THE TAXI GAME (Part II)
Jann Burner
August 12, 2006
Like big boats playing shark in shallow water these large bumper cars traveled the coastal streets of late San Francisco. Their steering wheels all black crusty plastic spinning first this way and then around the corner between the bread truck and the bus and--watch the old man crossing the street at Jones and O'Farrell! A large human hand reaches out from the curb and grabs for the driver's attention--the Hilton hotel is just ahead--maybe a ride to Mill Valley waiting? The large humanoid hand anxiously waves from the curb. Did the driver see it? Just a few more feet and...Jesus, what a line at the hotel! A quick check in the rear view mirror--no traffic! The driver skids to a stop, snaps the transmission into reverse--breaks, pops open the rear door and a young big breasted hustler with eyes like rusty bolts slides thigh flashing in and says, "to the airport please..."
In a sea of humanity anxiously rushing about on important missions, I had discovered that the Cab Driver was king. Not many spectators or even fares were aware of this. Some pointed to the bus, but a bus, like a train, was captive of a route. A taxicab was free. Nobody, least of all other spectator drivers, fucked with taxis. They knew that the typical cab driver had no "pride" of ownership, no morals and quite obviously no sense or why would an adult person be engaged in such an occupation?
In San Francisco there were almost as many cab drivers as there were policemen. Their rate of pay, though, was considerably less, but then people who drove taxis were not in it for the money. As far as I had been able to deduce, cab drivers were game players and The Taxi Game was a general growth game designed to test player alertness, sense of humor and overall sanity. The Taxi Game was played upon a specially designed game board situated upon a small peninsula of land which some choose to call San Francisco. Upon this peninsula the Supreme Adult Gaming Authority (SAGA) had seen fit to lay out hundreds and hundreds of roads, streets, avenues, alleys, lanes and ways--all with confusing names, nicknames and foreign pronunciations. Along these highways, by-ways and back alleys, SAGA had constructed semi-realistic looking houses, apartments and businesses. Every single building, business and/or vacant space had been given a numerical designation. These came in handy in trying to connect a real fare with his or her desired destination.
The designers of the game had gone all out to import almost 800,000 semi-realistic looking spectators. These spectators were divided into two major categories: fares and pseudo fares. Out of the 800,000 spectators there were only five thousand real fares. The rest were merely third-class spectators outfitted to look like real fares. Their job was to make--the player--take the game as seriously as possible. They would heckle, complain, insult, compliment, rob, maim and/or murder.
The five thousand real fares were in turn subdivided into three categories, the first of which might be termed Fun Fares. An attractive, flirtatious young lady in a micro-mini skirt would be a Fun Fare, as would a humorous, eccentric old man intent upon locating $50,000 which he buried somewhere in Golden Gate Park back in 1929. His ploy was that he liked you and wanted you to become his partner.
The second category might be called the Grey People. These were the fares you forget were there. It was Sunday. It was eighty degrees in the shade and I was on my way to the Cliff House at the beach, hopefully to find a Fun Fare. The traffic was heavy and I was in a hurry. As I turned my head to execute an intricate lane change, I was startled to notice two middle-aged people perched in the rear of my cab. I flipped through the card file that passed for my memory, but I could not remember where I might have picked them up and for the life of me, I had no idea where they might be going. Finally, in a move of desperation, I made a cab-driver-like comment to draw them out, but they continued to stare straight ahead. They would not respond. In frustration I finally pulled over at an arbitrary point and in a very official voice said, "Well--here we are!" They dutifully paid and left.
The third category of fare was The Weirdo's. It was testimony to the difficulty of this particular game that SAGA had seen fit to spare no expense in importing prime weirdo's to complicate the driver's life on this particular game board. The Authority issued notice to the nation initially by naming this pseudo-city after an ancient Jesuit with a bird fetish and then further hyped the public with reference to a gate of solid gold spanning the Bay.
"But," you may ask, "how did one win at this game and what is it that one won that made it all so...so worthwhile?" The driver/player received points in the form of dollars and cents for transporting a real fare from one point on the game board to another arbitrary point on the game board. This player, if successful, after many arduous days, months and/or years of play, finally accumulated so many points that he got what was called a feeling of security. This feeling called security was based on an old law which stated, "Points equals time equals security equals game." Once a player/driver accumulated enough points to grant him the necessary time to feel secure, he realized the basic stupidity of what it was he was doing and so he quit. This brought up another old law "To quit is to win." A player might lose or fail, but he could not in all honesty quit or win until he realized what a game it was he was playing. Conversely, to lose is to retire. To receive notice that you were due to retire from any particular game was to receive official notice that time had been called on your game and you had lost.
This, at least in part, accounted for the impish grin on any successful cab driver's face, for by merely being eligible to be considered a possible player, one had to have had experience playing many other games and to have won (quit) those other games. All taxi drivers began as winners because they had successfully realized the essential gameish qualities of their past pursuits and had thus won by having quit those pursuits. This undoubtedly accounted for the high degree of independence and competition among taxi drivers. They intuitively realized that the game they had chosen to play was an advanced one.
I fondly recall my first day on The Street (taxi talk for the game board). It was raining slightly as I cruised down Columbus Avenue towards the Cannery. My radiator was leaking badly and the engine was threatening to boil over despite the fact that the outside temperature was only fifty degrees. Visibility was limited (my windshield had been custom-pitted with a ball-peen hammer and then coated with some sort of mysterious grease) and from the movement of my gas gauge, there appeared to be at least three major holes in my fuel tank. Although I had yet to pick up my first fare, I had already developed a nervous tic in my left eye, caused no doubt by the radio. Someone had cleverly turned up the volume and then disconnected the switch. This would have been acceptable except for the fact that my antenna had been removed at the previous red light by a gang of teenagers intent upon entering my vehicle. I was having trouble picking up a fare because the curb side of my cab was so badly dented that no one could open the door and the street side was emblazoned with certain unmentionable colloquial expressions. Suddenly, I saw my opportunity. An eighty year old man with dark glasses and a white cane had just left a bank and was edging his way across the street from left to right. I quickly stopped in the crosswalk and snapped open my one usable door. As the blind man stumbled into the rear seat I apologized for the delay and was about to inquire as to his destination when I noticed that the man's pearl handled revolver had dropped to the floor. As I reached to retrieve it he whacked the back of my hand with his cane and said in a rather loud voice--"Quick! To the airport!"
As I accelerated across the cable car track to get out of the way of the several converging police vehicles, my cab lurched slightly and with a barely perceptible snap the steering wheel went slack in my hands. Apparently the tie-rods had come undone. By this time I had reached forty miles per hour and was headed across an intersection toward a line of expensive new cars cleverly placed along the curb directly in my path. I spun the wheel to the left and it turned as loosely as a ship's wheel at anchor. It could have been serious for a player of lesser ability, but as it turned out I was able to complete a rather creditable day by using the badly adjusted foot brake for right turns and the loosely connected emergency brake for left turns.
After speaking with more experienced driver/players it was brought to my attention that I should feel proud. I had been issued a cab with a ten handicap. The Supreme Adult Gaming Authority had only recently introduced what it called the Mechanical Handicap Factor. The purpose of the handicap was to reduce any inequity in driver proficiency. Since it had been my first day on The Street and since I had managed to survive a ten handicap cab, I was respectfully granted the option of trying for a second day.
My second day happened to fall on a Sunday and as I quickly discovered, if you're in it for the money, weekend days are boredom and Sunday is apt to be terminal boredom. As you search constantly for that elusive Fun Fare to Carmel, the game becomes a total drag and you cannot help but feel rather foolish. It's Sunday, for God's sake--you could be home in bed reading the newspaper with somebody. Instead there I was at the ferry building trying in desperation to give away a free ride to Sausalito just to relieve the monotony.
Unfortunately, some SAGA executive had tipped the one hundred or so pseudo fares that I was a ten handicap player and I found myself received with all the warmth and enthusiasm of a heroin dealer at a private girls' grammar school. But then--quite unexpectedly--an elderly couple from an Australian cruise ship crept out of the dark cave that passes for Pier 35 and hailed me down and begged to be taken to the one place that I felt represented the San Francisco mystique. I whisked them across the bridge of gold and through the rainbow tunnel and around and down the magic mountain and into the dark forest that lies at its base--the one named after Mr. Muir--and together, the three of us spent the afternoon petting redwood trees and whispering. They would never forget San Francisco. They would never forget the time they paid to pet a tree. I will never forget them because it was Sunday and they laughed a lot.
But the day that stuck in his mind the most was my last day--the day I broke SAGA rule No. 9002.5
"It is strictly forbidden for any second level taxi driver operating within the confines of the game board known as San Francisco to bend the body of another vehicle, fare and/or spectator. Should a player happen to bend a body he will be penalized future points, since injured fares and/or spectators are entitled to massive amounts of bonus points in the form of insurance settlements."
I had just snagged a middle-aged male fare pretending to be a high school teacher from Des Moines, Iowa. He wanted to go to the Hyatt Regency Hotel and we had just crested the California Street hill when, as our wheels touched down, it happened. At the time I recalled feeling rather sorry for the poor naive innocent from the outback who, by having selected my cab, suddenly found himself involved. Quite unexpectedly our destinies became intertwined like the twin ribbons of a chromosome. I remembered thinking at the time that our stories had better be the same. We had just passed the Tonga Room and were approaching Grant Avenue when one of those speed-crazed bicycle messengers decided to take out his hostilities upon my vehicle. I saw him approaching from the right with his head tucked in some drug steeped reverie, totally unaware of the massive metal vehicles hurtling up and down California Street. Like a remotely controlled Lunar Rover with a camera malfunction, he aimlessly cruised into my right rear passenger door. As his two-wheeled vehicle slammed against the side of my cab, he executed a three-sixty over the roof and managed a creditable series of cartwheels down the street following the path of my warm exhaust like a heat seeking missile.
Maybe he wasn't paying proper attention. Maybe his front tire got caught in the cable car track. Maybe he was just taking a cheap shot at my cab in hopes of collecting massive amounts of bonus points.
I checked my passenger's expression in the rear-view mirror. He appeared to be in a state of terminal shock. A nervous sort, these novice fares--totally out of their depth in the big city. I had to admit this was a potentially serious situation. In the City of Saint Francis, the Gaming Authority does not take kindly to cab drivers running down helpless messengers playing the Bicycle Game. I glanced down at my speedometer and then back in my rear-view mirror. I was doing twenty-five miles an hour and the kid showed promise of passing me on the incline. I quickly tried to think of something to say that would somehow defuse this explosive situation but a noise from somewhere outside was making thinking impossible. It seems the kid's bicycle had become lodged in the door and was creating a hell of a racket scraping along the pavement. To make matters worse, my fare was violently gagging on some phrase he was trying to utter. Finally the noise became too much to bear and in desperation I pulled over to the side of the road as the kid slid past like a stone skipping across a still pond, his T-shirt screaming out the message, "KEEP ON TRUCKIN'."
"It's a shame," I said casually to my fare. "They turn these kids loose every morning with a walkie-talkie and a pocket full of No-Doze and expect them to make it through the day. Their game is so dreary they're forever smacking into legitimate players like myself just to relieve the monotony."
By this time the young bicycle messenger had scraped himself off the pavement and was slowly approaching my cab. He made a pitiful sight as he advanced, clutching his mangled parcel of messages to his chest like a humble apology. Like Bob Cratchet approaching Scrooge in the old Christmas Carol Game he approached my powerfully vibrating commercial vehicle and said, "Jesus! I'm sorry I didn't even see you! I certainly hope I didn't damage your cab?"
I smiled patiently and waited while he extricated the remains of his bicycle from the side of my taxi. As he turned to leave I gave him the friendly smile of a fellow participant in the World of Games and with a wave of my hand dismissed the whole affair. "Better take a break, kid, and EAT SOME FOOD!"
I apologized for the delay to my fare, and quickly explained that all bicycle messengers were, in reality, professionally trained Hollywood stunt men up in The City during the off season, collecting unemployment and moonlighting as bicycle messengers--just to keep in tip-top shape. This seemed to satisfy the rural innocent in my rear seat because he finally managed to make the connection between his brain and his vocal chords and utter the phrase he had been strangling on for the past three blocks: "M-m-my God, I feel so-s-so-involved!"
As I pulled back out into the traffic, I glanced into the rear-view mirror and reminded my passenger that the Taxi Game was indeed quite serious. In fact it was purposely designed in every respect to vaguely resemble Real Life.
In a sea of humanity anxiously rushing about on important missions, I had discovered that the Cab Driver was king. Not many spectators or even fares were aware of this. Some pointed to the bus, but a bus, like a train, was captive of a route. A taxicab was free. Nobody, least of all other spectator drivers, fucked with taxis. They knew that the typical cab driver had no "pride" of ownership, no morals and quite obviously no sense or why would an adult person be engaged in such an occupation?
In San Francisco there were almost as many cab drivers as there were policemen. Their rate of pay, though, was considerably less, but then people who drove taxis were not in it for the money. As far as I had been able to deduce, cab drivers were game players and The Taxi Game was a general growth game designed to test player alertness, sense of humor and overall sanity. The Taxi Game was played upon a specially designed game board situated upon a small peninsula of land which some choose to call San Francisco. Upon this peninsula the Supreme Adult Gaming Authority (SAGA) had seen fit to lay out hundreds and hundreds of roads, streets, avenues, alleys, lanes and ways--all with confusing names, nicknames and foreign pronunciations. Along these highways, by-ways and back alleys, SAGA had constructed semi-realistic looking houses, apartments and businesses. Every single building, business and/or vacant space had been given a numerical designation. These came in handy in trying to connect a real fare with his or her desired destination.
The designers of the game had gone all out to import almost 800,000 semi-realistic looking spectators. These spectators were divided into two major categories: fares and pseudo fares. Out of the 800,000 spectators there were only five thousand real fares. The rest were merely third-class spectators outfitted to look like real fares. Their job was to make--the player--take the game as seriously as possible. They would heckle, complain, insult, compliment, rob, maim and/or murder.
The five thousand real fares were in turn subdivided into three categories, the first of which might be termed Fun Fares. An attractive, flirtatious young lady in a micro-mini skirt would be a Fun Fare, as would a humorous, eccentric old man intent upon locating $50,000 which he buried somewhere in Golden Gate Park back in 1929. His ploy was that he liked you and wanted you to become his partner.
The second category might be called the Grey People. These were the fares you forget were there. It was Sunday. It was eighty degrees in the shade and I was on my way to the Cliff House at the beach, hopefully to find a Fun Fare. The traffic was heavy and I was in a hurry. As I turned my head to execute an intricate lane change, I was startled to notice two middle-aged people perched in the rear of my cab. I flipped through the card file that passed for my memory, but I could not remember where I might have picked them up and for the life of me, I had no idea where they might be going. Finally, in a move of desperation, I made a cab-driver-like comment to draw them out, but they continued to stare straight ahead. They would not respond. In frustration I finally pulled over at an arbitrary point and in a very official voice said, "Well--here we are!" They dutifully paid and left.
The third category of fare was The Weirdo's. It was testimony to the difficulty of this particular game that SAGA had seen fit to spare no expense in importing prime weirdo's to complicate the driver's life on this particular game board. The Authority issued notice to the nation initially by naming this pseudo-city after an ancient Jesuit with a bird fetish and then further hyped the public with reference to a gate of solid gold spanning the Bay.
"But," you may ask, "how did one win at this game and what is it that one won that made it all so...so worthwhile?" The driver/player received points in the form of dollars and cents for transporting a real fare from one point on the game board to another arbitrary point on the game board. This player, if successful, after many arduous days, months and/or years of play, finally accumulated so many points that he got what was called a feeling of security. This feeling called security was based on an old law which stated, "Points equals time equals security equals game." Once a player/driver accumulated enough points to grant him the necessary time to feel secure, he realized the basic stupidity of what it was he was doing and so he quit. This brought up another old law "To quit is to win." A player might lose or fail, but he could not in all honesty quit or win until he realized what a game it was he was playing. Conversely, to lose is to retire. To receive notice that you were due to retire from any particular game was to receive official notice that time had been called on your game and you had lost.
This, at least in part, accounted for the impish grin on any successful cab driver's face, for by merely being eligible to be considered a possible player, one had to have had experience playing many other games and to have won (quit) those other games. All taxi drivers began as winners because they had successfully realized the essential gameish qualities of their past pursuits and had thus won by having quit those pursuits. This undoubtedly accounted for the high degree of independence and competition among taxi drivers. They intuitively realized that the game they had chosen to play was an advanced one.
I fondly recall my first day on The Street (taxi talk for the game board). It was raining slightly as I cruised down Columbus Avenue towards the Cannery. My radiator was leaking badly and the engine was threatening to boil over despite the fact that the outside temperature was only fifty degrees. Visibility was limited (my windshield had been custom-pitted with a ball-peen hammer and then coated with some sort of mysterious grease) and from the movement of my gas gauge, there appeared to be at least three major holes in my fuel tank. Although I had yet to pick up my first fare, I had already developed a nervous tic in my left eye, caused no doubt by the radio. Someone had cleverly turned up the volume and then disconnected the switch. This would have been acceptable except for the fact that my antenna had been removed at the previous red light by a gang of teenagers intent upon entering my vehicle. I was having trouble picking up a fare because the curb side of my cab was so badly dented that no one could open the door and the street side was emblazoned with certain unmentionable colloquial expressions. Suddenly, I saw my opportunity. An eighty year old man with dark glasses and a white cane had just left a bank and was edging his way across the street from left to right. I quickly stopped in the crosswalk and snapped open my one usable door. As the blind man stumbled into the rear seat I apologized for the delay and was about to inquire as to his destination when I noticed that the man's pearl handled revolver had dropped to the floor. As I reached to retrieve it he whacked the back of my hand with his cane and said in a rather loud voice--"Quick! To the airport!"
As I accelerated across the cable car track to get out of the way of the several converging police vehicles, my cab lurched slightly and with a barely perceptible snap the steering wheel went slack in my hands. Apparently the tie-rods had come undone. By this time I had reached forty miles per hour and was headed across an intersection toward a line of expensive new cars cleverly placed along the curb directly in my path. I spun the wheel to the left and it turned as loosely as a ship's wheel at anchor. It could have been serious for a player of lesser ability, but as it turned out I was able to complete a rather creditable day by using the badly adjusted foot brake for right turns and the loosely connected emergency brake for left turns.
After speaking with more experienced driver/players it was brought to my attention that I should feel proud. I had been issued a cab with a ten handicap. The Supreme Adult Gaming Authority had only recently introduced what it called the Mechanical Handicap Factor. The purpose of the handicap was to reduce any inequity in driver proficiency. Since it had been my first day on The Street and since I had managed to survive a ten handicap cab, I was respectfully granted the option of trying for a second day.
My second day happened to fall on a Sunday and as I quickly discovered, if you're in it for the money, weekend days are boredom and Sunday is apt to be terminal boredom. As you search constantly for that elusive Fun Fare to Carmel, the game becomes a total drag and you cannot help but feel rather foolish. It's Sunday, for God's sake--you could be home in bed reading the newspaper with somebody. Instead there I was at the ferry building trying in desperation to give away a free ride to Sausalito just to relieve the monotony.
Unfortunately, some SAGA executive had tipped the one hundred or so pseudo fares that I was a ten handicap player and I found myself received with all the warmth and enthusiasm of a heroin dealer at a private girls' grammar school. But then--quite unexpectedly--an elderly couple from an Australian cruise ship crept out of the dark cave that passes for Pier 35 and hailed me down and begged to be taken to the one place that I felt represented the San Francisco mystique. I whisked them across the bridge of gold and through the rainbow tunnel and around and down the magic mountain and into the dark forest that lies at its base--the one named after Mr. Muir--and together, the three of us spent the afternoon petting redwood trees and whispering. They would never forget San Francisco. They would never forget the time they paid to pet a tree. I will never forget them because it was Sunday and they laughed a lot.
But the day that stuck in his mind the most was my last day--the day I broke SAGA rule No. 9002.5
"It is strictly forbidden for any second level taxi driver operating within the confines of the game board known as San Francisco to bend the body of another vehicle, fare and/or spectator. Should a player happen to bend a body he will be penalized future points, since injured fares and/or spectators are entitled to massive amounts of bonus points in the form of insurance settlements."
I had just snagged a middle-aged male fare pretending to be a high school teacher from Des Moines, Iowa. He wanted to go to the Hyatt Regency Hotel and we had just crested the California Street hill when, as our wheels touched down, it happened. At the time I recalled feeling rather sorry for the poor naive innocent from the outback who, by having selected my cab, suddenly found himself involved. Quite unexpectedly our destinies became intertwined like the twin ribbons of a chromosome. I remembered thinking at the time that our stories had better be the same. We had just passed the Tonga Room and were approaching Grant Avenue when one of those speed-crazed bicycle messengers decided to take out his hostilities upon my vehicle. I saw him approaching from the right with his head tucked in some drug steeped reverie, totally unaware of the massive metal vehicles hurtling up and down California Street. Like a remotely controlled Lunar Rover with a camera malfunction, he aimlessly cruised into my right rear passenger door. As his two-wheeled vehicle slammed against the side of my cab, he executed a three-sixty over the roof and managed a creditable series of cartwheels down the street following the path of my warm exhaust like a heat seeking missile.
Maybe he wasn't paying proper attention. Maybe his front tire got caught in the cable car track. Maybe he was just taking a cheap shot at my cab in hopes of collecting massive amounts of bonus points.
I checked my passenger's expression in the rear-view mirror. He appeared to be in a state of terminal shock. A nervous sort, these novice fares--totally out of their depth in the big city. I had to admit this was a potentially serious situation. In the City of Saint Francis, the Gaming Authority does not take kindly to cab drivers running down helpless messengers playing the Bicycle Game. I glanced down at my speedometer and then back in my rear-view mirror. I was doing twenty-five miles an hour and the kid showed promise of passing me on the incline. I quickly tried to think of something to say that would somehow defuse this explosive situation but a noise from somewhere outside was making thinking impossible. It seems the kid's bicycle had become lodged in the door and was creating a hell of a racket scraping along the pavement. To make matters worse, my fare was violently gagging on some phrase he was trying to utter. Finally the noise became too much to bear and in desperation I pulled over to the side of the road as the kid slid past like a stone skipping across a still pond, his T-shirt screaming out the message, "KEEP ON TRUCKIN'."
"It's a shame," I said casually to my fare. "They turn these kids loose every morning with a walkie-talkie and a pocket full of No-Doze and expect them to make it through the day. Their game is so dreary they're forever smacking into legitimate players like myself just to relieve the monotony."
By this time the young bicycle messenger had scraped himself off the pavement and was slowly approaching my cab. He made a pitiful sight as he advanced, clutching his mangled parcel of messages to his chest like a humble apology. Like Bob Cratchet approaching Scrooge in the old Christmas Carol Game he approached my powerfully vibrating commercial vehicle and said, "Jesus! I'm sorry I didn't even see you! I certainly hope I didn't damage your cab?"
I smiled patiently and waited while he extricated the remains of his bicycle from the side of my taxi. As he turned to leave I gave him the friendly smile of a fellow participant in the World of Games and with a wave of my hand dismissed the whole affair. "Better take a break, kid, and EAT SOME FOOD!"
I apologized for the delay to my fare, and quickly explained that all bicycle messengers were, in reality, professionally trained Hollywood stunt men up in The City during the off season, collecting unemployment and moonlighting as bicycle messengers--just to keep in tip-top shape. This seemed to satisfy the rural innocent in my rear seat because he finally managed to make the connection between his brain and his vocal chords and utter the phrase he had been strangling on for the past three blocks: "M-m-my God, I feel so-s-so-involved!"
As I pulled back out into the traffic, I glanced into the rear-view mirror and reminded my passenger that the Taxi Game was indeed quite serious. In fact it was purposely designed in every respect to vaguely resemble Real Life.
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