The King Gino Report I -New York City Taxi Driver Annecdotes. Vignettes, Slices Of Life

The first King Gino Report

This is about:

African Americans, Africans, Bronx, Cuba, Cuban refugee, Facebook, Frankie Boy, gay bar, Jeff Blankfort, leather bar, night people, race, strip club, strippers, taxi, the Bronx, The Eagle
I told you a little bit about Frankie Boy and his reports. I was being kind.  Gloves off .

Frankie Boy is a taxi driver who might remind you of the Jackie Gleason character Ralph Kramden. He's big and loud. And truth to tell, crude. I'm old, arthritic and walk with a cane so I've not wanted to invite a beating which could end my working days.

At times Frankie Boy would ventilate his frustration with trips to the depths of Brooklyn or the Bronx, with no tip at the end of it. When Frankie Boy's face gets red and he goes off on Black passengers I worry for him in a way. You see, most of the drivers in my garage are African immigrants. Most barely react. There's one African guy who takes polite exception I sometimes tell Frankie Boy to can it, or stop over generalizing, and that if he doesn'tcalm down he's going to have a stroke . Frankie Boy is son of Cuban refugees. I don't think there are many of them driving taxis, but Frankie Boy is one, just like I'm a New York Jew. There are surely more New York Jews driving taxis than Cuban Americans. I never asked Frankie Boy his story, but part of it is probably about his dissappearances and trips to Cuba, trips he enjoys immensley as he reports. He's crude. He whips out his cell phone to show images of attractive naked brown skinned young women. He can work like a dog for a few months, save up a relatively small stash and live like a rock star for a month in Cuba. When you drive for a taxi fleet you can come and go as you please.

Anyhow I think he's on to The Frankie Boy Report. I've told him that some of his reports vaguely remind me of highlights of my own shifts, but while he seems to remember virtually everything that happens on his shifts, I remember next to nothing. If I want to have a really successful Taxi Driver Blog I'd better get working on remembering stuff.

Now, because I amble rather than walk, carry a black and silver  walking stick, and maybe due also to my white beard, big belly one of the African drivers has dubbed me "the King ." Others call me Gino. Here's the first King Gino Report.

An asshole passenger refused to leave taxi. Got ride to garage in South Bronx .

An asshole passenger refused to leave a taxi, so he got a ride to a taxi garage in the South Bronx followed by an ambulance ride to Lincoln Hospital.

I once had one like that.  When the statute of limitations passes I might tell you how I dealt with it.

Driving St. Paddy's Day night was like pulling teeth. But I got lucky

This Saint Patrick 's Day didn't start out all that great. I start at my garage on 18th Street in the South Bronx and head into Harlem over the Third Avenue Bridge. I caught my first fare at 12th Street and Lexington Avenue, a thirtyish  Latina and this older and seemingly mentally delayed older white guy. They were going to The Bronx up near the Throggs Neck Bridge. The traffic was brutal most of the way and they were arguing in coded words I took to be drug related. He wanted to get high then and there in my taxi. She had a bag of whatever in her purse and wasn't going to share it till they got home. Surprisingly she not only paid in full, in cash without drama but she even gave me a fairly decent tip. But there I was, nowhere near my next fare, six pm and I had forty dollars. I didn't get another fare till 6:45. 

The entire night was slow, like pulling teeth. The streets were quiet and empty taxis raced each other going nowhere. 

It was at around three in the morning that I picked up my first and only serious drunks of the night, three young Irish guys on Bleeker and MacDougal going to Jersey City. I made an agreement with the spokesman, the one who seemingly knew where he was. Sixty bucks, cash, all in. On the Jersey side he asked me to stop and pull over. He vomited on the sidewalk, not on my door. I appreciated that. They didn't have sixty bucks between them. That I didn't appreciate. The first credit card got declined. Uh oh. It worked out okay though, I got $84 on the third card and headed back to Manhattan.  

As often is the case for me I made good money near the end of the shift. I took a Black cop home from his friend's place in Stuyvesant Town to Park Slope. Forty bucks. Out on Flatbush Avenue, amib an armada of empty taxis racing to the Manhattan Bridge, I had the good fortune of catching another forty dollar ride, all the way to 72nd and Broadway.  From there I caught one back into the Bronx, twenty-nine dollars, no tip, and I turned in for the night at the stroke of five in the morning. I made $249.00 for myself. The closing two hours saved my night.

The kind of hassles NYC fleet taxi drivers put up with that can still make Uber X look good.

You can tell from the dispatch receipt that I was clocked in at the garage at 13:34 and I got dispatched at 16:00. That means 2:26 minutes just hanging around. I put the time to good use because the other drivers who got there before I did are kind enough to let me sit on a bench where I have a wall to lean against and a plug to connect my cell phone chager. So I blog, read the news, bullshit with other drivers, doze, etc. No one is paying me, not yet. Oh, I'm rated pretty highly too (Silver, 259 points of a high of 292 and up for a Gold rating). So I guess I don't get the worse treatment. 

So it's four o'clock, I've got the key and the key to my taxi du jour. Now to find the car. I go to the usual spots, and guess what? It's in the last place I'd look- the body shop. It's filthy.

It's filthy alright, and the body workers have had the engine running all day, my taxi is the one that they took their brakes, meals and naps in and they had the engine running and the heat on full blast. I  go to the dispatcher and get his permission to get on the gas line and have the car filled up.

The car is short four gallons but the gas pumps have frozen up.

So I take the car to the car wash, then push and argue my way back onto the gas line. Finally, my gas tank is filled. Three hours and twenty minutes after checking in, 54 minutes after being dispatched.

Ready to  roll. I made $182.00. A lousy night, not caused by Uber.- How do I know? I picked up a passenger who happens to be a stripper.  She only made $23.00. I smell recession in the air.

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Everyone who knows me knows that I don't like cops

I made these videos last Sunday. 

I used to have all kinds of problems with the weekend dispatcher but when I came back from my three month stay in Venezuela everything was different.  Now we get along quite well.

On Sunday night I had a passenger who pressed my "talk" button and somehow my dislike for cops came into play.

I gotta stop cheating on my wife.....

A message to Muslim Americans from your friends

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Uber takes out the trash in New York City

Since February, when I came back from a three month visit to my wife's homeland, Venezuela I've been thinking about and writing about Uber and its impact on my life. When I left for Venezuela in November 2014 I had been taxi driving basically 6 nights a week. The garage had so many more drivers than cars that I had to commit to that schedule just to assure that I wouldn't be sent home instead of being assigned a taxi to work with.

Shape up at New York City's taxi garages pre the mass Uber recruiting of taxi drivers was like something out of "On The Waterfront " which helps you to understand Uber's initial successful raid on the taxi fleets. Uber pushed their luck though, I think with the fare cuts and boosts in their take. Along with the lower non-surge fares and no tip option policy Uber attracts less desirable customers. These people are ignorant of Uber's dodgy business practices,  abuses of drivers and fascistic "Mussolini's March On Rome" approach to political and regulatory impediments or worse, they "get it" and they approve. 

Anyhow, the drivers seem to be drifting back to the taxi garages. I noticed some of the Gubers on the Saturday night of the nation wide Uber strike. Drivers outnumbered cars at the garage.

But this past Saturday I had another aha!! moment.  I like to listen to classical music radio WQXR 105.7 fm. For the past few weeks no passengers have crudely demanded that I "put on some tunes. "

Uber has taken out the trash. 

Uberwars NYC October 13 update

The taxi bosses organized a march across the Brooklyn Bridge yesterday, October 12. I didn't go. I couldn't find any mention of it on the Internet.  Did it happen?  I don't know. Here's what I do know: A group of Uber drivers are trying to pull off a nationwide strike this weekend, October 16-18. I also know that there are medallion taxis that will be sitting parked as usual for lack of drivers on those days. I also know that many Uber drivers are licensed taxi drivers.  Couldn't they be incentivized to drive yellow during the strike?

Some of them are renting Uber cars by the week.  What's to lose for the fleet owners?

Maybe it's too late to get it together for this strike? Something is telling me that we're not looking at the one and only Nationwide Uber Strike, but rather the first. Maybe the notion of this proposal will sink in and become real the next time, and there is going to be a next time.

PS- It's a good time to let your drivers know about the free Sherpa Share heat map.  It directs drivers for Uber to the zones where Uber is likely to be charging passengers surge prices.  This is a war, right?

#Uber wars New York City Third Update Thursday, October 8, 2015

One thing you can count on is that Travis Kalanick, boss of Uber, doesn't cancel or postpone his war against taxis, buses, the automobile industry and just about anyone who works for a living. So the New York taxi driver march is set for last week got canceled, but then reset.That's good. Truly I don't think it will change things much.

The new taxi app called Arro has been on the road for a few weeks. Honestly I don't think it's going to change much either. It's set up better for safety than Uber and than the old dead app called Hailo that completely failed. I knew it would fail.Taxi apps like Hailo create danger to the public Arro is not nearly as bad, but I just don't think apps and New York Yellows mix.

Still we should be fighting Uber / Goldman Sachs

UBER DRIVERS ARE ORGANIZING A STRIKE FOR OCTOBER 16 TO 1

That is good for yellow taxi drivers and green too. Even if only a small number of Uber X drivers strike it will mean a little less competition on those days. And if they make any progress in forcing Uber to give them more money it will be good for everyone who drives for a living.

There is a free app that shows us where Uber will probably charge extra for its rides. The public hates it when Uber raises its fares and Uber drivers need these raises, because the ordinary fare after all the expenses leaves them with not much to put aside to take care of their cars and replace them when they are all worn out. 

Sherpa Share Heat Map

We can use this map. It tells us where there is probably more business. It's free from Google Play and i Store and it's easy to use the map.

Name that drug

                   

I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas or information about a new club drug that might be making the rounds in New York City,  possibly a rape drug. 

I picked up a young woman passenger who was put into the taxi in the financial district by a young man. I will tell you that she is the third such "case" that's been put into my taxi within the past few days. I am used to outer borough passengers who prefer to give turn -by turn directions to a taxi driver, and so I was not alarmed until, close to the exit of the Brooklyn Bridge she would only tell me what neighborhood she was going to, also telling me to bring her home.  She had no information to add. By chance I came upon a cop car and got some help.

Enjoy the video. 

PS I DIDN'T RECORD THE POOR WOMAN'S FACE AS I HAVE NO INTENTION TO HUMILIATE HER. I DO FEAR THAT SHE NEEDS AT LEASE TO BE SEEN IN AN EMERGENCY ROOM BUT THE COPS WE'RE SET ON PUSHING THE SITUATION ONTO ME.

Some of the petty fxcking aggravations of driving for.a yellow taxi fleet.

  As you can see this dashboard is lit  up like a Christmas tree. I was given this taxi when it only had the "Check Hybrid System " light light on light on and light on and the gas Guage at around 3/4 full. Now were it only the hybrid light I'd have let it be and expect to lose a few bucks to extra gas. But with a quarter of a tank already gone I thought I would try to defend myself this time. Now this laid a few tasks out before me:

1- Get a mechanic to fix the problem of the check hybrid light. I spent a few minutes getting one of the mechanics to work on that, i.e. hook up the computer to the car.

 2- Meanwhile I go back to the office push my way back to the front of the dispatcher's line and get his consent to a "gas check. " 

3-While I am doing that the hybrid light is being reset. That gets done now.

4- I take the car back to the gas line, convince the gas pump guy that I'm doing an authorized gas check and not trying to jump the line.

5- Pull the car over to walk back to the office to push through the line again to.give the gas slip to.the dispatcher. Immediately the yard boss starts yelling at me to get the car out of the lot.

6 - Finally I can head out to find my fortune. 

After eight hours on the road the dashboard lights up like a Christmas tree. 

Merry flippin' Christmas in September the car refuses to go into "Drive."

7- Call garage. Convince dispatcher that I need assistance. 

8- One hour and a half later the tow truck arrives with a replacement car. This is a post Uber reform.

9- Go home with my $110.00

Now I have demonstrated that I am not a taxi moguls ' flack. Uber NY is now renting cars out by the week to drivers. I doubt they'll put more into maintenance and repair than the fleets. Probably less. What do you think? 

After Yom Kippur the New York Philharmonic Brings In The Big Apple's New Year

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/09/25/arts/music/for-the-philharmonics-opening-night-a-new-name-and-a-big-gift.html?referer=https://www.google.com/

Yesterday was New York City 's annual "back to normal " day. Imagine the Philharmonic opening before Yom Kippur 

I listened and loved it on WQXR.

Thursday night was rocking night all over NYC for taxi drivers. Even me. Although I lost an hour to a car breakdown and a $28.00 fare to an unfortunate schizophrenic passenger I didn't do too badly. Drivers who had no special drama killed it. My Sherpa Share heat map showed zero uberheat all night.

I'm going to popularize Share with NewYork taxi drivers and we'll kick the shit out of Uber and its underpaid fascist shock troop Goobers. 

So let's cast our bread upon the waters and anticipate good things from God.

New York Taxis vs. Uber - Anthony Noto Gets It All Wrong.

http://www.bizjournals.com/newyork/news/2015/08/17/yellow-cab-group-cites-data-to-support-case.html


No, he's not the Anthony  Noto who's Chief Financial Officer  at Twitter. He's a reporter for New York Business Journal.  He actually  was reporting about a report in the New York Daily News.  The big error and misinformation  is that across the  board, New York City cabbies  have lost nine percent of their  income  to Uber.

The fact is that the  taxi business  across the  board has lost receipts,  but there are fewer taxi drivers who are working.  Making it simple : If ten taxi drivers in a hundred driver fleet don't show up to work one day and together make 90 percent of  what 100 drivers would have made then the individual drivers lost nothing overall.

Some yellow taxi drivers  went to Green cabs, and  some went to Uber. Some took two weeks off for the summer, went on extended family vacations  in their home countries.

Chart illustrates how many Uber cars were working  in New York City  and how many and how many fares they  picked up. With an alleged 20,0000 cars, not 14,000 as reported by  Noto, they have 3000 actually working on average.

Summertime  is often the  slowest time for taxi drivers. Well to do New Yorkers are out of town, if not for the  summer  at least several  weeks and weekends.  This summer  the strong dollar  weakened the tourist  trade. Things get back to normal  after the  Jewish  High Holy Days.

Here's a  message to the  taxi bosses and Arro, the new taxi app. Uber spends millions on promotions and advertising.  Just showcasing the new app on Taxi TV will not do the trick. Remember HAILO. 

Thanks Thanks to Thanks to Sherpa Thanks to Sherpa Share Thanks to Sherpa Share I Thanks to Sherpa Share I definitely ste eat eat least eat least one  surge passenger from a heat zone. She definitely  canceled her Goober once she sat down in my taxi.😁

C

Uber wars New York City End of Summer Report

http://m.nydailynews.com/new-york/taxi-pickups-plummet-77-million-2015-analysis-article-1.2327367

Most Summers it's a bit harder driving a taxi. Affluent Manhattanites are out of town. The kids at NYU and Columbia  are gone. If the dollar  is strong,  like it's  been awhile then foreign tourists are not filling the  gap . It's tough for the liveries  too so lots of them turn to poaching street hails whether they're affiliates of Uber or ABC.

New taxi drivers and  taxi drivers  who like to  see  the  end of the world always  seem to be  found by Daily News  reporters doing their  taxi human interest  piece for August. A perfect  storm for  complaints  about  Uber. Daily News  reporters  Nolan Hicks  and Dan Rivoli got the story this year.

There's no  doubt that  yellow  cab receipts are down but so is the number of  yellow  taxis  on the  prowl. First some drivers went to Green cabs. Second some went to Uber  and third, some took off to visit their native  lands. It happens  every summer.  So yellow  taxi receipts  are down,  but spread among fewer taxi drivers. Fewer cabbies chasing  fares mean fewer fares.

Lawrence  Meyers pointed out some rusty spots on Uber' s shiny suit of PR armor, namely that Uber appears to be tapped out. Out of of the highly touted number of 20,0000 Ubers on the road in New York City only around 3000 are actually working at any given time. Of course Uber/ Goldman Sachs is a threat to all transportation workers on earth today. I wouldn't be happy if I were not fighting  Uber.

STOMPING OUT UBER MEANS STARVING GOOBERS 

Goobers live on surge prices.  The straight up Uber fare just doesn't support a Goober  and a car. One way to starve a Goober is to be where Uber is demanding surge prices.Uber customers  often will cancel a priceyGoober if there's an empty cheaper taxi who reaches them first.

Sherpa Share has an app that shows where the  demand for  Uber  is greater than the  supply of GOOBERS. These heat zones are the best place to be for finding a fare. This is no guarantee, but where the map is red, Uber passengers will pay extra, sometimes a whole lot extra. As a bonus you could be taking a fare away from Uber and helping starve a Goober. 

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Uberwar NYC update 9/01/15.

I downloaded an app that's used by Uber drivers for some business related tasks. The function I was looking for was the heat map. It tells the drivers where there are concentrations of passengers that outnumber Uber cars available to them. Drivers get bonuses and passengers within the warm zones pay premiums called surge prices. UberX can sometimes be cheaper than a yellow taxi but not generally so when surge pricing is in effect.

Above is a screenshot showing where the surge heat was at 2:27 this morning. None in Manhattan, a lot in parts of Brooklyn that were called ghettos not so many years ago. In those Brooklyn heat zones a taxi medallion provided an advantage over green taxis and Ubers evaluated by me at $00.00. IMO where people are looking for Uber's at a premium price there are people who'd cancel an Uber car and grab the taxi if it reached them before the Uber. Tonight I did that twice. Yellow taxi drivers should start doing battle with the goobers in their own comfort zones. 

Starve a goober, smash the surge and make money.

Aiming an Arro at Uber's heart.

Hailo was a taxi hailing app that was destined to fail miserably and that it did. The Taxi and Limousine Commission had blocked the industry from developing its own E hail system, obviously mimicking the referees of professional wrestling matches. Now there's ARRO rolling out this month. I hope to be using it soon along with thousands of other cabbies. I'll be seeking the heat too with the heatmap app by SherpaShare. Don't go to a knife fight wearing a blindfold.

Politics make strange bedfellows. Here's a notice of an anti Uber demonstration to be led by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance and Bhairavi Dessai. The notice was posted by fleet managers in the taxi driver waiting room at "my" garage. Dessai is  the one who worked with Michael Bloomberg to bring in the green taxis and with Bloomberg and Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to destroy taxi fleet leader Yevgeny (Gene) Friedman after he messed with Bloomberg and Uber. I doubt any fleet owner wants to fill his shoes, so the default "industry leader" will be Bhairavi "no skeleton in my closet" Dessai.

Line jumping taxi 1K38 Alltaxi.com Cornell Medical Center 6:57 pm

I like to go to pick up passengers at Cornell Medical Center, which is located at the end of East 68th Street for a whole number of reasons. For one thing it's set up.in a way that lets me wait on an orderly line rather than me racing up and down the streets competing with people who are younger than me. Their reflexes and vision are sharper than mine are. So waiting on a line and getting the luck of the draw, the good fares or the not so good ones, makes sense for me. Also the management of Cornell is thoughtful enough that they allow us taxi drivers to use the good clean restroom facilities of the E.R. while we don't have to worry about getting a parking ticket.

Also I like the idea of serving patients, visitors and the doctors, nurses and workers. Each deserves to be treated with respect, possibly more so than any.random passengers.

So it really bothered me that this character pulled in front of me while I was stopped, waiting for the taxi that had just picked up passengers at the front of the line to pull out, and for the taxis ahead of me to move up a spot. I didn't like it but I'd never thought of making a big deal about it. BUT when two people got into his taxi and a couple of moments later emerged and started walking towards my taxi I got angry. Very angry. This dirtbag was refusing to take them where they wanted to go. Just what they needed as they left the hospital - a rude insult.

Also it was the second insult this slimeball delivered to me directly. Here he's telling me : "I cut you off so that I'd get a fare before you, but these people are not going to be a profitable transaction. So here, chump, they're yours."

Well, I am not any cabbie's back up driver.

I walked over to him. I told him I'm going to report him to the TLC. He flipped the bird, and told me to go fuck myself.

Uber "defeated" in New York City according to well respected pawn broker.

Who better than.A payday loan and pawn shop vulture/mogul to write UberNYC's obituary? PDL capital's CEO Lawrence Meyers has stepped up to the plate to do the honors, blaming Big Government for Uber's predictable New York City downfall. Actually as long as suckers  like the folks at Hill House Capital Group can be convinced to pour the retirement savings of the Chinese public into Uber it probably will.soldier on in cities like New York and Chicago as cash bleeding zombie operations.

I don't know what Lawrence Meyers' stake in Uber is but I'd guess it's related to sub prime car loans and leases.

Meyers might be looking at a bunch of defaults, unless others have been stuck with those funny papers. I hope the New York employee pension funds are not among them as I warned two years ago that New York City is not going to be an gu.com/p/3hytp e hail town.

New York City tightens rules for Uber

Last Monday morning the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission voted to tighten it's oversight of Uber. Starting next month Uber will have to give passengers accurate estimates of surge pricing fares, which can be several times their normal advertised rates.

Drivers will be physically unable to input data into their Uber apps while their car is in motion except for one touch to accept a job. Drivers will not be allowed to have more than one app and the app must be attached to the car. The app will not be allowed to have turn by turn navigation directions, and any software change in e hail apps must be reported to the TLC. The original proposed rule required TLC approval of such changes. Uber touts the retreat by the TLC as a major victory. By requiring Uber to report such changes, it's still implicit that the TLC can disapprove a software change.

Also last Monday it had been expected that State Supreme Judge Chen in Queens, was going to require the City to explain why the mayor should not order an immediate ban on Uber. This did not take place. The city made a motion to move the case to Manhattan, apparently a delaying tactic.

Meanwhile traffic has been moving almost ten percent more slowly in Manhattan than in 2011. The TLC and Department of Transportation are sponsoring a City Council Bill to temporarily freeze the addition of livery cars while an environmental impact study is being conducted. Uber did a mass e mail to its customers who live in bill sponsor Steve Kevin's Brooklyn District attacking him. The bill is expected to pass and be signed into law by mayor deBlasio.

From what I gather UberX is no longer an option for earning a living.

Uber does count on mathematical illiteracy fostered by our wonderful system of education. Once a driver wakes up and smells the coffee he/she will probably want out. A problem arises for the ones who are trapped in a sub prime 22% interest sub prime auto loan.

While I am not a lawyer or a financial advisor, I want you Uber drivers who feel like your backs are against the wall all to know that your credit score is already shot to shit so there might not be much of a downside in either just walking away from the car, and/or filing bankruptcy. It's hard to face the realization, it's a bitter pill to swallow, but your alternative may be a physical and mental collapse. You just cannot keep going out there banging your head against a freaking wall.

uberdriverdiaries.com

Tell the judge that you went broke giving bottled water to cheapskate millionaires. 

It looks like Uber has created an opportunity for taxi drivers in New York City.

When I left NYC in November for three months the fleet I drive for had so many drivers a driver could come to shape up and wait two hours only to be told that there was no car for him and to come back tomorrow.

In order to avoid that unpleasantness I opted for another - a commitment to work six nights a week, which allowed me to come to the garage at five p.m. knowing that I will work regardless of how many other drivers had been there since three. At my age this was becoming quite trying.

When I returned to my garage in February the situation had turned because several of the drivers took a payoff from Uber and left. Now I work a more humane pace, as I.had planned to do, only expecting to be sent home one or two nights a week. Well, that's not the case now. My garage has a good location, otherwise I'd switch. Hmmm maybe I will switch to get those bonuses then come "home"....

If I could freeze frame the Uber situation I'd benefit. I'd have to adopt the attitude of our elected officials and stop worrying about a few pedestrians getting killed by app distracted Uber drivers who are exempt from State and TLC safety standards....