Sketchbook Cabbie

Dude, Help Me Get My Car Back?

It's a Saturday afternoon and I’m driving the few miles from the Budget Motel to the Marin Vehicle Pound in Corte Madera. Faux Jay and Silent Bob are in the back of my cab reeking of pot. They need to get their car back. These two stoners had it impounded the day before by the U.S. Park Police after being arrested smoking pot (“and just a little hash, ok”) on Muir Beach.
“Didn’t you know you were on federal land, guys?” I inquire.
Silent Bob answers,” I’ll bet if we jumped in the ocean, they couldn’t arrest us.”
This is the tone of the conversation on the drive over.
“Guys, I gotta roll down the window, okay?”  I say.
I find them a bit amusing until they ask me, “Can you drive the car off the lot for us. They need to see a license. We can give you $20.”
“Where’s your license?,” I ask.
“In the glove compartment, dude.”
“Hmmmmm,” I wonder.
“We need to get back to Colorado,” he adds.
I figure I should consider helping them get out of Marin.
At the impound, Ron, the tow truck operator has no tolerance for their attitude.  Silent Bob hands over some form…a request to retrieve the vehicle.
“Where’s the title and registration”, Ron asks. “I need the title and registration for the vehicle.”
“Dude, I just bought the car two days ago,” says Silent Bob.
‘Then where’s the title transfer,” Ron asks.
“In the glove compartment, maybe.”
Off we trot past the gate that Ron unlocks. I’m trailing further behind.
The car door gets unlocked and Faux Jay goes into the glove compartment.
“Dude, the cops musta took ‘em.”
“Okay,” Ron suggests, “You need to go to the DMV and get a copy of the title and get it signed, then come back. I can’t give you the car, till then.”
“Dude, no way!”
Back in the cab, my stoners are crashing as I drive them back to the Budget Motel.
“It’s $85 bucks a day for the impound, “ Silent Bob says.
“You guys, I’ll take $20 for this little excursion,” I’m done. “and it’s a holiday on Monday so you’ve got a few days to wait.”
“Dude,” murmurs Faux Jay, “Hey, there’s a P.J. Chang’s over there. I gotta eat.”

Thank$ Larry

The biggest event of the year for San Francisco is not Halloween or even the Gay Pride Parade. It’s JavaOne, the Oracle Developers Conference. The city rolls out the red carpet for 60,000 nerds. They take over several blocks around Yerba Buena and the Moscone Center. All downtown hotel rooms are booked. They spend a lot of money and the city needs it.

So when I drove a young woman who works for Oracle South Africa and her client from their lunch in Sausalito to their hotels in the city, I got to hear just how much cash was involved. She’d taken the gentleman over on the ferry for a meal at the chic Poggio restaurant. “Tonight, I take 17 people to The Slanted Door (in the Ferry Building)”, she tells me. I figure that’ll be a sizable but effective chunk of change from Oracle’s promotion budget. “Tomorrow night, I host another group at Kitsho.”

She’s pulling out all the stops. “Can you take us down the curvy street,” she asks. I tell her,  “There’s probably a line all the way up Lombard Street being Sunday and all”. “It’ll be okay", she answers. “Will it?”, I have to wonder. I do my tricky left onto Filbert then another left onto Hyde, which puts us right at the top of Lombard, with no waiting. The she does her photo op thing, standing out the window, as we slowly descend the hill.

After that I cruise down to Market, I drop her client at the Marriott Hotel on 4th St. then I take her to the Omni Hotel on California. “Are we liking Larry (Ellison, her CEO) these days,” I ask. Her response (almost defensively), “You’ve got to respect him for what he’s done, despite what people say. You know his yearly salary is $1. But he does have a $28 million credit limit…more than Bill Gates.” “Really”, I say.

I let my client out at the Omni and she spends $82. on me. Thanks Larry. 

Speaking their Language

I’ve made it a point to learn a few phrases in Spanish. Sometimes it seems like half of Marin County is Spanish-speaking. “Derecha aqui, senor?” is the one I use most often. Also,”El viaje costará 10 dólares, por favor” is a biggie. Not as much call for French (“Bienvenue sur mon cab”) and Italian (“come stai, gli italiani”), which I know a little. The young couple from Paris I drove last weekend to the L'Église Notre-Dame-des-Victoires on Bush at Grant spoke fairly fast, but I understood enough to know they were on vacation and they wanted to go eat dim sum in Chinatown, right after. Taxis are as ubiquitous in the world as Starbucks. Which is why the reality show travelers on The Amazing Race depend so much on us. Every Sunday morning, I drive Millie, who was born in the Fiji islands to the San Rafael Mission Church. I always greet her with, “Bula Vinaka” ("Hello" and "Thanks")? I’m an immigrant myself (from Canada) and I’d appreciate a little native tongue from my taxi driver. Well, you know what I mean.