NIGHT CABBIE

Odds are when you stagger out of a bar after last call into a taxi or plop into a cab after flying into PDX, you don't give much thought to the driver.

Well, our "Night Cabbie'' columnist (the successor to WW's original Night Cabbie chronicler, circa 2000) gives a lot of thought to you, her passenger.

Her weekly observations about the dumb-ass stuff you do in the back seat or your feeble pick-up lines have become-since her debut in March-one of the paper's most popular features, so popular that we decided to put the hack with the rearview-mirror eyes front and center for one week-10 columns about everything from stoned teenagers and marriage proposals to passed-out-drunk Irish nationals and the nightmare of getting lost.

To put those driver's-eye observations in perspective, we also have some taxi trivia and history on Portland's cab industry.

Sit back and enjoy the ride as the mysterious Night Cabbie takes you full-speed into her world.

Robert Hamrick contributed reporting for this story. Email Night Cabbie at nightcabbie@wweek.com.

A bevy of beautiful girls,all blonde and tanned and perfumed, are getting into my cab, along with a male friend. They've come out of Sassy's, and I had seriously hauled ass to get there. Sassy's orders are often gone when you arrive, you see, poached by a cab heading for the Morrison Bridge.

But this time, just the opposite happened. The girls are complaining about another driver "being a dick" because he left them standing there. "I mean, god, we called a cab!"

"Did he ask you if you had?" Yes. "That's why he left you. I'm the one actually dispatched; he knew someone would come soon."

"So it wasn't that he didn't want to take us?" "Nope, he was just being courteous to a fellow driver." "OK, that's better then." Stealing another driver's orders, that's being a dick.

We're off to Sinferno, and someone asks why empty cabs just pass right by when you're trying to wave them down. I explain that often they're simply heading to a dispatched order. "If someone had tried to hail me on the way to you, and I stopped, you guys would have been kept waiting."

I understand their confusion. People often think we're available if the toplight's on, but it's always on. I wish we did have a way of letting people know, so they don't think we're just ignoring them.

I get that question all the time, over and over. I think the only thing I hear more is, "I've never had a female cab driver before." What's great about that one, though, is sometimes I get to say, "That's what you said last week."

"LUSTIG ROAD," says the kid in the backseat. He has to be over 21, as he was coming out of a strip joint, but he looks about 16. Maybe he's got a really good fake ID. What he definitely does not have is any idea where he's going. "Go that way," he says, pointing east on Division. I start to go that way.

I open all the windows to combat the intense smell of pot emanating from this guy. It's so strong that any cop who pulls me over will never believe we weren't smoking it in the cab. The kid is too baked to notice the rain coming in-I doubt he'd notice if it were hail coming in. I'm having trouble with the rain, though; my wiper blades really, really need replacing. I can barely see.

"There's a motel around here." I ask him where the motel is. "On the right, up...on the right." Okaaay.

I keep going for a while, but once we're way out in Gresham with no motel in sight, I pull over. I shake the kid awake and ask him where the hell it is he wants to go. He says he wants to go to a motel because his home on Lustig Road is "like 15 or 20 miles away." I tell him that when he got in he told me to take him there. He doesn't remember. I tell him he directed me to a motel on Division that doesn't exist. He doesn't remember.

I backtrack to 181st and Stark and drop him at a motel. I doubt he'll remember how he got there.

I occasionally get marriage proposals, but this one isn't from an unwashed, mouth-breathing denizen of the more pitiful strip joints in town, where there's a line of guys playing video poker with their backs to the bored-looking dancer. This guy came from the Acropolis, which, while not pitiful, was apparently not to his taste. This started a discussion about strip clubs, and what is and isn't allowed from state to state.

When he finds out where I'm from, he asks me if I ever went to a certain club. I cheerfully reply that I started sneaking out at age 13 to go to shows there, got a concussion there at a Circle Jerks show, why do you ask? "Oh, I played there ages ago. "What band?" ask I. "No one you've ever heard of." After much pleading, cajoling and wheedling, he says, "Oh, OK, Adrian Belew and the Psychodots."

"Dude, I saw that tour when it came to Portland." He's not buying. I describe both the guitarist's horrible shirt and mistakes when playing a King Crimson (Belew's other band) song. He's astonished. I say I'm a King Crimson fanatic, and in fact had a Primus vs. King Crimson argument with a bass player not three hours previous, wherein I argued that Crimson pissed on Primus from a great height. Of course I knew this band.

"Is there any place in town where I can marry you, like, right now?" Not for the first time am I mourning the departure of the 24 Hour Church of Elvis.

Someone else wants to get into the cab; with regret on both our parts, he gets out. Then the bastards go exactly three blocks. I could kill them.

Feet first is not generally the way to get into a cab. Cab drivers tend to frown on that. However, the very large and very cheerful doormen at Kells reassure me that "this guy is an Irishman, he can hold his liquor." I am politely skeptical. They say, "Look, we know he's a wreck, but we haul him out like this all the time, and he's never thrown up."

They hand me a $20 and tell me where he lives; it being so close helps mitigate his seemingly total state of unconsciousness. So I head off up West Burnside toward a large townhouse complex, the sort that cabbies absolutely loathe, because you can drive around them forever, unable to find your prospective passenger.

I pull into the complex and start trying to wake him up. This is not a winning battle. Not at all. I get out and open up the back door, yelling, "We're HOME, wake UP!!" Nope. I give his earlobe a sharp pinch. Oh, that did it.

He's up, and staggering out of the cab, sans one of his shoes. I reach in for it, along with his shoulder bag. I hold them out, but they may as well have been Mayan artifacts. I drape the bag over him, and try to give him the shoe. He keeps refusing, and then suddenly takes it and starts beating on my hood with it. Right. I'm gone.

Back downtown, I notice his Irish passport wedged into the backseat. I consider defacing it, but finally just take it back to Kells, to await his next visit.

Some people should not be allowed to breed. Like Keanu Reeves once said, you need a license to drive a car or catch a fish, but any asshole can have a kid. Despite the sardonic comments that regularly appear in this column, it's actually pretty hard to really rile me. To do so enough that I put you out of my cab, that's really rare. But these parents have managed it.

Their eyes are dull and flat and permanently aggrieved. The mother sets down a toddler in the middle of the seat, and with great pomp and circumstance announces that he just pooped. I ask why, then, did she just set him in my cab? Ah. They didn't want to make me wait while she changed him. I say this would have been vastly preferable. So she removes him as I open all the windows. Then her husband tells me to stop the clock on the meter. Tells me. I don't ever have to stop it, but I often will, if you just ask politely. He also tells me, in an accusing tone, that I must not have children. So?

I try to be friendly. "Look, try to see my point of view. Would you do that in your friend's car?" "But this isn't my friend's car," he says with dead finality. He'd have been happy to shit on the world, this guy. You're right, it isn't, because your friend likes you. I don't. And your friend could air the car out, whereas I'm working here.

He's out, and so is his smelly spawn. All because they were trying to save the princely sum of $2 on the meter.

At least once a week, I get someone complaining about a DUI conviction. One in 10 seems to care at all about how they might have hurt or killed someone. The others just go on and on about the inconveniences. I'll mildly point out that you could spend $200 a month on cabs and it would be cheaper than a DUI, while also eliminating that whole might-kill-someone thing. Invariably, I am told that they drive all right after they've been drinking.

There is a phenomenon known as the Lake Wobegon effect. Remember, in Garrison Keillor's town, the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average. When asked to rate themselves on a variety of tasks, people usually choose "above average" on most things. The absurdity is obvious; see definition of "average." The number of DUI passengers in my cab who see the humor in this is considerably less than one in 10.

But not tonight's fare-he gets it. He has been waiting very patiently at Sabala's; he understands the vicissitudes of the 2:30 am bar rush. He tells me of his recent legal woes, and how this was his last night drinking. He says he learned some hard lessons by finally getting caught. He's disappointed that his last night out wasn't more...significant somehow. "Dammit, how dare you not notice that this is a major turning point for me!" I say. "Damn impassive universe." He starts laughing, and we head towards John's Landing. As he gets out, I extend my hand and wish him luck, and he accepts both so willingly it almost mitigates the other nine out of 10.

"I'm in your guys book." I've picked up my fare at a dive bar in Sellwood, and now he's directing me to turn left on Tacoma Street. What little hair he has left is carefully held in place with hair spray, and his face is the bright pink that bespeaks alcoholism or high blood pressure, or in his case quite possibly both. He is very, very drunk, the sort of drunk I size up carefully before letting into the cab, calculating the odds of my having to clean up vomit later. But he has the mien of the career drinker; he's not going to puke.

"I'm in your guys' book," he says again. And again. Most of what he says are just random sentence fragments-I catch something about an ex-wife in there. We are winding our way through a Milwaukie neighborhood; he lives on one of those streets that have the "Roadway Not Improved" signs. We get to his house on the far end, several jarring potholes later.

"I'm in your book, anytime you see a call that says 'so-and-so,' you know that's me. I take cabs all the time. That's me."

I have been nodding politely, but as he weaves his way up his front walk I wonder what kind of life he must have that being "in our book" (whatever that means) is so incredibly important to him. Suddenly I can almost see the inside of his house: the still, unmoving piles of his things, the layer of dust, the pictures of the family that doesn't call, the kitchen that has barely been used since she left those many years ago.

Getting lost is so embarrassing. Doubly so if you've got your passenger on board. Trebly so if it's purely due to your own stupidity.

I pick up this guy behind the Greyhound depot. He's an older guy, carrying a battered backpack, wearing a well-worn jacket with many pockets. He shows me a piece of paper that has his hotel's address on it, and we're off. I think, hmm, I don't remember where the Best Western is in Jantzen Beach, but hey, they change them all the time. What is now a Red Lion up there once was a DoubleTree. The Holiday Inn by the Rose Garden was a Travelodge. Marriotts spring up like crabgrass. You can never keep the goddamn things straight.

So I get off the freeway at Jantzen Beach, keeping an eye out for the sign. Nope. I make a circuit of the main loop up there, to no avail. At least my passenger has a sense of humor, helped by the fact that the hotel is paying for the ride. I cave and ask a gas-station attendant, who is both stoned and geographically challenged.

I finally call the hotel. Ah. Hayden Meadows Drive, not Hayden Island Drive. In other words, not Jantzen Beach at all, but Delta Park. Whoops.

My passenger may have a sense of humor, but the Best Western clerk does not. "Charging us for getting lost, are we?" I've written down considerably less than what was on my meter. I just sigh and tell her to write down whatever she bloody well feels like. I just want to flee so I can bang my head into a nice, solid wall somewhere.

"They stole your shoes?!" I've just picked up my passenger, whose open shirt reveals a generous and deeply tanned belly, at Southeast 28th and Schiller. He needs to go to Vancouver, for the second time that day.

The first time being when he went up to see the fireworks, found rock-star parking, staked out his spot on the grass, and then walked away for a moment. In that moment, someone stole his backpack and his shoes. The shoes somehow seem more insulting, but the car keys were in the backpack. So, back home on the bus to get spare keys, and right back to Vancouver.

Unfortunately, the fabulous parking that he found earlier in the day means that most routes to his car are now barricaded off. They are remarkably thorough about this in Vancouver. But there are some perks to driving a cab, and having those manning the barricades treat you with civil respect as opposed to annoyed sufferance is one of them. The guys in the neon orange vests tell me how to come in a back way. I must go quite a ways east on Fourth Plain before turning south, toward the river and the fireworks. Immediately upon turning south I find myself rapidly powering up the windows to protect against Roman-candle crossfire.

I'm beginning to feel like I'm on the set of Apocalypse Now. There's colored smoke just like that on the beach around Robert Duvall and his company of surfers. My passenger finally espies his car and hands me $40, and I'm left to fend for myself trying to get out of there. The horror, the horror.

So, I'm in Vancouver, the fireworks are about to begin, and I've found a semi-legal spot where I can perch on the cab and watch them. I've just gotten settled when a distraught-looking lady pulls up in a beaten old Volvo, asking me if I can get her closer to one of the main viewing areas, where her husband and friends are. Honestly, I don't want to at all, I'm comfortable and content. But I'll give it a shot.

She explains further that she has rheumatoid arthritis, making walking difficult. I suggest she ask the security folks about handicapped accommodations. Apparently they are all full, and they won't let anyone through anymore. I sigh, tell her to get in, belt up, and look pitiful. I can generally talk my way into or out of anything-this shouldn't be too hard.

At the first barricade I recognize the guy who earlier gave me directions. I wave cheerily, thank him for that, and joke that I now have a new problem he can solve. After a bit of back and forth, the sawhorses are moved aside and he is radioing ahead, telling security to watch for my cab.

We're gotten past the last barricade when a pair of cops run over, looking agitated. I go through it all again for them, and they just tell me to not drive more than 5 mph. "God, you are just too smooth!" My passenger is incredulous. I get her to within 50 yards of her goal. She cries when I won't let her pay me. It's all right. I was just going to watch the fireworks myself, and now they are beginning.

Three hundred and eighty-two cabs are licensed to operate in the city of Portland. There are five cab companies: Broadway Cab (with 136 taxis), Radio Cab (136), Green Cab (48) Portland Taxi (26) New Rose City Cab (19) and Sassy's Cab Co. (17).

Taxis are regulated by the City of Portland's Private For Hire Transportation Board of Review, which sets the ceilings for cab fares and determines the number of cabs that can operate in the city.

Area taxi companies offer different working agreements with their drivers. Some cabbies own their cars and others lease them from the company.

Broadway Cab driver Jonathan Johnson was shot and killed on Feb. 5, 2000, after reportedly struggling with Morrice Abdul James during a robbery attempt in the taxicab.

On Feb. 16, 2003, Broadway Cab driver Grigoriy Rogozhnikov was fatally shot during an apparent robbery attempt.

In response to these crimes, the Portland City Council voted to require security cameras in all taxicabs by July 1, 2005.

In 2001, the state Legislature amended state law to reclassify assaults on taxicab drivers a felony.

As of July 1, Broadway Cab had outfitted roughly half of its 136 taxicabs with cameras. Radio Cab had installed 62 cameras in its 136 taxicabs. Portland Taxi had installed 19 cameras in its 26 taxicabs. Green Cab had equipped all 48 of its taxicabs with cameras. Sassy's Cab Co. had cameras in 11 of its 17 taxicabs, while New Rose City Cab recently received, but had not yet installed, its 19 cameras.

Broadway Cab driver Terry McNulty died May 4, 2005, following a heart-related medical episode that caused him to lose control and crash his taxi into the back of the YMCA on Southwest Barbur Boulevard.

On July 22, cab fares will increase. The per-mile fee maximum will increase from $1.80 per mile to $2, with all other costs remaining the same. This month, the Board of Review will consider whether to institute a $1-per-ride gas surcharge, a change from the current allowable 10-cents-per-mile surcharge.

The City of Portland controls the cab licensing and fares but delegates nearly all training and oversight to the individual companies.

The Port of Portland, however, requires a taxicab driver who picks up passengers at the airport to pass one drug test.

The cab industry in Portland faces competition from the light-rail line that runs to the airport. Last year, cabs ran between 550 and 800 fares per day from the airport, about the same number of fares that cabs generated before light rail to the airport operated, even though traffic at PDX is up.

All Portland taxicabs must accommodate five passengers in addition to the driver, and each company may choose the type of vehicles to use. Many companies favor retired police cruisers.

The taxi industry also faces competition from executive sedans, or town cars. The city has determined that these sedans must charge a minimum of $45 for a trip to the airport, to keep town-car drivers from underbidding taxicab rates (cab fare from downtown to the airport costs approximately $27). However, a number of valets and doormen downtown say that in practice, many town cars only charge $30 to $35 for trips to the airport and kick back a $5-$7 tip to the hotel valets or doormen for the referral.

Most taxicab drivers make at least $20,000 per year.

Over the past 10 years, Radio Cab has installed approximately 300 "call boxes" in bars, lounges, hospitals and other businesses. A button on the box automatically calls Radio Cab, which dispatches a cab, thus guaranteeing that company the fare.

On Nov. 27, 1991, Arthur Palmer was sentenced to six years for distribution and conspiracy to distribute cocaine. Although Palmer was not listed as a corporation officer or owner of New Rose City Taxi, many area cabbies believed that Palmer ran the taxi company for his wife, the stated president, from his cell at Sheridan.

WWeek 2015