Off-Duty

Sorry for the delay in writing. I won't be posting anything for a while. I apologize that this is happening just after I started being productive again, but something's come up.

Don't worry, it's a very good "something" (for me, anyways), and I'll be back to explain it as soon as I can.

Take care,

Crabbie

The Trials of Oregon Cabbies on the Internet

I got an email from CabbieX, a driver down in Eugene, and writer of the wonderful Through A Windshield, Darkly. His Blogger site's been hijacked, and re-directs to a porn site. I'm thus taking down the link until he gets things straightened out, which hopefully won't be in too long. I'd encourage other people who may have it linked to do the same.

(EDIT: This had been a reference to a broken Night Cabbie link, but the link is now fixed. Thanks, Wil!)

In related news, I added a link to the wonderful This Fare City about a week ago. Michelle's also a cab driver in Portland, and is being bothered by a cliched hack down in San Francisco who claims trademark on an old and not particularly unique pun. I'd strongly encourage you to check out her site - female cab drivers, especially at night, have to deal with just about all of the same issues I do, plus some ones I thankfully don't.

I'm leaving comment moderation on for a little while longer, as I'm a little weary after the mini-drama of a week ago. It will hopefully not last much longer, and I'll likely be back with a more proper post later tonight/early tomorrow morning.

Maybe You Should

The daytime superintendent is a real classic, an archetypical cab superintendent. Picture Danny DeVito on Taxi only with German ancestry, more hair (tightly plastered into a tight part), and a few more pounds. He excels at the snappy repartee that cabbies have always been famed for in a way that I likely never will, though he's got a few more decades in the game than I do.

(Sample overheard dialogue:

Daytime Superintendent: So you working tomorrow?

Lease Driver: I don't know, it depends on how my girlfriend feels.

DS: She feels good. I'll see you at five.)

But I do enjoy the rare chances where I both get to bust it out and actually have a snappy remark occur to me. Last night I get a call to pick up at a crumby dive strip joint in Gresham at around 2:10 AM. I knock on the door, and the bartender tells me my fares are coming right out. I get back in the cab. After three minutes, I start the meter. After two minutes, I got out to tell them to get in or I was leaving, and the bartender meets me on my way in to say that they're coming. I get back in the cab, and a couple more minutes pass.

Eventually, two young black women with bad wigs and body glitter come out laughing, and I help them load their suitcases in the trunk. We get in the cab.

"Does the meter start at $5?" one of them asks.

"No, it starts at $2.50."

"Then why's it saying $5.10?"

"Because I turned it on after waiting for three minutes."

"We didn't know you were out here, he didn't tell us."

"I'm sorry, but we start the meter after three minutes. It's the busiest time of the night for us, you're lucky I didn't take off."

"You need to start the meter over," very angry now.

"No, I'm sorry, but that's both company policy and what I do when people make me wait at this time on a Saturday night."

"That's not our problem!"

"Yes, ma'am, it is, because you're the ones who were taking my time and money by making me wait. Look at it this way, don't you get annoyed when people sit at the rack but don't tip you?"

"People do that all the time!" the friend/co-worker chimes in.

"And you're cool with that?"

"We can call another company," the first one says

"You'd rather wait the half hour it'll take another cab to show up at this time of night than pay an extra $2.60 that you rightfully owe me anyway?"

"You need to start that meter over, or we're calling another company!"

"Okay."

I pop the trunk, and start unloading their bags.

"Are you for real?" she asks incredulously.

"Since you apparently are, I unfortunately must be as well. Good luck."

"Oh, we already got that."

"Mmhmm. Say, did you ever think about why you're taking your clothes off at a shithole in Gresham for guys who don't even tip you?"

"No."

"Maybe you should."

I purse my lips, give a solemn and thoughtful nod.

"Yeah, you might want to give that one some thought."

I then perk up, smile, and wish them a good night.

On a "where are they now" note, I gave the award holder for dumbest person ever in my cab another ride tonight. We met in much better circumstances, and she seems to be doing her honest best to hold down her title, having developed a British accent that she sometimes forgets to keep up. You go, girl!

Suicide Bomber

The drama yesterday took place before I even got in the cab.

I'd just paid my lease, and belatedly noticed that the superintendent had accidentally given me the wrong cab, the one I usually drive on Friday. Walking over to his office, I was almost hit by the door swinging open and a huge black man, maybe 6'4" and 260 pounds storming out, followed swiftly by the supe (not a small guy, but not nearly as big as this fellow).

My superintendent was evenly telling him to leave the premises, which he wasn't doing. Instead, he'd walk away, shouting nonsense things about how we needed to step off him. Then occasionally he'd walk up to the superintendent, who was standing in one spot, get his mouth within inches of the supe's face, and start snarling about how the superintendent had to get out of his face. The supe stood his ground and met the guy's gaze when he'd do this, and keep talking to him in a calm and even tone.

I just kind of stood behind my superintendent while this went on, arms folded and staring at the guy, with an eye on a nearby folding chair. I didn't have a chance in hell against the dude in any kind of one on one situation, but if something happened I was ready to try and gouge an eye or pull some WWF style sneak attack anyway. The thing about cabbies is that we pretty much have each other's back in situations like this, regardless even of company ties. I've pulled over to help a competitor with a violent fare, and have heard stories of them doing the same with us.

But the thing about the super is that I know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that he's got my back. Which means that I'm willing to take a couple of cracked teeth or a broken bone if it means helping him out with a massive guy who's menacing him.

Eventually, a crowd of cabbies and a mechanic or two began to gather at the noise, and the superintendent was ringed by about fifteen more people adopting the same stance and thinking the same way as me. Only these people were much stronger and wider than me, and one or two of them had handguns.

The guy kept ranting and menacing, and the supe told someone to call the cops. The cops were called.

The guy kept stomping around yelling about how we were the ones who needed to leave the property, and would run up to people and yell "I'm a suicide bomber." Or about how we needed to go get our guns if we were going to come at him, because he'd whup all our asses (is he starting to sound familiar yet? great minds, I guess).

A cop car showed up, and the guy stormed out into the street and the cop was yelling at him to take his hand out of his pocket NOW.

He was not taking the hand out of the pocket, and the cop was yelling much louder with the NOWS, and he turned to walk away from her, down the tunnel and into the heart of the building. At this point, I ducked up some stairs. Not complying with police orders is often a bad idea. Especially if they involve taking hands out of pockets. Even more especially if the cop sounds scared. Even more especially if you're in Portland and you're black. He's probably not the kind of guy who reads the news, but a lot of people have been murdered by cops in the last few years for similar offenses. I didn't want to be caught in the cross-fire.

Anyway, the cop, who was this tiny (maybe 5'5") white lady, charged after him while calling for back-up, taser drawn. Two other big strong white guys showed up literally within seconds, and the tough guy was ushered out in hand-cuffs with his pants around his ankles. As they passed me, I heard one cop hiss in his ear, "no, I wouldn't hit you. I'd just break your finger first." Portland's finest.

I've turned comment moderation on for a while, until everyone (including me) can chill out a little bit. I hate feeling like (well, being) a censor, but am trying to figure out how to deal with a site that seems to be falling to the internet's typical level of discourse (anonymous, ad hominem attacks), and to be attracting readership I hadn't anticipated.

A Happy New Year

I'd had much trepidation about working on New Year's Eve, but it ended up being perhaps the best one I've ever had. That it's one of the relatively few in my adult life that didn't involve me getting embarrassingly drunk of course helped, but it was good for reasons beyond that as well.

My first trip was my car's day driver. L's appeared here before, and is a real classic, a grizzled old Vietnam vet with a quick punch, good sense of humor, and government-given medical problems. I like him a lot, and was happy to give him a ride home at a discount.

While dropping him off, I was immediately flagged down by an extremely drunk middle-aged gay white man. He's a bartender who'd been called in to help prep for the night, and then gotten completely hammered. While driving him home, we talked for a little while about other cab drivers (he's been taking cabs in this city for over twenty years), and then out of nowhere he just started talking about a situation in my life that had been bothering me, and then started asking me questions that happened to pertain directly to insights I'd had about both myself and the situation earlier that day. I told him that he was starting to really creep me out, as we'd never met before. "Oh, I'm sorry," he said, "I'm a fortune teller, and I'm drunk." He left with me a somewhat optimistic statement about the situation (which I'd also arrived at earlier in the day), and we shook hands after he gave me a $10 tip on a $30 trip. I thought about giving him my card, but didn't. I enjoy allowing the occasional magical strangers who wander briefly into my life to remain cloaked in mystery, it makes the encounters that much more wonderful.

It was an auspicious start to the night, both financially and inter-personally. I started cruising back into town with an eye toward getting a sandwich and a cup of coffee, but suddenly my headlights dimmed, the MDT started acting up, and both radios (AM/FM & dispatch) stopped working. Knowing what was going on, I called up the supes on my cell, and they told me to try and bring the cab in, that they'd save another for me. The alternator finally died while I was waiting at a red light about 15 blocks away from the garage, and one of my superintendents showed up to wait for a tow with me. This gave me opportunity to eat a falafel sandwich and chat with him, he's a really nice guy. And it was good to hear, in no uncertain terms, that he and others in high places hold me in high regard both personally and professionally. Thus them saving a cab for me when they could've leased it out to someone else.

I got back on the road, and things went smoothly. Everyone was cheerful and celebratory. I took some time off from around 11:30 to 12:30 to go to a party and see friends, catch-up after the holidays, eat an enchilada, and ring in the new year.

Around 1:15 I got a call at Emanuel. I was to pick up a hispanic man, drive him out to outer Northeast to pick-up a car seat, and then take him back to the hospital. One of those great trips I like so much, especially on New Year's at 1:15 in the morning, when I could reasonably assume that the guy would both actually be there when I showed up and not be drunk.

Another one of our cabs rolls into the hospital ahead of me, and knowing how good a trip this is, I call out to a man walking toward it by the name on my order. It's my guy. I explain this to the other driver (though not what he's missing), and we set out. I ask the guy how he's doing, and he explain to me in broken English that he's been with his sister. As best I can make out, his brother-in-law stabbed her (or did something to her) five or six times. The brother-in-law's in jail now. He thinks the brother-in-law must be on drugs or something. I try to console him a bit, and we settle into silence.

As we're about halfway there, he asks me if I like Mexican food. I tell him that I'm from Texas, I love Mexican food. I ask him why he bothered to ask, if he was a cook. He says yes. We then start talking about various Mexican dishes we love, he's excited that I seem to actually know about real Mexican food, not just Tex-Mex. As we get closer to his place, he asks me if I like posole.

If there's one thing Crabbie loves, it's some posole. I get it at a restraunt once or twice a month, though have never tried to make it myself. I tell him this, and he gets really excited and tells me that I have to come in for some posole, he and his nephew had made a bunch for New Year's, and it had just finished while he was at the hospital.

I pull into one of the beat-up, low rent apartment complexes that caters to recent immigrants. Somewhat sheepishly, I follow him around to his apartment, and he invites me in and introduces me to his cousin, his nephew, and his brother, who are sitting around drinking beers. They give me a big bowl of excellent home-made posole, some chopped onions, a cold Pepsi, tostadas, and an habanero. Their English is spotty, as is my atrophied Spanish, but we talk at length about food. They're all cooks at various restraunts around town (Asian restraunts, actually), and I tell them about my gourmet barbecue hobby. We talk about family and Mexico, and they tell me to give them their phone number for when they make mole. I keep thanking them profusely for the food and company, telling them how wonderful it is and how it's made my night, and I couldn't be more sincere.

We get the car seat and go back to the hospital. I'd assumed the trip would end here, but he starts to load an adorable an extremely sleepy little girl, maybe three years old, into the cab, and his sister starts to limp toward us on a crutch. While this is happening, some friends I'd told earlier that I'd give a free ride to call me up in a somewhat lame situation. I explain mine to them, and tell them I'll call them back after I can talk to him, as they're on the way to his place and small women who could sit in each other's lap.

But a woman from the hospital rushes out to shoo him and the girl out of the cab. She sternly explains that while the hospital has an account with our company, Oregon Health Plan has an account with a competitor, so that while I could take him to get the carseat, the competitors have to take the woman home. I tell her that they'll be stuck waiting there for hours (it's around 1:50) at this time on New Year's Eve, couldn't the hospital show a little consideration for a woman who'd been stabbed and her small child.

No, I'm told, rules are rules.

It occurred to me as I was pulling out without them that I could just say "fuck it," and give them a ride for free, but by this time I'd already told my friends I was on my way and felt compelled to get them. This man, his sister, and her daughter have haunted me since. I didn't think to give him my phone number in all the fuss with the hospital functionary.

It was a delight to pick up my friends, who were in good spirits and happy to see me and be in the warm cab with good music, and excited to be in a cab with me for the first time. I told them about my last trip, "your job is so exciting," they said. One of them wanted to spend a couple hours driving around with me, but that's against company policy.

I was really happy to see them, and shot up the freeway to their place with the intention of hanging out with them and listening to them and some other friends play music until around 3 AM, thus avoiding the bar rush entirely. Just as we were a block or two away from their place, though, a scraggly looking couple waved desperately at me.

"Sucks for them not to have your hook-up," I said.

"They had a little kid with them!" said my friend.

Fuck.

As I got out of the cab to go pee in my friend's house, the couple started shouting "send him back here!" I walked toward them, asked where they were going (far), and told them I had to pee and that I'd be right back.

I pulled up, and they piled in. We were around 55th & Glisan, and they needed to get to 52nd & Woodstock. How much will that be? they ask. "I dunno," I say, "ten to fifteen dollars."

"Fuck it, we're walking."

"No you aren't," I tell them, "I'm driving you."

The man's missing a tooth and carrying a mostly empty handle of whiskey. The woman's hair is stringy, her teeth are yellow, and her face and neck are a network of scabs and scars. There are track marks on her arms. It's 28 degrees out, and neither of them are dressed for it. Neither is the kid, who's already fallen asleep in my backseat and is an absolutely adorable four-year old boy.

They spend the whole trip complaining. About how the busses aren't running at 2:15 in the morning, about the "niggers" they got in a fight with at the Max stop, about how society's fucked and there aren't any good people. They argue with each other about who's fucked-up the most. Their language is as vile as mine usually is in this space, and the kid's audibly snoring.

I hate these people. I'm not racist, but I have biases, and these people have triggered all of them. I would ordinarily never take people like this, and I would ordinarily have kicked them out by now. But that kid's in the back, and I force myself to think about the kid. I think about how he's likely doomed, and that I cannot save him. I say very little, except when asked. And then no matter what I'm asked, I tell them that it's horrible what they have done to this child on this night. Except I use less polite language. They occasionally lapse into thanking me on a couple of occasions, offering to pay me with weed or booze. I tell them to shut the fuck-up, that I'm giving the kid a ride and they're just lucky to have been with him. None of this seems to sink in, the niggers and the city and the other partner are always to blame (especially the woman, as he'd been carrying a kid "that wasn't even his").

I drop them off and immediately turn to go back to my friends' house. Behind me at the intersection where I drop them off is a cop. I throw on my hazards, pull over, and wave at him to tell him about them, but he just drives by. It's probably for the best, it's not like the state would do wonders by the kid anyway.

The music was great, and at 3 I gave another friend a ride home and then went back to work. Everyone was kind, polite, in good spirits, and tipping well. I got a ride home from an ancient cab driver who I gave a tutorial on the MDT. He's a friend now, and involved in charity work in a field that I've always wanted to enter, but never known how. So now I've got an in, and I'm excited and grateful about that.

I hope you all had a great and safe night. This story is long and inconsistent both stylistically and in the tenses it uses. There are probably also multiple typos. I couldn't care less.

Despite what the parents of 2007 may think, there are good, humble, and courageous people in this world. One of the joys of this job is that I get to meet some of them sometimes, although I don't write about them enough here. They never do ludicrous things in my cab, so I don't write about them often enough. I'll try to do more of that, to remember these people and tell you about them, because there's a lot more to my job than the sad and crazy stuff, and I don't represent that often enough in this space.

Well, Never Mind

I'd gotten home from work on New Year's to an anonymous comment containing a vague and baseless threat from someone who was way too sensitive about privacy issues. Thinking that the original anonymous moron* had been placated, I was ready to give-up with the assumption that Portland was just filled with hyper-sensitive jerks.

Instead, as this comment did indeed spring from my very first troll, I've decided to largely ignore it. Look dumbass: businesses employ many different people. Referencing where someone works is not an invasion of privacy if there isn't additional information contained that would identify them. Lots of people have jobs.

Indicating what city they live in is not an invasion of privacy. I'll even go so far as to say that saying something like "around a certain intersection" is okay when that simply narrows things down to 25-200 potential residences, depending on how one defines "around" and where in town it is.

I have, though, decided to remove all references to the company I work for. Again, there isn't anything on here which would cause me to be disciplined, and in fact (until I took them down, as they indicated the company) there were photographs on here which would have easily allowed management to determine who I am. I'm proud to work for what, as far as I can determine, is the best damn cab company in the U.S., for both the driver and the customer. So proud that I tried to get us some business.

That being said, there will always be unsavory aspects to driving a taxi cab at night. Weird and fucked up situations will arise, and reading about those weird and fucked up situations is probably why most people come here. The company prides itself on having earned such a good public image, and has done great things to drag itself out of the shadiness associated with the cab business. But if someone who doesn't understand that goes searching on the internet for a cab company in Portland, it's probably best if they don't come across my encounters with crack whores and then associate that with my company.

To the "cab driver's wife": you're not nearly as smart as you seem to think you are, and make yourself look like more of a fool with everything you write. Trying to be somewhat polite and explain things to you hasn't worked, so I'll strongly encourage you to just shut-up and go away. You don't seem to have much grasp of some basic aspects of the internet, which I don't have the tolerance to lay out at this point.

The other morning I had a nice, long talk with a friend who started with the company over forty years ago. He's perhaps the most senior and well-respected driver we have, just an amazing and truly decent and kind human being. He was telling me about how happy he was that so many of the racist, ignorant idiots had been given the boot.

He was talking about you. Not you specifically, of course, but drivers like you.

I gave you an opportunity to email me and get to know me, with an indication that I'd be happy to talk to you and let you know who I am. You didn't take that opportunity, instead choosing to threaten me and continue to yap anonymously about your paranoid fears and bigoted opinions. So you don't know who I am.

Keep that in mind: I may not know who you are (and I don't want to, at this point), but you don't know who I am, either. And as the past month has made clearer to me, who I am is one of the most respected and well-liked night drivers in the company. You can bitch and moan all you want about the "blacks" and the "Mexicans" and the food that gets puts on your table, but the fact of the matter is that you're a dinosaur, and I'm homo sapiens.

Like the guy whose picture you were upset was up here. He's not with the company any more. Another fat, paranoid, racist idiot that we got rid of. It's odd how the massive uptick in our business over the last couple of years seems to have coincided with the elimination of that kind of person, and the growing prevalence of young, creative, and open-minded people like me. A strange coincidence, I'm sure.

It's too bad you hated the website so much that you seem to have read the entire thing. That must have taken hours. I'm completely serious when I say that you should instead devote your time to something that brings you some enjoyment and fulfillment. Huffing paint sounds about right.

To everyone else, I'll be back with an update on New Year's, which will feature exactly some of the weird, fucked-up tidbits that you've come to know and love - including perhaps the best example ever of why I, for one, absolutely love Mexicans.

*There's a big difference between my "anonymity," which comes with the accountability and identifiability of a website and email address, and this person's. I'd happily use my first or last name, like Michelle, but both of mine are (un)fortunately very rare.

A Fare and the Fear

This was also briefly deleted. Originally posted early morning of 12.31.6. Again, the original comments (one of which contained good vomit advice from wil) are gone.

A drawback to most really good fares (and I should say that by "really good," I'm thinking $50+) is that they often involve going, well, a long way away. Don't get me wrong, I'm always happy to go to Kelso or the southwestern boonies or Scapoose or La Center or wherever the hell the customer wants to go (San Francisco is the holy grail, I know a guy who scored that one). It just about always works out in my favor to take a trip that long, even if I end up far away from where I want to be. But the fact remains, deadheading is deadheading, and it's something I dislike and try to do as little of as possible. The best trips are ones like these, which somehow manage to run-up the meter and leave me someplace I actually don't mind being.

I had my ideal trip as a cab-driver tonight. At the beginning of my shift, I picked up a bartender just getting off at a bar in Northeast. Yesterday had been her birthday, and she and her boyfriend were shacked up at the Convention Center Holiday Inn. The problem was that she'd left her new movies at home, so we had to go out to her place to get the movies, then go back to the Holiday Inn.

She lives in Gresham, right off the Banfield.

So we drive out there while having a lovely conversation and mutually enjoying some Tribe Called Quest, she runs in and gets the movies, stops at 7-11, and we drive back. $60 on the meter, plus a decent tip, all for talking to a cool, hot, and intelligent woman and listening to music I love for half an hour. And at the end of it, I was only about 20 blocks away from where I'd started, and in the heart of my favorite stomping grounds. This trip turned what ended up being a pretty slow Saturday into a good one for me, and is one of those little moments of exultation that only other cab-drivers can really understand.

I had another trip tonight where I took five people from around Fremont & Kerby out to around SW Multnomah and Oleason. Thery were incredibly drunk, stupid, and obnoxious, and all I could think about the whole drive there was how drunk, stupid, and obnoxious they were. Then we get there, and one of them gives me a $10 tip on the $30 fare, and I have a higher opinion of them. Then the drunk one sitting up front stayed in the car, and I started to get annoyed, until he said that I was taking home. To Vancouver. I was ready to kiss him at this point (that's probably another $40-$50 and a pretty quick trip), but his friends started to cajole him out of it. I was really tempted to just peel out with my captive Vancouverite, but the $10 tip had earned them the right to at least give it a shot. Unfortunately they succeded, and I thus was not able to have my best night ever.

I'm going to work tonight (New Year's Eve). I am not happy about this. At all. Not because I've ever particularly given much of a damn about New Year's as a holiday (I haven't), but because I really, really, don't want to be driving a cab on the biggest amateur night of the year. I'm dreading it, and that's not an overstatement. I am frustrated and scared, absolutely terrified, that someone is going to throw up in my cab for the first time, ever (granted, I haven't worked a New Year's Eve before, and hadn't planned to). I've been told to have plastic bags on hand.

I have a feeling that I will be refusing many people service. It'll likely be a night when the standing rule gets enforced.

But even though my New Year will likely be ushered in with puke, stunning acts of idiocy, horrific driving, and (hopefully) a big roll of bills, that doesn't mean that I'm pessimistic about the upcoming year itself. In fact, I find myself unusually optimistic about it, and hope you feel the same way. Have a good and safe night.

(Oh, and Brian has a hilarious blog and some good advice

The Novemberist

I'd deleted this as part of a plan to delete everything that involved anyone but myself, but as more has been revealed, it turns out there are not multiple upset people, just one idiotic one. Unfortunately, the original comments are gone forever. This was initially posted on 11.18.6.

11.18.6

I drove around members of a fancy major label band tonight after they got in from tour. I have never heard their music, but had been aware of them vaguely as being one of many bands from this town that have a name along the lines of "The (plural noun)," and that get mentioned by people who listen to rock n' roll.

Crabbie does not listen to indie rock, and frankly finds the shit to be excrutiatingly boring. Excrutiatingly. There are not enough words for how boring he finds it. He will tell his grandchildren in an adopted old world accent - "The indie rock, it was a very bad thing. I was make listen to it as I walk to school eight miles in cold, and when I grew up to be man, the first thing did I do was to urinate all over it and curse the people who make it to go to the most boring of hells for all eternity."

I'd also heard of them because very cool people who've actually heard their music make fun of them.

But I did not ask them questions like

"When did rock n' roll bands switch from being 'The (adjective) (plural noun)' to just being 'The (plural noun)'?"

or

"How is it that you're in a fancy pants rock n' roll band and live in such a shitty house in a shitty neighborhood?"

or even

"Why do hipsters think you suck?"

I kind of got the vibe that asking the questions I was most interested in might have negatively effected my tip. So I drove them home, and they were perfectly nice guys and tipped adequately, and I maybe shouldn't have been listening to the best band in town and accidentally proclaimed them to be "the best fucking band in town, man!" when the drummer (or was he the guitarist?) enthusiastically asked who they were, as it seemed to bum him out, because I think he expected the answer to be "John Coltrane" and not people who live in the same city as him.

So anyway, there's a story for all you hipsters in the audience. I still haven't heard a Decemberists song and honestly couldn't give a shit what they do sound like, or how cool they are, will be, or were. They are kind of nice and they tip okay and they take way too much shit with them on tour, and those are the only things that matter. Oh, and one of them has a really neat bike that folds in half.

Oh, and I'm playing a show tonight (sat. 11/18) at 2334 E Burnside. Starts around 6pm, we'll be on toward the beginning.

A Crab Dead

Well, this is no longer relevant, but I guess I'll leave it up as a curiosity.

I'd just started to get back into the swing of things with this, and was all ready to tell you about my fascinating New Year's Eve, but I think that it's time at this point to kill this blog.

When talking about other people in this space, even the dishonest, abusive, and thieving ones, I've always made a real and sincere effort to mask their identities to the extent that no one would be able to recognize them except themselves. And given that I never had any ambition for anyone to read this save the people I know (I've never once asked anyone to link to the site, though I guess I never thought to ask them to take links down, either), I figured that they'd never come across it in the first place. Besides, this website was supposed to be all about me.

But as this seems to be the only taxi blog I've ever read where people are upset about privacy issues (even though I seem to have no Portland readers who aren't my friends), I'm going to just stop. I like my job, and I feel a very real and strong sense of loyalty to my company, (most of) my co-workers, and especially my superintendents. I don't want to jeopardize a situation where I'm happy, liked, respected, and well-paid. I also don't want to injure our business, and I very sincerely don't want people to feel like their personal information is being posted on the internet for their crazed stalkers to find.

I'm too exhausted now to start deleting everything, but sometime tomorrow I'll begin deleting every post that mentions the company I work for or another human being. So basically, all of them. This process might take a few days, so my apologies to those who are offended.

I may start another site that's more well disguised, tucked into a smaller corner of the internet, and truly known only to friends and family. This will allow them to keep tabs on me, and everyone else to continue not knowing or caring what I'm up to. If you're interested in knowing about the new site when/if it happens and are one of the friends I don't know in my "real" life, feel free to send me an email at crabbycabbie@gmail.com, and I'll send you the link.

Take care,

Crabbie.