COLUMN: A conversation with a cabbie

From Dan Fienberg's, "The Fien Print," Fall '97 From Dan Fienberg's, "The Fien Print," Fall '97To begin with, it was cold and wet and I'd been standing in the drizzle waiting for a taxi for 15 minutes already. Then, David Arquette and Lucas Haas stole the first cab that came my way. And while Haas was the cute Amish kid with the hat in Witness, I really wanted to go home. Silly Stereotype No. 1 -- New York cab drivers never really speak English. "Hello. I'm Dr. Rush Westheimer. Remember to buckle your seatbelt and have a nice ride." Nothing starts a conversation quicker than commenting on the inanity of the celebrity advisories which accompany each and every car. Me: Well gee. That must get tired in a hurry. Yves: You bet! All night and all night it's only Dr. Ruth. Why couldn't I have gotten one of the cool voices. Silly Stereotype No. 1 Debunked. Me: Such as? Yves: Joe Torre is great. And Jackie Mason's kinda funny, but I wish we didn't have to have them at all. Stupid Giuliani. Me: What's wrong with the mayor? Yves: Well, he's done a great job and I'm glad he was reelected, but I bet he didn't get any votes from cab drivers. Me: (warning lights already beginning to flash through my mind) What'd he do? Yves: Well, he gave the taxi business to the Jews. The warning lights were correct. So at this point, we're sitting in a major traffic jam and I'm already having what my Sunday school teacher once referred to as a "Jewish Dilemma." Do I say thank you, throw some money at him, and stand in the middle of Times Square waiting for another cabbie to take pity on me? Probably not. Do I sit in silence, avoiding dealing? Undoubtedly. And this was a man who had said he loved Jackie Mason. Geez. Next question: Does he know I'm Jewish? How would he know? And what would he do even if he did, accuse me of owning his cab? Is he just baiting me now? Seeing how the Jew will respond. Me: How did that work? Good. That seemed like a noncontroversial response. Try to understand what's going on in this man's mind. Easy and hopefully painless. Yves: By making it harder for cabbies to own their own cars, making it so that everyone has to go with a group. So 90 percent of the people who can own groups are the Jews. More silence required from me. I tried to figure out if he was just using the Jews as a representative group to hate or whether he actually had a specific gripe. Still stopped at the red light, Sbarro's glaring neon red glowing in the background, suddenly a black man came running in front of the cab, slammed his hands down on the hood to change directions, to make a right angle, and then ran off in a new direction. A pot-bellied white cop struggled to keep up. Yves: And so all of those tourists over there (indicating the serpentine TKTS ticket line winding into the darkness) will go home thinking that that's what this city is all about. White men, chasing criminals who are always black. And that? The light turned green, though the intersection stayed clotted with legions of impertinent cabs and skyscraper-hypnotized rustics. Down Seventh Avenue I could see a political protest in the works. A tall Louis Farrakhan-wannabe flanked by two lackies stood on a podium, bullhorn to his lips, speaking to? no one in particular. Tumbleweed skipped in front of him as people actively avoided the area. Yves: Black people get more power in New York and they aren't used to it. So they lash out, saying the white man owes them the city. That the whole city should belong to the black man. But I don't want the city. That's ridiculous. And then the white people, they see these lunatics, they aren't used to it. So they lash out. More racism against all of the black people. People don't ever change. You change something and they get all scared and they hate it. It's just? how do you say it? primal. Cabbie Cabal? Taxi teachings? Driver dogma? Or simply an explanation. An excuse. For his own actions, or for my initial response to him. The man hadn't said anything so profound, but it struck a chord. Yves: You think you'd get used to it? Thinking that I was going to get more insight into the human condition I leaned forward, my cheek almost hitting the sneeze guard, or anti-mugging shield. Yves: You think you'd get used to what Disney has done to this block. On the horizon, lights flashed and a giant marquee boldly announced the new The Lion King musical. Yves was right, the huge regal visage of Mufasa was a not-so-stark contrast to the spare eyes of Cats and the Vietnamese helicopter of Miss Saigon. Yves: It's different, but I think it's good for the city. And I went back to thinking to myself.