Running into a cabbie on the subway

I ran into Ryan Weideman, a photographer cabbie I profiled in my book, on the subway platform. He’s insane. Dead space hangs between every word he says, and he sounds like a Beat Poet with an anger problem. Yes, he will turn his wrath on you. He's famous for snapping pictures of people in the back of his cab in the 80s, and you can buy his work from NYC’s Bruce Silverstein gallery, including the photo above, Self-Portrait with Allen Ginsburg.

He didn’t recognize me at first – I’d cut my hair and reverted back to my natural hair color since I last saw him. “Baby, your hair, it’s mousy brown,” he said, looking down at me. “Bleach it out, baby, get all the boys!” I told him I did fine with the boys, thank you. I failed to add that I'm planning on bleaching my hair.

I asked how his hustle dance lessons were going, and he took that opportunity to demonstrate his moves, spinning around on the platform. Bystanders scattered, dodging his long limbs.

The rest of the subway ride we talked about his photos, his hate of the bourgeois how he escapes to the middle-of-nowhere-out-west every summer. Then he told me he was a savage, growling as he pawed the arm of my leather jacket. I ducked away.

He was on his way to a college reunion. They were in for a treat.

Story: Taxi driving sucked so badly he only lasted a week

Story: Howard Leibowitz, former cabbie: I was having lunch with a friend of a friend, Howard, when he told me he drove a cab for one week in the 70s.

Really, just one week?

He had hit hard times after sinking all his money into a big music project that went bust. Even worse, when he learned he was broke, he went home to find that his live-in girlfriend had left him and cleaned out their apartment – furniture, TV, everything.

He spent the next couple of days sitting on the middle of his floor feeling sorry for himself, until a friend stopped by and told him to snap out of it. This friend was a cabbie making hundreds of dollars a week. He even told Howard how to make these hundreds of dollars -- illegally – by driving off the meter. Back then, cabbies split their take with the garages. But if they turned off the meter, they would collect all the money from the passengers, with the garages being none the wiser.

The next day, Howard got his hack license. “You could have mold for brains and still pass that test,” he said. He drove a cab from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. every day for one week. But he felt guilty going off the meter. Also, he kept getting lost and felt guilty about it, so he undercharged almost everyone. At the end of the week, sore and tired, he got his envelope of wages. Inside there was only $5.

His friend called him a nimrod. Howard quit driving taxis. (This photo is of Howard in '72.)