Conversations with taxi drivers

Hahhahaha. Is that an actual quote? That's fucking brilliant.

Yes, Alex, an actual quote.

Rather edgy speedy taxi driver driving thru St Kilda: "look at him. Fuckin junkies. I fuckin hate junkies. They don't deserve to live."

He then proceeded to tell me about his speed habit and how he'd been banned from every pub in the area. Scary motherfucker.

Several years ago -

Taxi driver: "Look over there mate! Singo!" ( = John Singleton, well known Aust media and beer identity and famous for the dismissive expression 'Pig's Arse!').

He then swerves the car and tries to hit Singo. Misses by an inch.

Taxi driver, under his breath: "F***ing Singo - I hate the c****."

The rest of the journey passed in silence.

john singleton?!!!

fun convos in chicago cabs = balding guys discussing sexual exploits, all in thick slavic/russian accents.

My dad was a taxi driver in New York city for about two years in the early 80's.

these days I am so drunk in taxis I tend to talk away to them from the backseat, total nonsense agreeing with whatever they say. i just shout "YEAH! HE'S A FUCKING IDIOT DUDE" and they say "Now you have it son".

I may have told this story before (and I wish I could remember all the details), but I got into a taxi with a driver who never stopped lying the whole time. He said he was on the way to pick someone else up (that much was true) and told me to get into the front seat. He stopped to tell some people waiting for the bus that the buses had stopped running, even though that wasn't true. (Somewhere along the line he said, "I am the crazy Pakistani cab driver," or something of that sort.) When he got to where he was supposed to pick up passengers, he radioed in to say that they weren't there, then he picked them up. He told them I was his friend. I think he told them some other bullshit. Anyway, he dropped me off, and I short changed him a little bit ("I know you don't like to take money from me"), but I wish I had just not paid at all. After all, I was his "friend."

I am vaguely remembering another one who told me the story of some stripper he was in love with, her run-ins with the police, the cat fights strippers have with each other, etc. ("If she'd just clean up her act, I would marry her," not verbatim, but that was the idea.)

One time, I had cabbed back to my then-shared house after DJing at a rock bar in Belltown in downtown Seattle. The cabbie noticed i had a bunch of records, CDS, and headphones and said "I see you're been DJing". I was pretty sauced up (free bar for the DJ, yay!) so I was "HELLS YEAH!"... and then he went on to very saucily talk about his collection of Madonna CD-singles in this very s l o w , c a l m , disturbing Liberace/Mr. Roger's tone of voice, and how there was this one CD-single which was almost (holy shit) the length of her album. He went on to describe how amazing it was that each remix on this very long CD-single was quite different than the other, and how amazing this extended CD single technology was. "Oh boy, it's one of the best CDs I own. And they cost only a fraction of the regular CD. It's amazing what you can in the CD single sections of your music stores today. And she has released other ones as well with plenty of different versions of the same song. Those are all really good, but not as good as that one" (by that time, i completely forgot which Madonna CD single he had been originally talking about) "I really like Madonna." "She's great"

I've never sobered up so quickly than that night.

funny to see this thread, cause i had the best cab-driver ever on thursday... we were stuck in traffic and he was just going off, culminating in this:

"this michael jackson thing makes me think of that saying, 'where there's smoke there's fire', knowwhati'msayin? i mean he's always got little boys around, acting weird. everybody knew what was going on.

like if you got in my cab, and it reeked of pot, and i had bloodshot eyes - you wouldn't need to see me smoke a joint to know I was toking, knowwhatI'msaying? and you'd be right too, cause I am high as a motherfucker... (laughing/coughing fit)"

"And then once I was with this woman who was into the 'rough' stuff...you know, she wanted me to tie her up and stuff. And, well, you know, a man sees stuff like that in the movies and gets curious, I mean, it could be fun! But then I thought 'HOLD ON A MINUTE, this could be a trick!' I mean, if we went ahead with it, later on she could say that I abused her, and I would have no way of proving this a lie. So I didn't do it."

That up there is the culmination of an increasingly disturbing (and yet hilarious) talk I once had with a 50something cab driver. At the end of the ride he told me that he was very glad to have met me, "you seldom meet people who really think about things." Well then!

A cab driver drove me right into the centre of the wedding I was going to - I mean, right into the centre of the wedding, guests all around me. It was outrageous, audacious.

Driver (as he accepted my fare, and by way of explanation): "You must make yourself big, man. You must big yourself up in this life. Walk out now. You are the king."

Phil to thread.

Once I went to a friend's house to pick up a quarter baggie, and smoked a few while I was there. I called a taxi to come take me back home as I was quite toasted. The taxi thar turned up was one of those huge van things, which freaked me out somewhat. Then I opened the front passenger door and this cabdriver leaned down and grinned at me all Richard D James style and said "donnnnt be scared! Its juuuust like a normal taxi!" in this hideous Alice in Wonderland singsong spooky voice.

I have never had such a weed freakout in all my life.

Fantastic. Coincidentally, I just saw the (Gene Wilder) Willie Wonka movie. That sounded like a Willie Wonka moment. I think Wonka made a deep impression on Richard James.

Yeah it was somewhat Wonka-esque. RDJ must have been into the Wonka story, one of the tracks on SAW has that sample "we are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of the dreams". Or is that Polygon Window? Anyway.

Yeah that's Aphex Vol 1 - 'We Are the Music Makers'. Also he sampled Mary Poppins somewhere. English psychedelia eh?

there must be more good ones.

My girfriend almost got intentionally run down by a taxi driver only last night, because he complained about her eating her Junior Whopper in the cab. She told him to f*** off and things quickly degenerated from there.

I was at home quietly tapping away on my computer when it all happened. It was about midnight. All was quiet. There was a light pitter-patter of drizzle and I suddenly heard the unmistakeable sound of my girfriend in full tilt abuse mode wafting down the street. She called him a slut and a whore! He didn't like that and tried to run her down! Then, abuse streaming from her lips, she comes in though the front door and says, 'Hi honey! I'm home!'

not exactly a conversation, but a funny story anyway:
a friend and i got into a taxi, and things seemed normal at first. the driver asked if we minded the radio, and we said we didn't. his response to this was to turn the volume up to deafening and start singing along at the top of his lungs to poco's "pick up the pieces." we hit the fdr drive, and he gunned it to about 70 and started weaving in and out of traffic. then he got out a can of skoal and drove with his elbows while opening it with a pocket knife. several near accidents ensued. the song switched to rick nelson's "garden party," which was apparently another favorite of his. when the line about how if you're not happy with what you're doing you might as well drive a truck came up, he screamed "hell, yeah!" in approbation. his comment upon getting us to our building: "pretty quick, huh?" aieee.

When I lived in Amherst Mass, where there were like two or three cabs total (more than once I waited hours for a cab to come), this one guy was always the guy to pick me up if I called from Northampton. Right from the first time, he started talking to me about, "your brother B___," which is my brother's name (the underscores are silent), and all the trouble he'd gotten into, and yeah, my brother used to get into a lot of trouble. Only he was talking about someone else entirely, which I realized after a couple of exchanges, and he thought I was some totally different guy, and since I was getting him to drive me to see my girlfriend, he thought I was cheating on some woman the guy-I-was-confused-with lived with, and it was this whole big thing. This whole big thing that carried on every time I saw him, since after the first time I stopped denying I was That Other Guy, which apparently he thought I was doing so I wouldn't get caught cheating.

When Gareth and I took a cab in Austin we got a dude who rambled on and on about the cabal of world leaders--you know Peter Jennings, Bush, Clinton, etc -- and their secrect meetings. Whatever. Gareth could probably tell you more. The driver was just weird and made us both laugh when we get out of the cab. You rarely if ever take cabs in TX so I don't have much to share.

My most interesting cab story however took place the first time I went to New York City. I had just arrived at Penn Station and was taking a cab to the hotel. Traffic was blocked by this guy sitting in the middle of the road. It seemed he was trying to commit suicide. His distraught friends were on the sidewalk trying to lure him back to safety. As we swerved around him, barely missing, our driver flipped him the bird and gave a few choice words.

Ahh, what a welcome to New York.

(oh, almost forgot about the dude who drove me home from the emergency room early one morning. He was lecturing me about how I should avoid traditonal medical care and wrote down a list of essential oils or something I should use to cure my illness. Goddamn Austin.)