SubscribeWhether your cabbie has a shaved head and is playing loud smooth jazz, or he just came back from Greece and is giving you a diatribe on the Iranian nuclear issue from the European perspective, you must love SF cabbies.
As a transplanted New Yorker the cabbies in San Francisco are a breed among themselves. In New York, most of my day time cab drivers never spoke to me at all, almost as if it was an unwritten rule note to speak to busy looking patrons during sun-time. Except of course if you found yourself going from Manhattan to Brooklyn in a Yellow Cab. In that case you had better have your own detailed instructions on how to get to your designation, or you will find a very chatty driver.
San Francisco cabbies are the polar opposites. I’ve rarely had a silent cab ride here, in fact sometimes I truly miss the peaceful long, “I’m moving but I don’t have the think about anything experience”. You can’t really count on that here.
Don’t get me wrong though, they are friendly. From what I’ve been told tips here are not very good so, they may be so chatty so there connection factor goes up and thus their gratuity. OK, maybe I’m a cynical New Yorker and the cabbies here have just chilled out as much as I have since arriving in the idyllic mental and physical space of California.
By far the most interesting current cab story in San Francisco is the mystery cabbie. Who is the mystery cabbie? The police have been looking for her/him for months. Apparently, they have a master key to all of the Yellow Cabs in the city. Are they stealing them? Have they been wreaking havoc? No, they take a Yellow Cab and drive patrons around for a few hours and then drop it off somewhere. No complaints by customers, they just pick up passengers and drop them off. Mellow right?
Back to my Greek driver/friend from this afternoon, when the ride started, I really just want a quiet ride over to Height. What I got was a very intelligent talk about what the U.S. was doing with Iran. He said, “why will the U.S. not let Iran have nuclear power when we are on great terms and just signed a pack with India, which has many nuclear weapons”. Just as we were really getting into it the ride was over. Haight and Cole was the end of that discussion. Instead of being upset that I didn’t get my quite ride, I almost felt cheated that the discussion came to no conclusion.
That’s a great experience for nine bucks, considering I’ve been to movies recently that I felt totally empty from after exiting.
I try to avoid cabs whenever possible. I’m surprised there’s not more accidents involving them, the way they drive.
Max Kiesler is an award-winning strategic designer and co-founder
and principal of Ideacodes.com, a web consultancy in San Francisco focused on next generation websites. About Max...
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