I used to commute between where I lived in Brooklyn and my job working high rise construction in Manhattan on a Honda 110cc street/trail motorcycle. I had found that this was the ideal bike for the rough streets of the city. It was a very light bike and, although it wouldn't go much faster than 45 miles and hour, it was nimble and agile enough to get me around town in city traffic. Plus it was stout enough to survive the rough city streets.
The biggest nemesis to my safety and well being in the city were the taxi cabs. Anyone who is familiar with traffic in New York City knows that taxis are way up there on the aggressive driving pyramid. What little respect they have for pedestrians and cars is non-existent when it comes to motorcycles. Out of all of the close calls I've ever had on a motorcycle I would hazard to guess at least 90% were related to taxi cabs cutting me off in traffic or pulling out in front of me from the curb or side streets.
There is an old Dire Straights song called 'Making Movies' about a girl living in a large city who roller skates through traffic with music blasting through her headphones. The song on the radio dictates her rhythm and tempo as she weaves in and out of traffic. There is one line in the song that recounts her stance as an 'urban toreador' with a taxi cab. This gave me an idea as to my own dilemma regarding these aggressive cabs. I decided I wasn't going to take their abuse and instead of being their victim, I was going to play a game of my own devising with them. A game I liked to call 'Taxi Cab Tag'.
The rules were simple. I rode through traffic defensively with the intent of getting to work or home without incident. As always, I wore a full face helmet, a strong jacket, gloves, jeans, and usually, my steel toed Red Wing construction boots. If a taxi cab interfered with me in an aggressive manner I would gauge the playing field, traffic on the street, and then zoom up next to the driver's side door and give it a good kick. Tag! You're it! Foolish and stupid? Yes, but oh so fun. If there was any kind of traffic I had the advantage on my motorcycle. I could weave in and out of cars, take tight corners and generally confound any cab that decided to take up the challenge.
I got quite good at judging how well a taxi cab was going to play the game. A cab without a passenger was generally more likely to play the game but generally less likely to be aggressive in the first place. A cab with passengers was more likely to act aggressively but less likely to give chase.
One evening I found the perfect player for my game. Or rather he found me. A big yellow Checker Marathon cab ahead of me had just discharged his passengers at the curb and pulled directly out in front of me. It was only by a combination of hard braking and moving between lanes of traffic that I was able to avoid running into him. I always got off from work a little before rush hour really started in full swing, so the streets were packed but not congested. This gave me some room to maneuver plus gave the cabbie the sense that he could catch me. If it were just the two of us on a lonely stretch of road the taxi would have the advantage of speed and power to my advantage of maneuverability.
So, after this particular incident, I gained my composure and rode up next to the driver's door. I waited for a hole to open up in the next lane over to my left. Just big enough for me, but not for the cab. I kicked the cab's door as hard as I could with my steel toed RedWing (those Checkers had thick steel in their doors!) and waited to see the pissed off look of the cabbie before I broke left, went around a few cars and settled back down to the flow of traffic. In my right mirror I could practically see the steam coming out of the windows of the cab as he tried to switch lanes back and forth trying to catch up to me.
I knew the traffic lights so well on Second Avenue that I could tell where I was in the 'bubble' of green by looking at the crosswalk signs as I passed each intersection. Sometimes I would zoom up a few blocks ahead of the cab and let a red light catch me. But only if he was stuck at a light farther back. Several times I would make a quick right turn right as the pedestrians were starting to cross at the cross street.
I could tell that my game-mate this evening was very intent on catching up to me as he was making every effort to follow my every move through traffic. In fact he was getting more and more intent on connecting with me on some meaningful level. I saw him cutting off more and more people and at one point nearly run over some people in a cross walk. Our cat and mouse game had taken us all the way from the upper east side of Manhattan to the Wall Street area and now I was leading us back up Broadway towards the Village. I could have just zoomed off and left him in the dust at any time but I decided to have one final go with him.
The streets of Manhattan form a generally orderly grid, with mostly clean rectangular blocks. But Broadway was an old sheep path that lead up the island in a haphazard manner and divided blocks into odd shapes. I knew one block in particular that had an interesting alley in the center of it. When you entered the alley it appeared as if the alley dead ended at the buildings at the far end of it. These buildings were actually skewed slightly in such a manner that you couldn't see that there was a narrow pedestrian sidewalk between two of the buildings when you entered the alley.
Making sure that the cab was about half a block behind me, and in full view, I turned down the alley and rode to the end. I stopped the bike with the engine running, pointed towards the opening between the two buildings and waited. The cab entered the alley and stopped when he saw me at the end. Trapped. I figured the guy was going to inch down the alley and some point stop the cab, get out and come at me with ill intent. Instead the guy revved up the Marathon's engine and started tearing down the alley at me. I suddenly realized that this guy was intent on smashing me against the brick wall.
Down the alley he came at maybe 25 to 30 miles per hour. Not very fast but in the tight confines of the alley very fast indeed. I revved up my motor and put the bike into gear, waiting to pop the clutch and squirt through the hole in the wall when he got about 50 feet away. And then something incredible happened. Something that I wouldn't have imagined could happen.
This particular block has several restaurants and businesses along Broadway. As a result, there are many large steel dumpsters lining both sides of the alley. The other significant thing is that there is an almost imperceptible narrowing of the alley as it proceeds towards the end. When the cab was still about 70 to 80 feet away from me, just as I was ready to pop the clutch and bolt, he connected with one of the dumpsters and almost immediately glanced a dumpster in the other side. The dumpsters on either side of the cab rolled as much as they could but then each became jammed against their respective buildings. Like a wedge driven into a wet log the whole taxi cab became jammed between the dumpsters.
When he became stuck, the cab still had just enough forward momentum that the rear of the cab lifted slightly, and although the wheels were still touching the pavement, they could find no traction on the slippery cobblestones. I stared at the scene in dumbfound amazement. Here was this big Checker Marathon cab, stuck, with doors pinned on either side, not able to move. I got off of my bike and stared at the driver. He was in a rage unlike I had ever seen, pounding on the dash and the roof, practically foaming at the mouth and fixing his dark almond eyes on the with such malice that I nearly froze in my tracks.
I climbed over the cab to look at it from the rear. His back up lights were still on and the tired were spinning, barely touching the pavement. I took out my Swiss Army knife, pulled open the screw driver and did one of the most stupid things of my life. I crouched down in behind the rear bumper and took a trophy.
The Checker Cab's back up light is a separate clear round glass lens from the turn signal and running light lenses. It has two screws holding on a chrome ring which in turn holds on the glass lens. I took it apart and put the lens and chrome ring in my jacket pocket. I then climbed back over the cab with the irate cabbie still pounding away and hurling curses at me that would make Don King blush. I hoped back on the bike, started it back up, gave the cabbie a salute and rode through the hole in the wall.
I have often wondered what became of that cabbie. How he got out of there. He could have called his dispatcher and told them that he was stuck in a dead end alley. But how would he explain that? Or he would have had to break the thick glass of the front or rear window and crawled out, maybe to try to enlist the help of some friends to get his cab unstuck.
It was the last time that I ever played my cat and mouse game of Taxi Cab Tag. After a few more close calls with the motorcycle in the city and surrounding boroughs, I elected to retire it in greener pastures in Connecticut before it killed me or, more likely I killed myself with it.
(c) Kai Schwarz 2012
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