MARKING THE OCCASION - REFLECTING ON
30 YEARS OF
SF TAXI DRIVING.
Thirty years ago I answered an ad in the San Francisco Chronicle - "Driver's Wanted - New Yellow Cab Co-Op." On January 24, 1978 I began driving a taxi in San Francisco. That's right - I t's been thirty years! Unbelievable! I can't believe I survived thirty years of cab driving in this nutty city. Thirty years of dealing with weekend drunks, boring yuppies, European tourists, crying ladies, Saturday night party-goers,Castro Street drag queens and too-drunk-to-wake-up party goers.. On the streets I had to deal with red light runners, Bay Bridge traffic and over the years Union Square gridlock due to everything from Christmas shoppers to Chinese New Year street closings.
The first night they gave me a set of keys and told me to pick out a cab on the lot. The company had been out of business for awhile and just reorganized. The lot were full of cabs that looked like they had seen better days. I picked out a 1974 Ford Torino.
My first night on the streets was a nightmare. Right before each customer got into the cab and told me where there destination was I said a silent pray to myself that I knew where they were going. One couple asked to go Julius's Castle, a restaurant on Telegraph Hill. The guide book said it was on Greenwich Street. But the only way you can get to it from Greenwich Street is from a staircase. I didn't know that yet. So I followed the street and came to a dead end. Then I went up to Coit Tower and looked for the place. When I went back down the hill to Grant Avenue the couple was so freaked out that they jumped out of the cab and said that they would find another taxi.
The next night an old sailor from China gets into the cab. He does not speak one word of English. He hands me a paper with directions. It says "take the first exit off the Bay Bridge." So I look up and the first exit I see is Treasure Island. So there I was driving in circles on Treasure Island trying to follow the instructions not realizing the first exit it mean was over the bridge at the Oakland Army Base.
I learned my lessons the hard way. Nowadays when someone has to leave the cab to get the money I take some kind of security. Back then I didn't know any better. Once a guy went into a poolroom in Daly City and told me to wait and he would be back. Well I waited and waited and waited. A few weeks later a drunk wanted to go into his apartment to get the fare. I took his wallet figuring he would come back for that. He didn't come back. It turned out that he was so drunk that he passed out when he got to his place.
The first incident which evolved into a "cab story" was the time I picked up this young couple in the Mission District. They asked to go to the airport, but wanted to stop at a house first out in the Excelsior District to pick up some clothes. The house had a long dirt driveway. I backed in and waited in the car while the young lady went in the house to get her bags. She runs out of the house and throws the bags in the truck and says "hurry up, let's go." I start pulling away when this lady runs out of the house screaming, "come back here with my daughter." I figured the couple was paying for me to take them to the airport, so I continued pulling away while the lady was chasing my cab down the driveway.
San Francisco was a different city back then. It was more like a big town. The convention center was not build yet. George Moscone was still the mayor. The population of the city back then was only 683,000. Today it's almost 809, 000 according to some estimates. There were only 711 taxi medallions. Today there are about 1385 taxis on the streets.
Except for some of the original Fisherman's Wharf restaurants, almost all of San Francisco's popular restaurants were different back then. There was the Greek Taverna, Vanessi's, Little Joe's, Luigi's, the Gold Spike, Beethoven's, Guidos and the family owned U.S. Restaurant and in North Beach. There was Paoli's, Doro's, The Iron Pot and the Blue Fox in the Financial District. Downtown there was Le Trianon and Phil Lear's Steak House on O'Farrell, La Bourgogne on Mason,
On the Embarcadero there was the railcar restaurant Victoria Station, Garo's and down by Pier 32, The Sailing Ship Restaurant.
Eventually they all started to close down. L'Etoile, a Nob Hill fixture for 24 years closed in 1990. In 1999, Ernie's Restaurant on Montgomery Steet, made famous by Alfred Hitchcock in the film "Vertigo" closed it's doors in 1999. Che Michel turned into Gary Danko's and as recently as last week, the Washington Square Bar and Grill, a long-time North Beach establishment closed it's doors.
I lived through three major events which changed this city. The first was the AIDS crisis.
The crisis totally changed the dynamics of the city and cab business. Most young people I have in my cab don't realize that most of the clubs they go to nowadays used to be gay bars. There were gay bars in every neighborhood in the city - unlike today where most of them are in the Castro District. A neighborhood as posh as Pacific Heights had two gay bars - The Lion's Den and The Alta Plaza.
As the gay population of San Francisco diminished so did the number of gay bars and restaurants. The gay bath houses were open 24 hours and gave taxi drivers business throughout the night. There was about a dozen of them located throughout the city. In 1984, believing that casual sex was one of the causes of AIDS, the city closed all the bath houses. This hurt late-night business a lot.
The second major event was the earthquake of 1989. This changed the city physically. With the Embarcadero freeway closed I was no longer able to hop on the Broadway on-ramp and be on my way to the airport. All the freeway entrances, eastbound for the Bay Bridge and southbound for the airport, were now south of Market Street. This causes the financial district and the south of Market area still to have grid-lock traffic.
The third major event was the collapse of the dot-com industry. In the mid to late 1990s business in San Francisco was booming. Every night was like a Saturday night. Night clubs were open every night and the streets were always filled with people. Things took a big turn after the holidays in 2001. I figured business would pick up, but it didn't. All over Nob Hill and Pacific Heights there were "For Rent" signs all over.
People were saying the dot-com industry crashed. I did not know what they were talking about. I thought business was good because people loved San Francisco.
Gradually since 2001 business has been improving.
Weeknight business is still not even close to what it once was. Many nightclubs are closed during the week and open for the weekend starting on Thursday night. I make almost three times on a Saturday night than what I make on a Tuesday night.
So anyway, why am I still doing this after 30 years? Well, the money has always been decent, I was able to take a vacation whenever I wanted to and it's probably the ‘trippiest ‘ job there is. Where else do you meet random groups people every ten minutes and can have insane conversations with.
They are like characters in my one act play and my taxi is a small stage.
It's an improvisation class and every few minutes the characters change except for me. I remain the constant my little taxi of a stage. One minute I'll have some tourist family from St. Louis in my cab,
the next minute it might be some party girls from the Marina. It could be some serious wall street analyst or some gay guy crying because his lover just died (yes, this really happened).
Over the years I began to have a different perspective about the job. I figured I might as well have some fun.
I began to think of myself as a talk show host and began to interview and entertain the customers.
I'm always playing the friendly cab driver who can talk about any conversation that comes up. If the customer is from Wales I could tell them that I've been somewhere in Whale that they have not been to. So I ask them if they have been to "John o' Grots" during my visit to Scotland in 1983. Most Scots have never been that far north.
So this week marks the thirty years. I still bring tapes every night to play for the customers.
Young people get the Stones, Beatles or U2, while the older folks get my Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett or the Louis Armstrong mixes. I steal topical jokes from the Tonight Show or the David Letterman Show or make up stuff as I go along. When people ask, I bring out some of my best cab stories. I try to make the job fun. It seems to work. My customers seem to enjoy their ride, sometimes they don't even want to get out of the cab, and the tips keep getting better. That's all folks!
Here I am in 1982 in my taxi at Veteran's Cab.
Here's my self portrait from 2006 in my taxi.
WELL THAT'S ALL FOLKS!
I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU!
FEEL FREE TO E-MAIL ME AT
Philflash@AOL.com
IF YOU HAVE ANY COMMENTS. THANKS!