When your driver just got out of jail

Passenger Story, by anonymous: It was 6 a.m., and I was catching a plane for a business trip. I live in Brooklyn, and you can’t find yellow cabs there, so I called a discount car service.

This driver seemed pleasant enough, and he was a talker.

"Wow, this is great,” the driver began. “I really needed this fare. Thanks man.”

I told him no problem, and told him I was heading to LaGuardia’s Delta terminal.

"Yeah, when dispatch called me to pick you up, I was pretty happy,” the driver continued. “I could use the money. I had a tough weekend."

My curiosity was piqued. "Oh, I’m sorry, what happened?” I asked, figuring he was going to share an amusing yarn in hopes of scoring a bigger tip.

“Well, I was in jail all weekend,” he said. “I just got released, like, an hour ago."

Um, okay. I probed further. “That’s too bad. What happened?"

"Well, the police found cocaine and some drugs in this car. But they weren't my drugs. I leant this car to my friend, and he must have put them in there."

Well shit.

Cabbie Econ

I was at JFK, needing a lift back to my apartment, and if I weren't by myself, I would have totally taken a gypsy cab. I just couldn't help feeling for those guys -- whispering "taxi! taxi! taxi to Manhattan!" -- keeping up appearances despite the economic downturn.

Because the financial reports are in, and while the yellow cab business has stayed steady -- thanks in part to the fact that people can swipe their credits cards in cabs now, hello more consumer debt! -- business for limo drivers is down 30%, and gypsy cabs are getting killed financially.

So I wanted to help these guys out. But as I didn't feel like being alone in some unmarked car driven by some strange dude, so I waited in the obscenely long line for a yellow cab.

Ifzaal was my driver. We talked finance.

First, he's annoyed at the 50 cent fare hike -- the money will be going to the MTA, or public transport system. What does the city do for him? He asks. They don't even give cabbies a place to use the bathroom.

Ifzaal drives mornings, and before the economic meltdown, he was crazy busy taking people to work. He's doing fine now, but business had dropped off.

And as more people who used to drive cabs get laid off from their current jobs, they're going back to driving, meaning there's a line at many garages.

Yes, the business is hurting, Ifzaal says. But he's doing fine. It's an okay job, he guesses. Which sounds downbeat, but overall, he seemed like a pretty content guy.

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.)