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.
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