IT'S A MIND FUCK!!!

The following was taken from my MySpace blog.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006
It's A Mind Fuck

Category: Life

Some people think that it is just a job. But, it's not. I have to be on my guard for ten hours straight. I have to make sure no other car is going to hit me. I have to make sure all those fools talking on their cell phones while they are driving are not going to run a red light and ram into me. I have to constantly listen to the dispatcher for radio calls when the streets are slow. I have to constantly watch for people trying to flag me down on the street. I not only have to look for flags, I have to make sure there is not another cab near me who is going to jump the light and cut across me and steal the load from the street.

I even have to be on my guard before and after customers get into my taxi. I have to make sure everything is cool with them before they get in. Are they too drunk? Are they about to be sick? Do they actually have money. Are they going to be cool inside the cab?? Almost every customer is a different experience. Whether they realize it or not they are characters in my play. The cab is the stage. My character remains constant throughout the evening but the many characters are from all forms of human reality.There are the Harvard Marina types or just speak of all their friends from school. There's the tourist from Indiana who just think the Crooked Street is so divine that they must cell phone their friends in the other cab to drive the same route that we drove on. There are the guys talking about what sluts these girls are. There are the young dudes whom I thought would be cool to rap with, but all they talked about was finances and business. Hey when my friends were there age all we talked about was Clapton, Hendrix, the Dead and cars. How did all these young people get so serious. What are they doing up in these law firms till after midnight.

The thing on the bottom of this blog says "Tell us what you're listening to." Well I would like to but I can't get the damn thing to work. I'll just write it down. I am listening to the Louis Armstrong folder in my Music Collection on this computer. Right now it's playing Louis singing "I've got a lot of living to do."

Anyway I was proud of myself on Friday night. Usually when someone enters the cab and wants to go somewhere that I do not feel comfortable with I may hesitate but eventually take them where they asked to go. The other night a young black girl flagged me down and wanted to go to the Hunters Point area. This was not a race thing on my part. It was late on a Friday night. About 1:15 a.m. and it's a bad area. A real bad area.The Hunters Point and Bay View districts have the highest murder rate of any part of San Francisco. Also I have had trouble in the past when I went to these areas. So I didn't turn her down. What I did was to determine whether or not she had any money on her. If she money I would feel the deal was legit. So I said to her. "Yes, I can go there. But our company has a policy - some parts of the city we are supposed to get the money up front." So she says to me, "Oh, my boyfriend is going to pay when we get there." That said it right there - she had no money. "She even said, "here, do you want to talk to him on the phone?" I said that I was sorry, but it doesn't work that way and she got out of the cab. The funny thing was right after she got out of my cab she flagged down another cab from my cab company. I radioed the dispatcher and told him to tell cab number 268 that the girl who just got into his cab has no money. I thought fast. There were other times when I hesitated and got all jammed up with bad situation. ..

I got into a lot of bad situations when I first started cab driving. I was too timid and naive when I began. You can't be timid. You have to know how to talk to people. The worse case of me being too timid was my first year of driving. I was driving for New Yellow Cab of San Francisco when I picked up this guy outside this rough gay bar called the Black and Blue. Imagine a bar with that name. Anyway this guy gets into the cab and says he wants to go to Fairfield or somewhere past Vallejo. I realize it's a big ride. Even back then it was going to be a $70 ride. Today it would be way over a hundred dollars. Anyway this guy didn't look too clean. So I said to him, "Do you have the money?" And he says "My wife is going to pay when we get there." Well deep down inside I wasn't sure he was telling the truth - but it was a quick seventy bucks if he was. So I decided to take a chance. (I would never do that today.) So I drive the guy up there and he was non-social. I mean he never said anything- even when I tried having a simple conversation. So I was getting bad vibes during the whole trip. So we get there and I say, "which house is it? Where should I stop and let you out?" He hesitated and then pointed to a dark house. I stopped he ran out of the cab without paying me. I didn't either bother to take the keys out to the ignition, I chased after him. He was big, over six feet tall. I caught up with him. He turned around and slugged me. I fell to the ground bleeding. I turned around and saw him take off with the cab. A neighbor came and let me use their house to call the police. My face was in pain. He broke my face bone in three places with just one big punch. The police said he was some drug addict trying to get to some clinic. They arrested him and I got the cab back about an hour later. I was having surgery on my face in the hospital when I was supposed to go to court. The police came to my hospital room to take my statement. I never found out what happened to him. That was 27 years ago. I learned my lesson ----- the hard way.

That's All For Now. Peace Out, PHIL G.

Here I am in my taxi working on my "Scenes From A Taxi Driver's Seat" series in 2005.