This is a list, which I will inevitably have to add to, of up to now, the craziest encounters I've had with taxi drivers.
1. Place: DCA
A Middle Eastern looking guy who would not stop ending every sentence with "sir", which is really annoying after about 5 minutes. After I tell him where I wanted to go, he starts with small talk, no big deal, but then, he says: "Would you like to hear some poetry?" Against my better judgment, I said yes. He start reading his "poems" with were all just filled with puns. The only line I can remember from it is "knights of nights" and it went on with bad word play for a good 15 lines. Yeah... when you don't have control of a language, please don't make pun-y poetry.
2. Place: SoHo
After a late night, my friends and I didn't feel like taking the 7 train home to Queens, and then a bus to my parents place. So we decided to take a taxi, somewhere near Williamsburg bridge. This guy is irate from the get go. Granted all NYC cab drivers are really aggressive and they have to be, but this guy was something else. Long story short, I have the window open on the backseat driver side, he tries to cut off a car,he gets hit by the car and I almost get my arm crushed. This leads into a giant curse fest, while driving, and of course the other car is a tricked out rice burner filled with Asian guys who think they're tough. Driver gets called a "fucker", leaves, and now has a dent in his taxi.
3. Place: My house
When a cab picked me up, the first thing I notice is this guy is white. There's not many of those, it's like finding a four leaf clover, it may be lucky or it's just a shitty piece of grass. He has this way of talking where he sounds like Garyson Keillor from a Prairie Home Companion, just much less interesting and a lot less folksy. Since we ran into some traffic on 395, he decides that that was a good time to read me some poetry, because "You looked like somebody that would enjoy it". I didn't think this could get that bad, considering this guy at least has a good control of the English language. He proceeded to read me some bullshit about snow days. The kicker is the poem, throughout, was an alliteration of the letter S for snow! If a 10 year old wrote it, it would have been great. He was not 10. Then I asked him who his favorite poet was, he replied "I don't read poetry". OF COURSE YOU DON'T JACKASS! Or you'd realize you suck, and your writing skills rival that of an 8th grader.
4. Place: Midtown Manhattan
I generally trust cabs I get in midtown Manhattan. They've done this for years and are generally too busy to fuck with you. NOT THIS TIME! A couple of our friends hail a cab down and we wanted to go downtown, this guy pulls up and I tell him where we need to go. The first thing he says is: "I have no clue how to get there, you need to tell me". He then goes on to explain how we're, literally, his second customers ever. He started that day, had one passenger, and then us. I ended up having to GPS this guy to where we needed to go. What are the chance in New York to get the guy who started THAT DAY and has NO GPS.
5. Place: DCA
This nice Indian man is the driver, its late and I've had a really long week, all I really want to do is go home, shower, and sleep. This is when I still lived in Rockville, so the ride from DCA to Rockville is a good 30 minutes. I can't remember what it was, but there was a recent report about something dealing with US foreign policy. I tend to stay away from politics with cab drivers, but this guy made some off handed remark about how the US shouldn't be in Iraq. After a little chatter about Iraq, he decided to take the conversation to Afghanistan, which lead to Pakistan, which lead him to a giant tirade about how much Pakistan sucks and why we, the US, should go in there a show them what's up. Yeah... don't talk politics with cab drivers, you don't know what crazies will emerge.
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