Chicago Cab Blog

cab 3455

chicagocab — Fri, 16 May 2008 05:08:04 +0000

Heading home and am pretty sure this blog ewas. A dumnb fucking idea

Cab 2655

chicagocab — Fri, 16 May 2008 03:46:58 +0000

I’m a little drunk. Cab is boring and its dark. Nothing eciting is happening. Speed bumps. Fuck that

Cab #4199

chicagocab — Fri, 16 May 2008 00:15:07 +0000

Cabbie said “thank you” when I told him my destination. Seemed really grateful, don’t understand why.

Cabbie is speaking Spanish on his cell phone. This marks the first time since I started this blog that I have been able to identify a cabbie’s language.

Fascinating habit: I thought the guy was putting the cab in park at red lights. Erroneous. He actually shifts into neutral while he is still driving and then brakes, and holds in neutral until the light turns green. Automatic transmission.

LSD is jammed up and cabbie helpfully suggests we breeze through Lincoln Park instead.

Cab #2020

chicagocab — Thu, 15 May 2008 16:17:24 +0000

Cab 2020 was not piloted by Hugh Downs, as I had hoped. Instead the cabbie looked like an Italian version of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, except not actually Italian.

The rearview mirror has a small yellow smiley-face sticker in each corner. On the sun visor there is a CD holder, but I cannot make out any of the CDs.

Otherwise uneventful.

Cab #5041

chicagocab — Wed, 14 May 2008 00:26:52 +0000

Cab smelled like car air freshener, which was probably due to orange car air freshener. Relatively clean. Cabbie bald again and briefly wondered if it was same cabbie from this morning until I checked the cab number.

Cab has one of those video screens in the divider but it is turned off. Wonder. why these have not caught on here – New York cabs not only all have that screen but allow you to swipe your credit card in the back. In Chicago you are better off threatening to desecrate the grave of your cabbies ancestors than to suggest payment by credit card.

It turns out there are actually four air fresheners hanging in the cab.

Ride passes in near complete silence.

Cab #4543

chicagocab — Tue, 13 May 2008 15:33:07 +0000

My first thought upon stepping into cab #4543 was that it smelled like a mid-range hair salon. In the spectrum of taxicab odors, this is a pretty good result. The smell was not oppressive but the fact that my driver was bald left some unanswered questions.

Cabbie was on bluetooth and speaking a foreign language. The only English phrases I picked up were [my destination] and “buy one get one free.” Temporary fear of being sold into slavery did not come to fruition.

Overall a pretty standard experience and a nice way to ease into this blog.