"What did you do last night?"
I took a cab from east harlem and the cabbie looked like one of the friendlier guys somewhere from the Caribbean.
"Last night? What I did last night? Oh it was a good night, last night! You know I rent the cab and it is $150 for the 12 hour shift, so do you know how much I made on top of that? I mean I drive a cab for 12 years now, and I drive the cab only two days a week. So yesterday, I had to go. Many drivers went back to the garage, because there was really bad traffic and they were scared. You know, we cabbies do not like traffic. This is why you will never see a cabbie go slow. We want to pick up and drop off and pick up and drop off, and fast. This is the only way we can make money. So many went back to the garage, but I had to go. Do you know how much I made after rent and the gas?"
He pulled out a bundle of money, some pieces of paper...
"Here, CitiBank, I made a deposit today. Look: $1020. I made more than a thousand bucks!"
He showed me the yellow deposit slip. (It was for $1020.)
"The traffic was really bad. Really bad, in the beginning. The first customer, to get from downtown to FDR, it was 1.5 hours! Just for 7 blocks. Really bad. The first four hours were really bad. But after that! It was good. Those people in Connecticut have money, I kept going to Connecticut. Round trips. Any price I gave them, they pay. This one guy gave me $200 and then a $100 check! One hundred dollars tip! Crazy money. Another one: I had six people in the cab. Four in the back, two in the front. We went to Westchester. It was a good night. And after 10 hours, most cabbies were out of fuel. They were just on the side of the road. Waving... but I was not out of fuel, because I knew that there was electricity in Connecticut, so I took a guy to Connecticut and refueled. I went through the entire night.
I could have maybe went longer, but I needed my 8 hours of sleep. This was a really good, good night."
What a man...
Another cabbie told me a different angle of the story, he had stayed at home. Because he lives in Brooklyn, he would have not made it into the city anyway. He said that most of his friends who drove last night made $800-$1000 but that was only because they were charging pretty much illegal flat-rates. He was very strongly against those increased fares. ... of course...