Monday, December 10, 2007

Flagging Down a Cab, Boston-style



For my money, there's no better way to flag down a cab than to pretend to throw ice-balls at them while stepping somewhat precariously into oncoming traffic.

In Ronnie's defense, almost every cab that drove past us had their "Vacancy Light" turned on (is "vacancy light" the appropriate term? It is now), and not one of them stopped to pick us up. Who the hell does that when it's 2:30 in the morning and -15 degress? Our limited weekend experience taught us that the cab drivers in Boston could be supreme A-holes, although the one dude from the Sudan who gave us a Coles-notes history of the Sudanese Civil War was top shelf.

(As a side note, 30 seconds after this video was shot, another cab driver responded to a black man's inquiry as to why he wouldn't pick him up if he had his "vacancy light" on by throwing a chicken wing at him and saying: "Take this. I hear you people like fried chicken"... I didn't manage to get the narrowly averted race riot that ensued in the aftermath on tape, but needless to say, the defense rests as far as the general character of Boston taxi drivers goes.)



More Beantown highlights to follow shortly.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

And you wonder why I had to lie to the cabbie I managed to finally flag down, alone no less, by promising him that the other THREE people we were going to pick up weren't drunk and weren't dickheads at all.

Looks like I'm the biggest ass of them all for subjecting the poor young man to what I'm sure felt like the longest ever cab ride into Southy, with his backseat crammed with four insensitive assholes...