably the band hopped onstage just a few minutes behind schedule. I never knew a Crown Vic could handle like that.
Hope you gave him a nice, fat tip!
Of course. Seeing your post above I now understand that the FDR is apparently the ideal testing ground for new cabs in NYC. Live and learn.
The second story I got too long-winded to type out involved an old guy named Tommy from Queens who used to troll for fares on East 125th St when I worked in Westchester and lived in West Harlem. He was a bit of a sad sack who’d lost his wife and had a good-for-nothing junkie son who lived with him and shared driving duty, as his gypsy cab (a nightmarishly battered navy blue Crown Vic of unknown vintage) was owned by him outright. I used to look for Tommy when I cabbed across Harlem 2-3 nights a week on the way home. I just felt bad for the guy, and he got very few fares, as the car was so battered and filthy, had a plume of blue smoke behind it, no a/c, a strong smell of unburned gasoline and more creaking and squeaking sounds than an automobile should ever make. He was always so appreciative for the fare, the conversation and a decent tip. This was in 2007-8, and I’ve often wondered since what happened to Tommy and whether that lousy son’s next stint in Rikers finally did the little loser in. I never met the kid, but I’d have wrung his neck I think.
I often find taxi rides and the taxis themselves very illustrative of the culture of the area and of the driver (this may be because I rarely take taxis). Of course, local taxi drivers tend to disregard traffic laws or any sort of decency pretty much anywhere.
Some that come to mind:
– taking a 2hr drive all the way across Crete, through the mountains
– a taxi van racing us, a group of 6, over the Istanbul ring road, pushing aside all other traffic
– anything with a back seat being used as a taxi in Macedonia
– the driver of our airport ride, clearly a busy man, talking on one phone for the entire ride, suddenly pulling another phone out of his pocket while on the main motorway through central Toronto.
However, the most memorable has to be my first one in the USA, just after arriving at JFK. A big yellow cab with softs seats, even softer suspension, and a partition wall – exactly like you’d see them in the movies, or on the first picture of this thread. It was an early ’90s Crown Victoria, but I only recognised the Ford badge at the time. I’ll never forget the first view of Manhattan from the back seat of that taxi.
In 1985 I took a vacation from work at Penn State to visit parents in Enid. The bus got me to OKC, but the irregular bus to Enid was two days away, with luck. I grabbed a taxi at the OKC bus station and had him drive to a motel, thinking maybe I could get parents to come and fetch me later. When I told the taxi driver about the situation, he offered to take me directly to Enid for $70. (About 110 miles). I agreed, and the trip was pleasant and dull. The taxi was a ’75 or so Caprice.
Easily the taxi ride I took in New Orleans on Valentine’s Day 2014. The taxi driver spent the entire 20 minute ride talking about World of Warcraft, with the main focus of telling us about his avatar and how he designed her to be “sexy.” Every 30 seconds he’d say, “kna’ what I mean?” and frankly I didn’t know how to respond, because no, I didn’t know what he meant. Bear in mind this was a middle aged man who looked like a cross between Jerry Garcia and Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons.
My first Taxi Ride is my most remembered. In 1984, when I was 10 we took a trip to New York City. We got picked up by a Checker cab outside of Penn Station. There were 6.5 of us were in the car, my mother was pregnant. The jump seats were used and my dad sat in the front with the driver
Late ’90’s, early am hours Havana city to airport to catch a flight thru Merida to Guadalajara. I swore that the trash and crap in the old Peugeot was airborne, as we bombed thru the quiet sleeping city. What a trip!
Mexico City.
’nuff said
It’s not ’nuff. Enquiring minds need to know if it was a Beetle or some boring box.
Recent enough that it was a boring box, or at least as boring as it can be in Mexico City. I cant say that I am a big world traveller, so perhaps there are worse places, but to me, saying that Mexico City traffic is interesting is like saying the south pole is bit cool. It’s an amazing ballet though, danced without benefit of turn signals or regard for signs of any sort.
On a related note, a couple months later the customer visited my office in San Diego. Driving to lunch I stopped at a stop sign. He very seriously asked me why I stopped when there was no other car coming.
Taxi ride from Da Nang to Hoi An, pre-agreed fare (I’d done this before with no problems), and the driver took us to what probably technically was Hoi An in administrative terms, but in practice was way out of town amidst farm fields, and told us to get out or give him more cash.
I argued briefly but was always wary of messing with the locals, however there was no way I was paying more. I threw the fare on the ground and lugged my sister’s ridiculous suitcase god knows how far into town in the Vietnamese heat. Suppose I should mention the car was the ubiquitous-in-Vietnam Toyota Innova.
My last taxi ride was not a taxi but Private Hire Car (I try to avoid those but I live on the edge of Glasgow and the proper Glasgow taxis demand a ludicrous boundary charge) and the driver spent the whole journey making phone calls, swearing and moaning that his grandson (this guy was about 45) was going to lose his job as he was being “done” for contempt of court and would have to do a few days jail time. He had failed to appear as a witness, which the driver saw as perfectly acceptable. Despite being a PHC the vehicle was actually a Peugeot Eurotaxi, and despite being a local the guy had no clue where he was going.
Toyota Crown Comfort in Japan in 1999. Yes, fastidiously clean with doilies on the seat back tops, and there is no tipping in Japan, even for cabbies!
In New Orleans in the mid-1990s, most of the local taxi fleet consisted of full size American cars from the 1970s and early 1980s. My wife and I had gone down to visit my family, but the timing didn’t work for anyone to get us at the airport, so we got in the cab line. When our turn came, I was thrilled to see that our ride would be a 1977 Lincoln Continental sedan. Outside it was painted as a cab with the requisite markings, but the door jambs showed the car had originally been dark blue. The interior was tan leather–worn but still well kept. The car was immaculately clean and the driver was very pleasant. Naturally we started talking about the car, and he told me he’d been driving it for two years as a cab. It had several hundred thousand miles on it, but was “still going strong.” He’d bought the car off his brother, who had owned it for years, since buying it used in the early 1980s. Turns out, his brother worked for a family that had owned the car since new, and he bought it from them. Then suddenly it hit me, so I asked if he happened to know the name of the first owners–he did, and my hunch was right: that very car had belonged to some good friends of my parents. I’d been in that very same car many times as a kid! It was bittersweet to see it as a cab, but it was at least being used-up in loving hands, and I knew that it had given all the families who owned it a lot of pleasure through the years. A car’s life, well lived.
Well lived, indeed! Must have been a very strange feeling to encounter a car from a previous part of your life, one that you had spent time in, as a taxi.
Late-night Lebanon about 10 years ago, from the airport to my hotel in a beat-up 1970s Mercedes S-class. I remember sinking into the olive-green MB-Tex upholstery and watching the bullet-holed buildings zipping by as we did about 130 km/h into the Hamra district, and thinking that this was just so Beirut.
From the Florence train station to the hill town of Settignano Italy (1973) in a Fiat 128, driven by a very distant cousin of Mario Andretti. The best part was this tunnel… no stopping, just lay on the horn.
A pick of 2 –
No 1 – From central Gothenburg, Sweden to the airport, a ride of about 25 minutes, with a work colleague. The car was the last series of SAAB 9-5 and I complimented the driver on the car and then made the mistake of saying that as we were Gothenburg, I was surprised it wasn’t a Volvo. It turned out that thus guy was SAAB’s no 1 fan, had driven SAAB’s for 30 years and then proceeded to demonstrate the features. Change the ABBA track on the CD with steering wheel buttons, or a button on the dash, heated seats can be hot, very hot or very hot indeed, the cruise control works like this, it’s twin turbo you know, and more. And the price? 875.00 Swedish krone for 25 minutes, around £90.00, cash only please, ATM over there…..
No 2 – In Mumbai, India, in a Premier Padmini to a Chinese restaurant. After a 20 minute ride through very busy Mumbai, the driver offered to wait for us and drive us back to our hotel in a couple of hours. OK, thanks. We come out, get in, friendly welcome, and the driver makes a U turn across the divided highway in front of a police man. We’re pulled over and a discussion follows. It seems the on-the –spot fine is 200 rupees, about £3, and the driver asks us to pay as he has no change. A bit of negotiation gets the fine down to 100 rupees, and we go on our way. Total fare for the return trip was only 150 rupees, plus the tip, which actually he’d had already. We could have paid a bit more though, to have an air-con cab…..
I spent a few days working on Hönö in 2013 on business (overnighting in Goteborg) – I had a hire car, though (VW Golf, IIRC). Lots of Volvos, but I also saw some more familiar profiles in traffic:
1976. Kansas City, MO. it may have been the last time I’ve even RIDDEN in a cab.
The ride was memorable because I left a paper bag in the cab that had quite a bit of my money in it. No chance of recovery; I didn’t realize until the next morning.
1972 Hiroshima, Japan caught cab (small 4 door Toyota) the cabbie so wanted to practice his English skill’s we drove around the city for 2 hours on a guided tour all the time with the meter turned off. I asked how much I owed him and he replied nothing so I left a $10 dollar bill “US” on the seat and thanked him for the experience.
Oh, I’ve had one or two that should have scared the Hell out of me enough to NEVER take a cab again.
Fall 2000. My then girlfriend and I stay in downtown Chicago for a romantic weekend for her birthday. We get a hotel near Marina City, plan dinner at Wildfire grill and then on to see Blue Man Group. Bellman hails a beater Ford Crown Ick taxi driven by (big shock) a man of Arabic extraction. Tell cabbie we want to go to Wildfire. He roars off in the general direction of the restaurant and takes a shortcut that includes going THE WRONG WAY DOWN A ONE WAY STREET THAT’S UNDER CONSTRUCTION! Oh, and we barely miss a Hasidic Jewish pedestrian as we lurch down the one way street. When we got to the closest intersection to Wildfire, we told him to drop us off and after paying, we walked three blocks to the restaurant. :-0
2002: My wife and I are at BBs Lounge in downtown St. Louis. Wife calls for a cab on her cell. We see a Chevy Astro cab parked in front of a bar across the street. The cabbie comes out of the bar, puts his 1/2 empty beer bottle on the curb, climbs in the Astro, fires it up, pulls a U-turn and picks us up! I remember the squeaks and groans the Astro made, and the dome light kept flashing on and off. Must’ve been early for the cabbie, or he was seasoned, because he got us back to our hotel no problems.
Most memorable Taxi ride, was when I in the middle of a divorce, as a recent immigrant in a foreign country, with no friends nor family around, found myself having to start drive a taxi, after being forced to close my business and move, all to preserve my parental rights as a father.
The attempt to drive a cab, came to be after applying for over 825 jobs, contacting 164 recruiters, and only getting one phone interview. I had no unemployment benefits, nor any form of assistance or help. I was on my own. To say I was desperate for ANY income, would be an understatement.
That day, I drove straight from court, still in suit, after cleaning out all my savings, maxing out all my credit cards, scraping together every last bit of funds I could manage, and literally paying the lawyer $11 000 that day to show up and defend me against made up abuse allegations, to my first day as a cab driver.
I signed out a cab, put my stuff in the car, logged into the computer system, and got ready for my very first shift.
The cab was low on gas, and drivers are supposed to fill gas themselves. I had now $3.62 left to my name, on a debit card, and figured Id take some rides, get some cash, and buy gas. Wrong.
I got 2 rides, both using vouchers, and ran out of gas, rolling up to the gas station. I fill gas for my last 3 dollars and sixty two cents, and have barely enough to make it back to headquarters. The cab has a v8, so naturally guzzles gas.
There I stand in line for over an hour, trying to cash in my 2 voucher trips, for a total of $13, to get gas money. And get yelled at, threatening to fire me, for not doing my job right, and for cashing in too early.
A seasoned cab driver caches the whole thing, as im trying my best to calm things down and explain. Slides me two $5 bills, and just comments: “Rough day, huh”.
I took the two 5’s, and my $13, filled gas, got rides, kept going, and never looked back. My 12 hour shift, became more like 20 hours, and by then I had $420 in my pocket.
The next day, I picked up the kids from kindergarten, and we stayed together, and had money for food.
Days became weeks, and after a few months I get called into an interview, and get a job in my field. Now a year later, I still remember how close I was to completely crash and burn.
Wow. That would make a great short story! I guess Reader’s Digest and the like are no more, but that’s surely an experience to share somewhere, maybe on the ‘blogosphere’ as they say. It’s a tale of perseverance, redemption, etc…. Just sayin’.
Definitely an amazing story from the point of the driver rather than rider. Glad your perseverance paid off!
Buenos Aires in 1995. International flights come into one airport and domestic ones leave from another airport, so you must cross the city by cab.
I forget what kind of car it was, but it was my first exposure to South American driving and I was rather terrified at going 120km/hr while lane splitting to fit four cars abreast in a two lane carriageway.
The most memorable cab ride I ever heard of was a co-worker who was riding in a cab in India, the driver increased the fare en route which led to an argument. The driver parked the cab in a very dodgy location and left for a half hour while the locals pounded on the windows and shouted at the guy. When the cabbie returned he asked if they had a deal or not, and my co-worker paid up.
It’s always an Engineers worst nightmare to die in a cab accident overseas, and it does happen once in a while.
I have to ask – why is it worse to die in a taxi and why is it worse for engineers?
I don’t know if it’s worse to die in a taxi, but it’s the least safe part of a site trip. I work in mining and metals processing, our Engineers travel frequently around the world and some areas are very dodgy.
Mines and smelters are generally pretty safe, being staffed by trained personnel. Air travel is extremely safe but once you leave the airport in rural India, China or Columbia your life is in a random stranger’s hands.
1992, my daughter took a year after graduating from high school to be a Rotary Exchange student in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Midway through the year, probably January 1993, I flew down to visit for a couple weeks. She and I took a bus trip from Santa Cruz to La Paz (Highest city in the world) to visit relatives of her host family. Arriving at the La Paz bus depot at about 11 pm we snagged a nice looking tax driver who piled us into his sort of beat up VW with sagging seat springs. My daughter couldn’t put her hands on the exact address but knew the address we wanted was somewhere around “Calle Ocho”. So we drove for about 20 minutes and then started looking for likely houses that were on corners because she remembered it was supposed to be on a corner. Mind you, all these houses have high walls and gates with bells that have to be rung. So the taxi driver and my daughter get out and start ringing door bells (gate bells actually) and a light rain has started. I figure I better get out, after all my daughter has disappeared around the corner in a strange city with a stranger. We make no progress so drive around some more. Soon my daughter remembers she may have a telephone number and digs it out of her purse. A moment later I spot an all night mom and pop grocery store with a sign indicating telephone available. I tell the driver to let us out there’d she makes the call, reaches the relative by phone and I pay off the taxi. Moments later we were picked up by her host father’s cousin and enjoy a fabulous 3 day stay in La Paz. We flew back to Santa Cruz in time to attend a really splendid wedding part in Santa Cruz. Bolivians do know how to throw a party!
Way back in ’79, sixteen years old and riding in a Checker… in New York City. Pretty heady stuff for a teen from Cleveland!
A Ford Granada from the south shore area of Blackpool to a house in a Fleetwood warzone. The driver clipped a car and never stopped but he stopped to have a fight outside Yates Wine Lodge with the man who was shagging his girlfriend while he worked nights, To be fair he switched the meter off during the fight.
I hardly ever ride in Taxicabs so no distinct memories. However I have seen interesting Taxicabs.
I remember seeing a circa 1995 Caprice 9C6 in service around the turn of the century in NYC.
When I visited New Orleans in 2008 the 1990s Suburbans, Caravan’s, Caprices, and 1980s Town Cars being used blew my mind. I was used to Ithaca and NYC Taxicabs which were newer.
I saw a circa 1990 Crown Vic Taxicab in service in Coastal Virginia in 2011.
Radio Cab in Portland, OR had a circa 1997 Camry and a circa 2000 Lumina in service recently, but no photos before they were retired. They do have at least one 2012 Civic in service. Broadway Cab had a Chrysler LHS in service and maybe they still do. Seaside and Astoria Taxicabs are funny, at least some of them because they are econoboxes or worn out looking.
I remember in the late 90’s seeing a “north area ” cab ( north Charleston SC) that was an 88-89 Chevy Caviler. It was driven by a little old lady (60ish). Thought that was weird for a cab
1969 or thereabouts, Chicago. I was 9 years old. The family, all five of us, took the C&NW train to Northwestern Station. Then in a Checker, jump seats and all, to the lakefront… Field Museum, Shedd Aquarium, Adler Planetarium. Dad could have just as well and more cheaply driven us in the family car, but he wanted us to have the full city experience. A day to remember.
Brunei is a small country on the island of Borneo. It has (or had) lots of oil. In 1996 I travelled there for work in connection with an LNG marine loading platform in the south of the country. The airport was in the north.
The owner of the LNG facility was meant to arrange for a company car to pick us up at the airport and take us to the hotel we were staying at – a trip of close to 100km. They used 7 series Volvos because of their reputation for safety. Roads in Brunei are dangerous and they have a very high accident rate (compared to the relatively small population).
There was no car for us outside the airport. We waited but to no avail. Eventually we decided to catch a taxi. It was a small Toyota Corolla. We climbed in the back. There were no seatbelts. The driver took off and onto the main highway south. There were long stretches of straight road with lots of small unpaved side roads joining it. It was easy to see how accidents could happen with slow moving vehicles pulling on to the main road that we were rocking along at 100km/hr plus.
I was terrified. I thought we were going to die. The only comfort I could give myself was that the driver had obviously been doing this for years and he was still alive.
Well, we made it (obviously) and without incident. Fortunately, they had a company car for us on the trip back. I have never been back to Brunei. It’s a strange place.
In 2012, I took the train back from Richmond, where my fiancee had moved, to Raleigh, where I was still living. Stepped out of the train station and walked toward the cab line, and what do I see sitting on the curb but an early 90’s Lincoln Town Car *stretch limo* with a cab company paint scheme. I asked the driver if the fare was higher and he said no, same as any other cab, so I slid into the blue leather back seat and we were off. He said that the company he drove for didn’t own the cars, the drivers did, and he saw the old limo for a good deal and picked it up. Not very maneuverable and I imagine the gas mileage wasn’t great, but he could pick up large parties if needed. Interesting dude, and by far the most deluxe taxi I’ve ever been in!
Most memorable in the daredevil category, six of us crammed into a Mexican version of a Nissan Sentra tearing through the streets of Puerta Vallerta Mx. Everybody there drives like maniacs. Most memorable in “hit to the wallet” category, $40 for a six block Uber ride in Las Vegas. If I had known where the destination was, I would have walked.
Torreón, Mexico in the 1960s. Not even sure it was a taxi because there were no markings on the outside of the clapped-out 1950’s Studebaker, and no meter inside. There were vague hints that a seat cover once existed on the rear seat. Our thrifty driver shut the engine off every time we came to an intersection, and seamlessly re-started the car/put it in drive as soon as cross traffic allowed. He used his horn far more often than his turn signals. Needless to say, there was no such thing as AC, and we were all drenched in sweat by the time we reached out destination.
All of my cab rides have been dull. I always enjoyed hearing Harry Chapin sing about his in his song ” Taxi”.
For me, it was riding in a taxi through London England from somewhere to Heathrow Airport. The driver was a Middle Eastern driver with a British accent. He was driving a 1990s Toyota Previa. I had never ridden in a Previa before, so it was something new and different. I enjoyed the ride. That was in 2006.
During the early 70s we lived in Turkey, and took a 57 Chevy taxi every morning to an English speaking school. Others in the neighborhood took a 51 Plymouth , so we would keep urging our Turkish driver to race the other. He never did, but it was fun anyway. Those old taxis handled the rough cobblestone streets quite well.
I have two “interesting ” cab rides.
One was from tech school in witchita falls TX.
We had gone down town to get off base We jumped in a cab a former caprice classic cop car. The driver was proud of it. He saw a few of our friends from base in a Mitsubishi Eclipse wave at us and gun it. We were cruising at about 70. He said watch this, he gave them about 3-4 car lengths and floored it. We went past them in what felt like 2 seconds. (Probably 5 tbh). At about 115mph if I remember the speedometer correctly. It was a fun ride.
The second was in Amsterdam. A friend and I came up from Germany We walked quiet a ways from the hotel. Grabbed a cab back to get ready for dinner. It was a red ford mondeo wagon. He drove across a paved square in town and then proceeded to drive in front of a tram. We passed with about 3 feet to spare. We walked everywhere the rest of the trip
Witchita Falls brings back bad flashbacks.
I was successful in using my own POV as a taxi to Airmen who wanted off base.
’87 Chrysler 5th Ave- never had an agreed upon rate, but it always worked out well.
Two memorable taxi rides, one good, the other – not so good.
The good: In 1999, I took my family – the four of us – to NYC for a long weekend. We flew into LaGuardia. The taxi driver picked us up and gave us a wonderful, brief tour of parts of the city. He did not gouge us, but was very professional and quite informative. He dropped us off at our hotel, the Renaissance in Times Square. Only cost about $25. I think the whole tab was around $33 or so with tip. We didn’t mind paying that at all.
The bad: I flew into Chicago O’Hare for a business trip in summer, 2004 and my hotel was Indian Lakes Golf Resort. The driver had no idea where it was. TWO HOURS LATER I FINALLY GOT TO THE HOTEL, late at night and dead tired from the trip! Needless to say I was furious, but held my temper and stayed respectful, but it took a lot of tongue-biting! I found out the place wasn’t far from the airport at all!
Funny – I don’t recall on either trip what type of vehicle I rode in!
I love this QOTD. Riding with my gf in a Crown Vic in DC. Engine is sputtering, and the driver starts chuckling. “How many miles on this thing?” we ask him. “455,000,” he says, laughing some more. He couldn’t get it over 15mph. The worse it gets, the more he laughs. It shit the bed a block from our hotel and we walked the rest of the way. He was practically in hysterics when we left him.
2 extremes in LT1 b bodies:
Boston in 1998 or so.
The cab was a 94-96 LT1 equipped Caprice. Narrow streets….high speed 70 in a 25. Terrifying!
Baltimore a year later
Driven home from the airport in a white 94-96 Buick Roadmaster. Really comfortable leather back seat. We get on the highway and I’m really impressed by its smoothness. I didn’t want to get out when I got home.
A VW Bug in Acapulco with my wife (then girlfriend) in 1992. I came home from the hospital in a ’61, and I hadn’t ridden in a Bug for quite a few years. We also rode in a few Type II vans with liquid cooled engines – a different experience to see one with a temperature gauge. For myself, I drove a limo for a few years, and I found the 407 (in Toronto) a handy way to get people back and forth from Pearson in a hurry. That’s all I’m going to say…heh heh.
1981 – a Peugeot 504 , the early hours of the morning, from Sousse to Tunis Airport , stopped three times at military checkpoints in the pitch dark . Military men with machine guns checking our passports and the driver’s papers.
Subscribed .
-Nate
I really hate taxi rides. Whether it’s a navigationally clueless driver in a late-model Camry (Boston, a few years ago) or countless speedy rides through dense traffic in various Asian and European cities, they’re rarely fun. But my most recent ride was actually the first time I’ve been in a car that touched, albeit just barely, a pedestrian. The passenger side (MY side) mirror just grazed a woman’s backpack. The driver never lifted or even acknowledged it, and the pedestrian just slightly bobbled. But it was close! The cab: a diesel Dacia, in Antalya, Turkey.
Mine was in a full-size Chevrolet in downtown Chicago. The driver was what often is a caricature of big-city cab drivers: he swore a lot, and in Arabic. In Chicago, taxi drivers don’t like to pick up anybody who isn’t going to O’Hare airport, which is about sixteen miles out of town; so when I told him I wanted to go to the train station, about two miles away, he got pissed. In sequence, which turned out to be the wrong one, he dropped the meter flag, revved the engine and slammed the transmission into gear, at which the taxi spit out its driveshaft. The universal joints must have been close to letting go when he stopped. He tried to insist that before I left, I pay the fare according to the meter. I ignored him and walked away.
For 5 years in the ’50’s I rode to school and back every day in a taxi. I went to special needs school and evidently the school district decided it was cheaper to contract out the transportation of the students rather than by having their own school buses since it was in the city and the neighborhood schools everybody walked or rode bicycles to them. There were between 4-6 kids on the route the taxi serviced I was on and of course no seat belts or concerns of where the kids sat, as long as we behaved ourselves and didn’t bother the driver. As close as I can remember the taxis themselves were big 4 dr sedans from Chevrolet, Ford and Chrysler Corp. As I think about this today it made a lot of economic sense since it was at slack time for most cabs, gave the drivers a steady income source that they could depend on, the school district did not have to go through the expense of buying and maintaining buses that are only in use maybe 3 hrs a day and also not having the expense of purchasing buses, hiring drivers, building facilities to house and maintain the buses and maintenance personal to service them. Of course today it is a different world and not always for the better. .
Most memorable to me was my 1988 ride in a Toyota Landcruiser diesel 4WD taxi in the Western Australian desert. I took the taxi from Laverton to Kalgoorlie, a ride of 359 kilometers (223 miles). Back then about half of the road on that journey wasn’t sealed. It was a long, slow drive that I had to take because the twin engined plane I took there was unable to take me back – overbooked and over loaded. The taxi driver spend much of the drive telling me of his time in prison. He also wanted to drop me off at one of Kalgoorlie’s numerous legal brothels. I remember that he was a married man who knew an awful lot about the different services offered at each of the brothels. He must have been on some sort of commission. It took some convincing for him to drop me at my hotel rather than one of those places. The fare was over $650!
Mine was a semi-political ride. I was living in Madrid in 2005-06 and at the time there were a lot of bad press due to changes in the status in Catalonia within Spain. Most right-wing radio speakers were (and still are) constantly insulting Catalans because of that.
Nevertheless. I finished work and I decided to get a taxi because I was meeting a few friends for dinner. On the way to the restaurant, I got a phone call from a buddy in Barcelona and we started to chit-chat in Catalan. At a certain moment, the taxi suddenly stops and the driver asks me “is that Catalan what you’re speaking?” I was astonished and replied “yes, but this is a private conversation” to which the guy replies “Sorry, I don’t want anybody speaking Catalan in my cab. I hate Catalan people, so please get out.” I did not pay for the ride and the guy dropped me a few steps away from a taxi stop but I was so astonished that I didn’t even write down the registration number to write a claim or something…
2001, Berlin. Staggering out of Tom’s Bar in Nollendorf Platz in the naughty hours of the morning. Clad in black leather.Parked on the rain slick cobblestones under a streetlight is the last Fintail Mercedes-Benz Taxi cab in Berlin. I climb in and finish the night in the perfect (post) Cold War fashion.
Brilliant. Makes me think of “Midnight in Paris”. It’s amazing a fintail was still in service.
I think it was a special historic vehicle- I’m pretty sure I saw an article on DW tv a year or two later.
The town where I grew up, the city bus, taxi, school bus and inter urban bus fleets were all owned and operated by the same company. Since kindergarten had half day classes, the few bussed students rode the bus to school and were taken home in a taxi. This was 1961, the taxis were all Checker Marathons, if we were lucky, we got one of the cabs with the folding jump seats. Can you imagine that happening in the US today? Half a dozen six year olds crammed into the back seat of a car with no booster seats or seat belts, maybe sitting on flimsy folding seats, maybe standing. Today, the company would be shut down and the drivers arrested
My first taxi ride, at age 11, circa 1986, a Checker Marathon driven by an amputee WW2 vet. I was amazed that the car had over 400,000 miles. The Checker seemed like it had seen combat duty, and the driver told me a land mine had taken his leg off. Back then both the cabbie and the car seemed like they were from another universe.
Las Vegas, April 1997. I was there for the Golden Air Tattoo at Nellis AFB, an epic international airshow marking the USAF’s 50th anniversary. My flight from STL arrived after Thrifty Car Rental’s office had closed for the night so I took a cab (my first cab ride) to the hotel.
The cab was an early aero Crown Vic P71 with the telltale 140 mph speedo and “Police Interceptor” decals on the rear door windows. Like most of the taxis I saw in Las Vegas, the cop steelies had been replaced with white aftermarket steelies similar to those on a lot of RVs and boat trailers.
The most memorable part of that short ride was simply taking in the glorious assault on the senses that is Las Vegas Blvd after midnight.
The next morning I took the hotel shuttle to the Thrifty office to get my CC-worthy rental…a Mercury Mystique in a very ’90s shade of teal.
In 2003 I was in Amsterdam, took a cab from Schipol Airport to my hotel, what a ride, it was in Buick Roadmaster of all things, the driver drove like a mad man, drove down the light rail tracks, ran lights etc. Was the most fun and scariest cab ride of my life!
Ironically, I can’t really think of one that was memorable and/or hairy . I’ve taken taxis in
Japan (immaculate Nissan Crews & Toyota Comforts),
London(Polite driver, true London cabby, real London Cab)
Korea (Iots over the years, although I do fondly recall a mid-90s ride in a Stellar with 422,000kms on it! or 7 or so years later where the old gent could take his eyes off his new in-dash TV in his Grandeur )
Singapore (new clean Comfort), Hong-Kong (oh those Crown Comforts, I love ’em),
Macau (also Comforts & Crews)
Thailand (clapped out Corollas mostly)
Jedda, Saudi Arabia (dodgy Nissan Cedrics, 50% with lit airbag lights and duct-tape over the torn area of the steering wheel) ,
Philippines (old Corollas with CVs so shot they clicked going straight ahead)
China (clapped out A2 Jetta without rear belts since the gov didn’t require them),
plus I could write a taxi biography of all the one I’ve taken in Vancouver over the last 20 years. Progressed from the 80s B-Body GM to repurposed P71 Panthers to the Prius which now dominates. Could it have been my very ever first ride in a taxi as a 5 year old? Going downtown shopping with my mom (it was a new ’65 full-sized Plymouth, likely a Savoy).
After all that, I would have to say it was in Manilla about 10 years ago, going from the domestic terminal to the international one. We came to a stop and the driver told me to make sure my door was locked. It was, and before I could think why, the whole car was overrun by street urchins, child beggars, a couple of whom tried the door handle.
Not scary, just sobering and eye opening. I’d traveled a lot, but the PI was first truly poor country I’d been to. That is tied only by a ride I took in Saskatoon in late 1996 in an Acura Legend with 450,000 kms on it that belied it’s age not one whit, other than a jumping speedo needle.
I had to think before I wrote this, because circumstances have had me as a taxi passenger since I was a child, and continues to this day.
Jason, that actually sounds terrifying. I’m glad that Aspen didn’t crap out for some miscellaneous reason.
I can think of one taxi ride from the year I spent in my father’s native Liberia in 1983 – ’84 as a fourth grader, and in the capitol city of Monrovia.
My mom and I were headed into the city from the mission house to run some errands, so we hailed a taxi – which was customarily already full of a bunch of people. I was in a snit about something, so once I squeezed into the back seat of a new, c. ’82 Toyota Corolla 4-door with three other adults (including Mom), I somehow managed to be able to slam the door in anger.
In response to this, the driver of the car turned his head around, looked directly at me angrily and told me there was “no need” for me to behave in such a manner in his new car.
It’s one thing for a parent or guardian to tell you not to do something, but it’s another thing altogether for a basic stranger to tell you just how it is and how it’s going to be. You had better believe I behaved for the rest of that (very fast) ride through Monrovia’s streets and didn’t even so much as whimper. Needless to say, whatever problem I had with my mom was completely forgotten by the time she and I reached our destination.
Saint Patrick’s day, 2010. I was living in Dresden, Germany at the time, and my linguistics teacher Jörn, a German man who learned English in Ireland, had invited his students out to an Irish pub in Neustadt. I of course accepted, and within minutes of getting through the door of the pub, was challenged by Jörn to a Guinness drink-off, which I had the misfortune of winning. Some 12+ pints later, during which I can only vaguely recall meeting an avid NASCAR fan, I spilled out into the streets as only one can after having consumed so much beer. With the help of some friends, I meandered to the closest tram stop. Unfortunately, it was around 3:30a.m., and the trams that do run all night only come twice an hour during this time. After only a few minutes of sitting, everything started spinning, and I can assume you know what happened next. After what seemed like an eternity, a tram arrived. The only sober one among us unfortunately knew very little German and was directionally challenged, but she assured us that she would get us back to our apartments. What she didn’t know is that some trams run for a bit and then go back to the station, and that this was one of those trams. So when the tram got to Hauptbahnhof Nord and then turned right, she fretted, but did not know to hit the stop button to get us off at the next stop, which wasn’t that much farther. Mercifully, someone was getting off at the World Trade Center stop, which is when she gathered us drunkards up and told us the bad news. Defeated, we wobbled back towards the main train station, some 10 or so minutes by foot. By this time, the birds were beginning their morning song, much to the ire of my friend Brian, a fellow drunkard. With my head pounding, my feet burning, and my stomach churning, we finally arrived at Hauptbahnhof. We looked south towards the area our apartments were, and remembered that it was all uphill. Again feeling defeated, we looked back towards the front of the train station, which was an oasis of taxis. Hiring a taxi to drive us to our apartments was the best decision we made that night, and slipping into the back seat of that E Klasse further cemented that sentiment. It was the most memorable taxi ride of my life.
January 1992 I think, where I went to college there was a taxi server that would take students anywhere, anytime, for $1. The town was pretty small and not many people ever had to use it. But I went downtown to buy a computer, and realized I didn’t want to carry it all the way home. Called a cab, and they came in a Checker. I’d never been in one before and couldn’t believe how spacious it was in the back.
I think I want one, just for that reason alone.
The most memorable ride was late at night. Two of us drivers on duty, one dispatcher. We get a call to one of our regulars. An odd time for him, but, one of our regulars. I’m up, so I go.
Now this regular was very reliable. He’d be waiting when we got to his place, he’d sit up front with us, and he’d tip well. I get to 202 Duke East. And Regular isn’t there. Wait a couple of minutes. No regular. I tootle the horn melodiously … no regular. On the radio “It’s a no trip…. wait… there he i… she is …” and out walks Regular. Wearing a lovely, light green, form fitting, evening gown.
Regular gets in the back seat and asks to be taken to Oak Street. I call it in “18, Oak Street East” and off we roll. He doesn’t talk much, he just says he’s very drunk. Ok….
We get to Oak Street, he pays me, and then tells me to wait. Ok, meter goes back on. Tick tick tick.
A few minutes later, he gets back in the car and tells me to take him home. “18, we have a return on this” on the radio, back we go, and he pays me for everything that’s on the meter. Basically twice for the out trip, and once for the back.
I get back to the stand and tell the story to the dispatcher and the other driver. The other driver tells me that of course, with the tip, I’m buying coffee. Fair enough, I go to Timmies.
After chatting up the girl at Timmies, I get back in the car and hear the other driver, sounding very stunned “There’ll be a return on this”.
The other driver isn’t there when I get back to the stand, but gets there a few minutes later. “YOU WEREN’T KIDDING!!!” Same regular, same deal, but to a different address.
My regular car at the time was a ’73 Dodge Polara.
Regular never called us again after that.
Mine was kind of the opposite of yours, Jason. Back when I had an active private pilot’s license (maybe 1988 or 89), I decided one day that I could log some needed hours by flying to Terre Haute, Indiana (a 90 minute drive from my office) in order to file something that was due that day in Federal Court there. I had plenty of time, like an hour before the court closed when I called the cab from the TH airport.
Then I waited. And waited. A cab finally showed up. It was a beaten to hell late 70s Impala sedan. There was another fare, who graciously told the driver he could get me to Federal Court first, and I think I picked up his fare. I always wanted to tell a cabbie to “step on it”, but that Impala had the most horrifying engine knock I had ever heard. The driver let me know that he had babied it along that way for quite some time, but that he dared not thrash it. So we sllloooowwwwwlllyyyy drove from the airport to the courthouse, where I made it with something like 5 minutes to spare. That cab then got me back to the airport and I flew back home.
I have often wondered how long the poor engine in that cab lived after I got out and paid the driver.
In my neck of the woods we still see 1990’s Park Aves, A-body Ciera’s and Century’s, plenty of Panthers, the occasional LT1 B-body and the subject of my scare ride in an early 00’s Honda Accord several years ago. It creaked and groaned like the well worn car it was. What took the cake was when the front end jumped and vibrated and made a horrible noise, as we were trying to turn left, and suddenly we were stationary. Right in the middle of a busy intersection in town. The front left tire was sitting crooked in it’s fender well meaning a tie rod probably let go. As luck would have it the driver radioed in this malady and another car was sent to rescue us within 10 min so it wasn’t a long wait thankfully. The rescue car was a 1996 red Ciera with a partially flat front tire but thankfully that got us to where we needed to go. Some of the cars this place uses are very questionable indeed.