Slow down in Old Town

Interesting things are happening in Scottsdale these days. Business is way way down. The bars are not nearly as crowded, the clubs and restaurants are slow. This makes it tough for the cab drivers. Usually, we park in front of bars and clubs, or just cruise around, waiting for someone to come out to the taxi. Then, off we go. When the job is complete, it's back to Old Town for another round.
Most taxi companies in the valley have added taxicabs because of the upcoming Super Bowl. The anticipation is that we will be needing a huge amount of more taxicabs. but until the crowds for the Super Bowl arrive, these taxis are just cruising around, trying to make money like the rest of us. too many cabs and not enough calls means financial hard times for most cab drivers.
Now I am one of the best there is, and that is not blowing my own horn. I am just stating a fact. So when I go out there and make barely a hundred bucks on a Friday night, you know there is something wrong. Maybe it is the slowdown in the real estate market, since up to a little while ago, it seemed like everybody and their brother was working in home sales and related business. Maybe it is just a general slow down in the economy brought on by the nervous reports coming in out of wall street these days. When your 401k tanks, you start thinking about cutting back on expenses. and dinner, drinks and dancing is a good place to start.
Looks like I am going to have to readjust my focus, marketing my taxi service to other businesses, landing medical accounts, etc.
In the mean time, if you need a taxi in Phoenix, I'm not too busy. (602) 684-4220

The real life of a cab driver

You know, it is not all peaches and cream for cab drivers out here. I can only speak my friends who drive here in Phoenix in this regard, though, since I have not driven taxi in any other city. But this is what my friends and I tend to experience day after day.
You really don't know what is going to happen from the moment you get up in the morning. If you have a scheduled call already, you roll out of bed, shower, shave, and go get them. But if you don't, you simply sit in the taxi in the front yard, log into the taxi company's computer, and hope you get something. I can't tell you how many early morning hours I have spend with a hot cup of coffee in my left hand, and my right hand playing with the data terminal trying to get a decent run.
Early mornings are cool, though, in that you can bid on calls that are very far away, and still have a great deal of confidence that you can get them. For the uninitiated, bidding on calls means you tell the computer that you want a call. First one to bid on the call gets the first opportunity to accept or reject the trip. If you accept the trip, you run it.
But what do you do when you are like me, and don't HAVE a company to provide you with calls? I rely upon my instincts. I search the web and the newspapers for information on upcoming events that might need taxis, such as sporting events, and concerts. Then, I go and sit in front of the venues near the end of the show. In the mean time, I sit on designated cab stands or outside hotels, hoping someone comes out and wants to use my services. Lately, the web has been a great place to advertise, and I do have a few other tricks up my sleeve, which I will not tell you since a rival may read this column.
But the anxiety of not knowing whether you are going to make five dollars today or fifty or five hundred can drive you nuts. Over the years, I have become far more conservative with my money, rationing it out like a miser. I sincerely annoy my wife this way.
the instability and the anxiety of this job are definitely one of its down sides. If you need "job security", that warm fuzzy feeling of having a pay check every week, do not go into cab driving. go into real estate or something.
What's that?
Oh, I'm sorry. I have just been informed that real estate and its related fields are not doing so hot. Try working at a funeral parlor. You never get thrown out of work, and people are just dying to use your services. Meanwhile, I gotta cruise on over to the Phoenix Convention Center's website and see what is coming up. Meanwhile, you folk can look at this. It's a picture of the Westward Ho, one of the first resorts here in Phoenix, though now it has been converted over to elderly people's housing.

Fiesta Bowl after action report

Well, I can finally breathe for a few minutes after the business of the first week of the year. Of course, there is New Years, which is always a great time to make money, except for this year. Everyone was bitching and whining about how they did not make as much money this year. Course, cab drivers will bitch about anything, but that is a topic for another day. New Years WAS down from last year though.
So we all looked forward to the mighty Fiesta Bowl. Every year since football was a baby, the Fiesta Bowl was played in Tempe, right after the New Year. And every year the drunken college fans would throng Tempe's Mill Ave directly after the game, milling about (Which is why it is called Mill Avenue) and using lots and lots of taxicabs.
That all changed after the Arizona Suckwads (I mean Cardinals. did I call them the Suckwads? Must be a typo.) force fed a publicly financed stadium down our taxpayers throats. Lucky thing I dodge taxes. Do you believe those bastards originally wanted to build the stadium in Tempe at the end of a runway for Sky Harbor Airport? Yeah, THE main airport. Just like Shea Stadium only directly in the flight path.
Well, the tax leeches were forced to move the stadium out to Glendale because people got a little upset about the location after 9/11. Seems people did not want to risk someone screaming Allah Akbar! and flying a jet into the stadium on third down with 5 yards to go.
It was moved out to a large vacant area in West Bumf**k (I mean Glendale), far away from anything resembling a bar. A bunch of bars sprang up around the stadium, but for the last two years it has not been the same.
For starters, there is nowhere for the taxis to cruise. All the bars and other temples to Bacchus are located in the center of this complex of buildings which includes the stadium and parking garages. And it is surrounded by this giant thousand acre parking lot. Which has no place for taxis to cruise. Or even sit and park for that matter. (Nice city planning, Glendale!)
So at the end of a game or huge event, we find that the taxicabs are forced to stage in a dirt lot about a quarter mile from the stadium. The drunks now have to stagger a long long way to get to us.
Then there is the parking lot attendants who are running the whole show. there is only one job on the planet that is worse than port-o-john emptier guy, and that is parking lot attendant for the taxicab lot here in gGendale after a game.
For starters, these poor characters have no experience with taxicabs. They might have seen a cab once on TV, but that was late at night, and they were flipping channels anyway. They have never directed traffic before either. Couple that with the fact that two thirds of the cab drivers are straight off the boat from third world piss holes you would not want your brother-in-law to live in. Then add the fact that everyone is hungry from a shitty New Years Eve, and you have a recipe for chaos. Picture seventy taxicabs crammed into a dirt lot, with sixty Arabs, five Croatians, and five angry red neck Anglos all arguing about who is first in line, and whether someone who has waited an hour to get to the front of the mob can turn down a customer who is going all of two miles. The parking lot attendants consisted of three unemployed Walmart Greeters, and this little blond woman. Blondie was about five foot zero, and PMSing really bad. This woman was getting in the face of this fat Croatian about four times her size, threatening to bodily throw him off the parking lot if he did not take the next customer no matter where he went. It was like watching a little yellow Australian shepherd dog harass a steer. Remarkable.
While watching this sideshow slowly unfurl, and doing my best to sow additional chaos as needed, I ran into my old buddy Marty (picture above). I showed him my new
Blackberry, and informed him that since I had switched phones, I had lost his number. would he be so kind as to give it to me again? He gave it to me, and then I asked him to pose for the camera, so that I could add his picture as an icon to his phone number. That way when he calls his picture shows up as well as his phone number. Well, at first, he balked and made a really nasty face. So I snapped a photo. Then I told him that if he didn't give me a good shot, I would post the nasty one on the web. So he let me take a nice photo.
"I think I'll post this nasty one on the web anyway."
"You wouldn't dare," he said.
Wrong Marty.

New Years Eve post mortum (or is it mortem?)

Ok, New Years was a good drive, but not a great one. Probably had something to do with the economy starting to slow down. You know, from the sub prime mortgage mess. Yes, all you idiots out there who actually believed the swine that called themselves MORTGAGE BROKERS and bought into the sub prime adjustable rate pipe dreams.

For example, I met a cop in Peoria AZ, not long ago, and he had just purchased himself a $350,000 home in north Glendale. Hah! On a cop salary! And his wife isn't working! Ha Ha Ha! Idiot got an adjustable rate mortgage with a 1% teaser rate, and low low payment he could actually afford. Trouble is, two years later, it adjusted up to 9% and now he is totally under water because he can't make the payments! HA HA HA!! Serves the guy right for giving me a ticket for blitzing a stop sign at 62 mph in a posted 25 zone. Oh well, he will probably make ends meet by dealing a little dope on the side. Hell, I know I would seriously consider it. And its not that hard for cops to score the dope, either. Say for example you bust a guy with 20 ounces of weed. (Good hydro, not that cheap ass stuff your brother in law gets.) You write him up for say 5 ounces, and pocket the rest yourself. who is going to complain? the defendant?

"Yer honor, it ain't right he be charging me with possestion of 5 ounces of weed. I had about a pound and a half minus the stuff me and my cousin Drake burnt up in the back seat of his Camaro."

Anyway the economy is collapsing. You can tell this because all the real estate get rich quick snakes are now selling books giving away the secrets to flipping houses.

Isn't capitalistic excess grand?

Made about $450 on New Years Eve, and the grand part of it is that no one threw up in the car! In fact the last guy who did throw up in my cab was a cop (Actually, the third to last. There was the illegal alien who hurled, and the demure little centerfold wannabe who drank way too much Jagermeister.)

But this cop threw up in my taxi. Granted, he was off duty, but I was furious, cuz he actually got some on my shirt! Bastard! I yelled and hollered at him, and his girlfriend said that I should watch my tongue because he was an off duty cop!

"Well, he should know the laws about public intoxication, then!"

I got 150 clams out of the girl friend.

But New Years Eve, nothing happened. It was all a bunch of slightly drunk folk who wanted to be taken home because they did not want to chance a DUI.
How come I don't get any lunatic hookers who want to beat the crap out of their meth dealers anymore?

Prospero Anno Neuvo everyone! I know mine will be.

Why a mural at Sky Harbor makes me grateful I am not a frog

This is a photo of a mural that appears on the wall of Phoenix Sky Harbor Int'l Airport at Terminal Two. I'll be publishing more photos from PHX from time to time. Which reminds me of something that happened today. I took a call from someone who wanted to go to the airport, and, unable to locate a piece of paper whilst barreling down the freeway at 67 miles per hour, I wrote the address on the back of my hand, which made me think:

I am so glad that I am not a frog.

For starters, a frog has slimy skin which means he cannot write addresses on the back of his hand. The ink will not stick through all that slime and the pen will end up skipping the next time he wanted to use it. Which means he would have to find a piece of paper to write on. Which brings up the subject of thumbs. A frog does not have thumbs, so it would be very difficult for him to hold a pen in his front hands, and have you ever tried to write a memo with your back feet? I don't even have back feet, so I can imagine that must be very difficult. And what would you do about the phone? A person cradles the phone against his ear and his shoulder while he writes down something, but a frog does not have external ears. It does not even have shoulders, which means it would have to put the phone on "speaker". Can you imagine how embarrassing that would be to call and have a frog put you on speaker phone while he tries to write a memo with his back legs? This is probably why frogs do not get many phone calls. Have you ever called a frog? I didn't think so. And if a frog can't get calls, he probably won't be a very good cab driver.

Twas the Night Before New Year's Eve

Actually, it is early morning on New Year's Eve, and I am looking forward to a few things. First, I am looking forward to tonight, which tends to be one of the busiest nights in cab driving on a consistent basis. If you cannot make $500 in one night on New Years, well, maybe you should reconsider driving a taxi. People are drunk off their ass and tip extremely heavily. also, due to the unavailability of taxis, people generally throw money at you just to get you to stop. I have had people pounding on the hood of the cab trying to get in. So has everybody else I know.
Want some tips about getting a taxi on New Years Eve? Hire a Mormon as a designated driver. Make sure that you always have TWO Mormons at your party because one will drink all your booze. Seriously, pick a company, call that company, and wait.
DON'T CALL TWO COMPANIES AT THE SAME TIME: There is a likelihood that two taxis will arrive at the same time, or somehow one company will find out that you called two companies (Your brother Steve drunkenly tells the cab driver, "Jim and Nancy left in another taxi already.") In this day of computers you might find yourself blacklisted from that company, and never be able to get a taxi from them again. When I was a dispatcher, there were several ass holes that I black listed, not only with my own company, but by calling up buddies at other companies and having them black listed there as well. I wonder if that guy on Glenrosa Ave. ever did get a ride?
CALL AND RECONFIRM YOUR ORDER EVERY HALF HOUR. The reason you do this is because many of these computer systems that cab companies now use delete calls automatically if the taxis have not been dispatched to it within 45 minutes or so. By calling and confirming, you can eliminate this headache.
BE READY TO GO WHEN YOUR CAB SHOWS UP: There ARE other humans on Earth other than you and some are even bigger lushes than you. Be courteous to the driver and his other customers by not tying up the taxi unnecessarily.
BE CLEAR ABOUT WHERE YOU WANT TO GO: Give an address. Or a major intersection. Or a bar name. Do not under any circumstances drunkenly tell your driver where to go and how to drive. Remember, he is the sober professional driver YOU are the alcoholic in the back seat. I remember I was driving past a field late one night with a crowd of truly trashed individuals in the back. One was alcoholically telling me directions. At one point he told me "Turn lefffft righhht ere." So, of course, I drove off the road and into the field. After a few yards, I stopped the taxi, looked at the idiot, and said "Now where?" "Oh.... I meant riiight."
AND ALWAYS TIP YOUR DRIVER: Heavily.
Anyway, I will post some of my experiences in the cab here from time to time. If you need a taxi in Phoenix, call me at Paul's Taxi (602)684-4220