Around 3am a girl called demanding a cab at “320 Avenue.”

That didn’t make any sense. “320 Avenue? That doesn’t make any sense. What’s the street name?”
- “Avenue.”
- “Which avenue? Like 3rd Avenue, 4th Avenue?”
- “Avenue!!! Avenue Street!”
- “What city are you in?”
- “San Francisco, duh…” in a perfect valley girl accent.
- “There is no street called ‘avenue’. Are you on 20th Avenue? Maybe 3rd Avenue? What’s your address?”
- “It’s 320 on Avenue Street!”
- “Avenue Street?”
- “Yeah Avenue Street! 320 Avenue!”
- “Maam, there is no street named ‘avenue’ in San Francisco. Can you call back with your real address?”

She called back 3 or 4 times in the next hour, always very frustrated and presumably thinking I was part of some conspiracy meant to silence the existence of Avenue Street in San Francisco.

Yesterday I drove a normal “extra” day shift from 7a-5p. Some notes:

• I drove my favorite taxicab: the Toyota Camry Hybrid. Ample space, great handling, adequate (but not stellar) gas mileage, smooth ride, good stereo and accessories, nice pickup.
• I thought I would tire of cab driving after a year, but I still enjoy it. Approaching my third year. Scary! Admittedly, it is much more fun to drive just 1 or 2 days a week. When I drove 3+ per week it felt like a job.
• Thursday was a very busy day, owing in part to a fatal Muni accident which shut down all inbound/outbound Muni Metro service for a significant portion of the day.

  However, both as a dispatch order taker and as a driver I notice a significant improvement in demand for taxicabs (and thus earnings) compared to last year. Last winter was the toughest I ever experienced driving a cab, when $150 take-home seemed like an amazing accomplishment. (My all-time average prior was $170 per shift, so a peak of $150 per shift is extremely scary.)

  In the mornings in the dispatch office we notice significantly higher numbers of airport advances and generally higher numbers of inbound calls. On the street I’m again finding hails in unpredictable areas, a fun sign of increased demand.

  It is fascinating to directly experience fluctuation in demand for a service I provide that so closely parallels the greater economy.

• I had an amazing nonstop pickup streak yesterday. As a day driver, it’s tough for me to encounter this regularly, but some night drivers (especially on weekends) are very familiar with this feeling: when you drop and have an immediate or near-immediate followup fare it’s like a drug.

  Here’s mine:

  • Picked up a radio call at the St Francis hospital. An older woman got in my cab and we headed out to her home in the Inner Sunset. We spoke at length about her ailment, apparently some sort of muscle related pain in her legs. She’s going through physical therapy at the St Francis.

    I love the drive from St Francis hospital to the Sunset district. That’s fortunate for me, as countless elderly ladies seem to regularly commute to and from the St Francis hospital and the Sunset. They should have just put the St Francis in the Sunset.

    Depending on the traffic I’ll head down Hyde, out Turk to Masonic, out Masonic to Lincoln to 7th Ave and left. As we passed by an elder home I saw an elderly couple desperately hailing. Noted.

    Dropped off my St Francis fare and returned. They were still there!

  • Very short fare, from 7th Ave and Irving to the UC Hospital (near 3rd and Parnassus). Checked in via radio for an en route order at the UC Hospital. She was ready to go as soon as I arrived and heading toward Glen Park.

    When I first started driving I wouldn’t have been excited to go to Glen Park from the UC. The optimal route is difficult to determine given rush hour traffic and traffic signal priorities, and Diamond Heights/Glen Park is rather maze like. In my wiser years my ways have changed. I worked out a nice path and we flew down O’Shaughnessy with Toyota’s Hybrid drivetrain whining in pleasure as it gobbled up regenerative juice.

    After dropping checked in for an order nearby in Bernal Heights. Another case of “if I had just started driving I wouldn’t know where the f* those streets are.” But, now I know and it was close by.

  • Picked up a middle-aged lady from the Bernal Heights Library. (Thanks for waiting, middle-aged lady.) She had just finished her weekly writing class which she enjoys immensely. Dropped at 23rd and Dolores.

    23rd and Dolores is rather residential and not a prime place for finding passengers or hailing cabs. I spent a minute filling out my waybill after my passenger had departed. To my surprise a man gave me the “eye” as he walked toward my freshly empty cab and I gladly welcomed him in. We headed downtown. Nice. $70 (revenue, not income) in about in hour. Keep up the good work, San Francisco economy.

• Thursdays I work in the dispatch office for a few hours before driving. Normally I answer incoming telephone requests for taxi service. I kindly greet our callers and enter / confirm their address, destination and special needs. Dispatch operations at our company use an older but very effective computer solution from the 90s. The system automatically remembers past callers and matches their address. I simply send this to the dispatcher’s screen and s/he sees all the currently open orders. (I’ve written about the radio dispatch process once or twice before.)

  Unfortunately this past Thursday our computers didn’t cooperate so we were forced to use the old fashioned system — paper and pen. I take orders (address and phone) on the left side of a pad of paper, the dispatcher finds cabs and writes the cab number on the right side of the paper.

  I was amazed at how well this worked. For the drivers and customers there was little difference between the two systems. We were able to dispatch drivers to hundreds of dollars worth of business with a phone, a pad of paper, and a motorola radio. Sometimes low tech is okay.

• Sometimes high tech is okay too. Thursday I made an extra $70 during my shift using Cabulous, smart phone software that connects individual drivers with passengers via GPS maps. (Disclaimer: I am an advisor to the Cabulous team.)

  So far the Cabulous team has been doing their best to balance the difficult equations of driver availability vs passenger demand on the Cabulous network. But, regardless of technology used, from hailing a cab with your hand to calling a company dispatch service, this is an impossible task.

  I’ve helped test the Cabulous driver system on the iPhone on AT&T and my BlackBerry 8820 on T-Mobile. Over the past 6 months of testing and subsequent public release regular usage I haven’t earned much more than $20 per shift and not usually exceeding 2 successful hails per shift using Cabulous.

  Yesterday was different. As usual, I used the J2ME CabulousLite app on my BlackBerry 8820 on T-Mobile. The “lite” app uses a very basic interface to let me login and then it simply periodically reports my GPS location to the Cabulous server. Twilio integration notifies me via telephone text to speech where people have hailed me, and if I accept then I can call the passenger directly.

  I was amazed by how much extra it earned me — I earned just over $70 just from Cabulous yesterday. I was also impressed how well it integrated with my normal sources of fares: street hails and traditional radio dispatch.

  Here are my Cabulous hails:

  • After picking up a radio dispatch order in Marina/Cow Hollow I was headed toward the JCC with a very precocious 5 year old and her adoring mother. (When I had pulled up to their luxurious abode the 5-year old clearly raised her hand to hail my cab. A lifelong customer.)

    Approaching the JCC I received a Cabulous call. (Unfortunately, there isn’t a good way to distinguish a Cabulous call from a personal call, my only hint is whether or not the incoming call registers as an existing entry in my personal address book.) Clicked on the speakerphone to hear madame Twilio say it was relatively close — Golden Gate and Scott. (Another “unfortunately”, the Twilio robot only gives me the raw address. As a somewhat experienced driver I’m able to ballpark the intersection hearing an address, but many new drivers wouldn’t be able to determine the pickup point without a cross street.) The JCC is at California and Presidio. 10 minutes max, more like 5.

    The fascinating part about Cabulous is that technology alone does not make the system successful – it’s half technology and half driver initiative that makes a positive experience for both the driver and passenger. As I use the system more it becomes clear that significantly more onus is placed on the driver to provide a good experience for the passenger with Cabulous than with traditional dispatch (and even traditional computerized dispatch solutions like DDS).

    I now call all passengers as soon as I accept the hail. I call them to accomplish a few key goals:

    • Establish a personal relationship: I identify my name and taxi company affiliation and confirm that they hailed me using Cabulous.
    • Confirm pickup location: “Are you at 2238 Geary at Divisadero?”
    • Sometimes I’ll ask their destination if it’s a distant location.
    • Estimate arrival time and receive verbal commitment that party will wait for me. This is crucial. In this case, “I’m about 5-10 minutes away, are you willing to wait?”

    The amazing thing here is that humans are much more willing to wait if they are “in” the queue and have an accurate estimate of time. Humans get very angry when they are queueing for an indeterminate amount of time, worse if they’re queuing for a falsely reporting amount of time, and worst of all if they’re queuing for an unknown time and believe that the queuing/fulfillment system is flawed.

    In this case, the above phone call addresses all the above common queue concerns: yes, you’re “in the queue”; yes, there’s an accurate estimate of time; yes, there’s a fair and transparent queueing system (it’s simple: you’re next).

    I picked up the fare at Scott and Golden Gate, and saw an empty taxicab drive by. My passenger didn’t even consider hailing him, he knew I was on the way. He paid me well. $20

  • I had picked up another radio order, also from Cow Hollow, but this time heading downtown.

    I received the Cabulous hail just after the passenger entered the vehicle. I’m a good sport so I accepted to see where they were — maybe they’d be close to our destination. (Unfortunately, a driver must accept the order before the location is revealed.) To my surprise the order was downtown, perfect.

    I called the passenger to confirm his location and that he was indeed willing to wait for me to arrive. Again, this is essential for both parties to have comfort with the transaction. He was still in an office and would wait for me to get there before even going down. Nice, captive audiences are best. I didn’t ask destination.

    After dropping my fare off nearby I headed around the corner and stopped at the address given and gave him a quick call. He saw me (told me my cab number and color from his upstairs view) and said he’d be down in a few. 10 minutes later I wondered if I had made a mistake. Should I have taken him at his word? Did he just grab another cab? I called him back, “I’ll be down in 5. Going to SFO.” He knew the magic words. Nice trip to the airport, $40.

  • Last fare was a pickup near Geary and Presidio. A bit challenging as the woman didn’t give me her actual address, just saying she was near the Best Buy. Not very helpful. We eventually came up with Geary and Presidio as a meeting point. Worked great. Another $12.

  A total of just over $70 from Cabulous. Nice.

• These few days were slow, slow, slow. I find it funny that I have such a hard time estimating how much I’ll make beforehand. It’s almost like gambling. The only ‘sure-fire’ well-paying weekends are those with big street fairs or festivals, or huge conferences at Moscone Center.

  I get a bit more stressed when my earnings are on track to be significantly below my all-time shift average of $170 (11-hour shifts). I try to separate out those things over which I have no control, most notably that would be demand for taxicabs in the City during my shifts. But, it’s tough to do in practice.

• I was struggling to find fares on Monday morning during the usual ‘morning rush’ to work. I saw a lady urgently hailing my cab on Fillmore as I headed down the hill in Cow Hollow/Pac Heights. It turned out she was hailing for her husband who was heading to a meeting downtown.

  I really enjoy passengers that exhibit a steady and relaxed aura. Not cold, quiet people — confident and wise people comfortable with their person. This guy was one of those people.

  The first thing he said after putting on his seat-belt was, “You don’t do this full-time, do you?” I replied, “Right now, it pays my rent.” We had a good conversation.

• I picked up a radio call in the Financial District after dropping someone off downtown. The guy was in his mid-20s. He hopped in my cab and said he needed to get to Cupertino. I was a bit worried — I had never gone that far outside of the City. I didn’t do a great job with the protocol.

  I knew the general directions, but I had to call the dispatcher to get directions to the address in Cupertino. I looked up the price estimate and couldn’t believe it — a fare from SF to Cupertino is $160.* Wow.

  *(This includes a 50% surcharge for empty return trip. The ‘meter fare’ is about $100 to Cupertino. SF law says taxis charge 150% of meter fare for trips 15 miles or greater outside of the City. The additional 50% pays for the cost of the empty return trip. I know, this seems like a lot to me too. But, I did the math in my head as I was heading there and back. It is a long trip down there, as much as 2 hours round trip. It uses a lot of gas, let’s say $10 worth. So I could make $20-40/hr for 2 hours and not spend as much on gas if I stayed in the City. So that’s as much as $80 that I would make if I stayed in the City, and I would make significantly more if I had an airport run. If cabs charged pure meter for out-of-town fares, there would be no additional motivation for the increased risk of traffic problems, unknown territory, and higher chance of/penalty from a no-pay that out-of-town fares bring. Thus, without the 50% surcharge, most cab drivers would turn down out-of-town trips.)

  I warned him. He didn’t seem to happy about it, but he needed to be in Cupertino so he dealt with it.

• I was surprised how busy late Monday night (early Tuesday morning) was in the City. For some reason a lot of people went out on Monday night. But, Tuesday late morning and day was rather slow and I was getting stressed out.

  I picked up a sedan call in the Marina. A ‘sedan’ call means no vans, no SUVs. Usually elderly persons request sedans because it’s easier to get in and out of the cars.

  It turned out to be an older lady who had lived in San Francisco all her life. She was great fun. She was heading to the UC hospital from the Marina. She had to move very slowly because of a leg injury, hence the hospital trip. I always love getting older life-long San Francisco residents in my cab. I’ll quiz them all the way to our destination about what life was like in the City back in the day. I’ll also prod them about old school Muni (of course).

  Like the older guy above, she had a comfortable, steady demeanor which really calmed my nerves from the stress of the busy City traffic mixed with low cab demand. Thanks, lady.

• I picked up a dispatcher and driver for another cab company early in the morning. He had missed his Muni bus connection because the first bus driver was flirting with a passenger and didn’t leave on time. Oh, Muni. We talked a bit about the difficulty of needing to judge passengers, especially late at night, before picking them up for our safety. It is a tough and scary thing to do.
• I picked up a Mexican guy in the Tenderloin. He didn’t speak English well and asked to go to “Seventh and Mission.” I started that way and when we arrived, he said, “No, Seventh and Mission.” I realized he had meant “17th”. I didn’t mind, started the meter over, and tried out my very limited Spanish with him. I confirmed that he wanted to go to 17th and Mission. I guess I should keep taking Spanish classes.

During my shifts this week:

• I took an older lady and her daughter back from the hospital one morning. We dropped her daughter off at work first and then I took the lady to her home. When we got there she asked if she could ask a “personal question.” I said sure, no problem. She wondered if cab drivers “need” tips. She had paid one cab driver but he had refused a tip for some reason. I told her that the short answer is yes, we need tips. It’s not required but it makes a big difference in my pay. If I didn’t get any tips I wouldn’t make enough to drive a cab in the City. I’d have to find another job that pays more.
• I took a rowdy group of 6 in my van back to their hotel from the Castro. For the first few minutes they had a loud internal debate about whether or not to go to the End Up after hours club. The deciders up front voted against it so we ended up going to the hotel instead.
• The National Automobile Dealer Association held their 2008 convention in San Francisco. I had a number of convention-goer fares. Business was busy in the City, especially Monday when many people were heading to the airport to return home.
• I had one very involved conversation with a vendor heading to the convention. He had created a chat-based lead generation service for dealership websites. He had recently formed the company after working in the auto CRM industry for a number of years. It was exciting to hear his experience starting the company from scratch.
• I picked up a nice guy smoking a brown cigarette. I thought it was a clove but it turned out to be a hippie ‘natural’ cigarette. We had a nice chat about the chemical effects of alcohol, nicotene, caffeine, etc. A few days later I thought I saw him on Polk Street but didn’t know for sure. He nodded a non-committal nod as though he thought he might know me too. Afterward I thought, it’s funny, when I first started driving I invested a lot of processing thought on the people in my cab. I looked at their faces, thought a lot about our conversation, their destination, their clothes, etc. Now, I do that stuff but spend less brain ‘processing power’ on those tasks. I encounter so many people each week during my shifts that it just doesn’t make sense to commit all those faces explicitly into memory.
• I had a lot of fares from bar and restaurant workers that head out an hour or two after the City-wide 2 am bar closing time. They are fun passengers. They’ve worked on their feet for many hours and are decompressing after what was often a busy and stressful shift. They’re usually sober unlike the other passengers at that time. And they tip really well. I guess it’s a combination of having so much cash on hand after a long shift and understanding the power of a nice tip. Thanks, bar and restaurant workers.
• I picked up a transgender prostitute and her friend from the Tenderloin and took them both to their respective homes. At first I thought the friend was a customer, but he later expressed his (drunk) frustration at the apparent lack of non-transgender prostitutes in the City.
• Sometimes we’ll get radio calls for cab drivers coming to the garage. This is a perfect way to make a few extra bucks when I’m returning to the garage at the end of my shift. I picked up a driver that had been working for our company since the late 70s. He said it took him about 20 years to earn his medallion. He still loves the job. He drives one of the fleet’s few Chrysler 300C models. They get poor gas mileage but he didn’t seem to mind. The acceleration of the 340hp engine is evidently worth the extra cost of gas.
• I played around more with driving in the Financial District (City Center) during weekday business hours. The traffic is annoying, but there seemed to be plenty of street hails, especially as the lunch rush began. It was a good experience and as I learned which streets to avoid (for example, Montgomery Street with its excruciatingly long pedestrian-only traffic light cycle) I began to move around more quickly.
• A catering company worker was standing out on the street downtown with a few bags of prepared food in the Financial and needed to go an office building South of Market to drop off the goods.

  I took him down there, we had a good conversation, and then he asked me to wait. I told him that I couldn’t do that. I knew how long these things can take. It takes forever to get to the right floor, you have to hunt for the office, then you have to put the food out in the right meeting room and find whoever the right person is to sign off on the paperwork (that’s assuming that they’re present) or hunt around for someone that will accept the liability of signing the paperwork. Then you can finally come back.

  I didn’t want to wait that long. In that time I could have found another fare and been off somewhere else. But, he insisted and I was a pushover so I said okay, but I have to run the meter for time while I wait. Five minutes later he is still a no show. I started to get antsy. I had already flipped the taxi radio back on and could hear orders flying by right around me that I was missing.

  He didn’t seem like a flight risk. He didn’t seem like the types I had seen in the past that ran out on bills. Flakes are usually very, very quiet. They avoid direct eye contact and often don’t have a clear destination. He didn’t have any of these traits.

  But, I didn’t think he shared my view of time. He didn’t seem to have an accurate understanding of how long his task would take nor did he clearly understand the cost to me nor the meter cost to him for waiting that long. I decided to wait five more minutes and then cut my losses. Five minutes later he still hadn’t come down and I took off. Sorry, buddy. I guess next time I need to be more forceful about not being willing to wait. Maybe I’ll give out my cell phone number and they can call me when they’re done. That’s probably best.

• The City was slow as usual for this time of year.
• With just under one hour remaining on my shift, a lady hailed me in the Marina asking to head toward Tiburon to see her mother who was sick. I feared that it would push me over my time limit but just barely. It was worth a try. Fortunately she didn’t need to go deep into the hills or anything; she let me drop her right at the town entrance. I made it back to the garage 5 minutes late, but the cashier let me go without charging. Thanks, cashier.
• I picked up a young couple downtown. They had me head toward Pier 39 to meet family for lunch. They were tourists. Something clicked in my head — it’s been a long time since I had a tourist in my cab. It was fun to talk about our mutual midwest upbringings. Thanks, tourists.
• I found a fare quickly from Fisherman’s Wharf straight to a hotel. At the hotel the doorman gave me an airport since the guy had excessive baggage and I had a van. Thanks, doorman.

  The passenger and I had a long conversation all the way to the airport. He reminded me a great deal of my friend Tom. Like Tom, this guy studied business finance in college. Like Tom, this guy started doing hourly construction work. And, like Tom, this guy realized that he could gain more leverage by creating his own construction company. This guy ended up investing heavily in rental property, a path he thinks is solid through good times and bad.

  I’m curious to see what Tom will do.

• I picked up a young couple early in the morning near the 24th and Mission BART station. They needed to get to SFO to catch their flight and didn’t realize the first train didn’t come until 9:30 am.

  I realize that it’s not possible for BART to operate 24 hours per day, as limited track capacity means trains must stop at night to make way for maintenance vehicles. But, BART leaves people stranded every Sunday morning. As much as I enjoy the income from stranded passengers Sunday mornings, it seems pretty clear to me that there is demand enough for Sunday morning service. Let’s get with it, BART.

• I took a very, very strange lady very, very early in the morning to a grocery store. She said she had tried being a cab driver for one month until she got rear-ended and decided it wasn’t for her.
• I showed up to a 3 van call at a youth hostel. A school group from Argentina was heading up north to Sausalito.

  The group leader, a middle-aged teacher or volunteer, rode in my cab. I quizzed her about working in Argentina — a path I’ve recently been considering. She was very bullish about this plan.

  “Yes, yes! This is a good idea,” she said. “You will love it.”

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  She went on to say it would be very easy for me to find a job teaching English with my university degree and the currency conversion is still very favorable. We’ll see.

I drove on Friday during the heavy storm that hit most of Northern California. It was a great day to drive.

Details after the break.

During my shift

• It started out to be a quiet morning. The severe wind and rain didn’t start until 7 or 8 am, so I didn’t even have a fare for the first hour. Add to that the fact that many people still aren’t back in the City or working full time.
• My first fare was a radio call in Lower Pacific heights. He was funny — he insisted that I take the identical route of the 1BX-California Express. I didn’t realize that was what he was doing until toward the end when I went straight (on a fast timed light street) instead of turning (on a slower, untimed street). He said, “Oh, I guess you can go this way. I just like to follow the bus route for some reason.” I understand. I have a fond place in my heart for the 1-California (non-express) route, even though it follows some of the slowest roads in the City through Chinatown.
• As soon as I dropped him off the rain started pelting down pretty hard and the wind became pretty intense. And, it became very, very easy to find hails on the street. You can tell if street hails are frequent just by listening to the radio. Radio orders in Pacific Heights, Marina, Nob Hill, Russian Hill during the morning commute hours are normally answered by a driver within seconds and a car can show up to an address under a minute. This morning orders were already taking much longer than usual for drivers to bid.
• During the morning commute I usually leave the Financial District via California Street, Sutter Street, or back under the Broadway Tunnel depending on my latitude. The first time I dropped I returned via California Street and was hailed right at the top of Nob Hill. This happened about half the time I returned from downtown. While these trips aren’t very exciting, they are quick and easy. And, because a flag drop is $3.10, quick and easy fares are lucrative.
• I took a couple of fresh out of college investment bankers from their corporate apartment near the top of Nob Hill to their job in the Financial District. They seemed unsure how to treat me, especially given my apparent similar age and level of geeky appearance. Should we just act like he’s not there? Should we treat him as a subordinate? Should we treat him like an equal? They settled on acting like I wasn’t there.
• For a split second I was worried I’d be stuck downtown all day, unable to get out of the downtown area since I was just dropping then going out and then getting immediately hailed on the street. But, then I experienced the magic wonderfulness of cab driving: the random destinations. The hotels, most of them downtown, were beginning to have a tough time getting cabs (another strong sign that it’s busy). I’d say this was around 9-10 am. When it gets after 9 am I’ll sometimes do a pass by a few blocks of Market Street, around some of the busier BART stations (Powell, Montgomery or Embarcadero). Already there were signs of the storm. A section of Market Street, between Montgomery and Kearney was closed because of falling scaffolding from the Ritz Residences under renovation. A hotel on New Montgomery couldn’t get any cabs since all of the trolley busses were detouring from closed Market Street around to Mission. I was inadvertently stuck and was able to pickup from there, getting a couple of guys going to a meeting all the way out at the St. Francis Yacht Club. Nice. That started my out-of-downtown day, which I like better.
• After dropping at the Yacht Club I took a radio call to pickup a lady in the Marina. It turns out she was having an impossible time even CALLING the cab company. She had tried and tried again but got a phone company message saying the network was down. Ouch. She had her daughter try calling from a different part of town and she was able to get through. This lady was really nice. She was visiting her daughter from France. She wasn’t very familiar with the City but we talked at length about some cool places to visit.
• I picked up a couple times along Geary if I didn’t have a radio call nearby and was easily able to get hails from people waiting for the 38-Geary. At one point on Geary I saw an old lady that could barely walk due to the wind pushing her back against her umbrella. Wow. Windy.
• I picked up a gal in the Richmond going to the airport. She was sooooo happy that I showed up, and showed up on time. I took Oak to the 101 entrance at which point we hit a traffic jam for about 10 minutes. Once we reached the front we realized what the cause was — the highway bridges couldn’t drain water fast enough and a lane was blocked in various places from standing water. She tipped me really well — like $20 on a $40 fare. Thanks, lady.
• Throughout the rest of the day numerous lanes were blocked, especially on highways, from standing water unable to drain. On a few places on 280, between the 101/280 split and Daly City, there were felled trees. This was also near the felled tree that brought down the BART line between 24/Mission and Daly City.
• Speaking of the downed BART line, I heard on the radio that there were many pickups at the BART stop since the BART was down. I headed over there and sure enough there were some DESPERATE looking people trying to hail me with all their might. Apparently, 3 strangers had banded together. They all needed to get to SFO to make their flights (that probably weren’t even leaving on time). They must not have taken cabs very often because they were worried that I wouldn’t know how to get to the airport. Blog readers take note, if a cab driver is new to the City there is only one route he or she will know, it’s how to get to the damn airport. They also didn’t tip very well. Come on! There were 3 of you and I saved your asses! Throw me a frickin’ bone here.
• Came back to the City and hit up the BART station. Took a guy to Daly City BART. He gave me a nice tip for helping him out, he was going to be late to work.
• Many of MUNI’s trolley bus lines were down. Some overhead lines were hit by trees, some routes just didn’t have grid power from PG&E. It gave me a couple of pickups from the Castro and along the 24-Divisadero.
• It was a fun day. I made more than $200, significantly above average. I enjoyed experiencing the storm and was a bit sad when it calmed down to just a trickle of rain at the end. I look forward to the next.

Today was a tough, tough day to drive a cab.

I left the garage at 5 am. Nobody was out in the morning. I had about one fare per hour until around noon when the fare faucet started to drip drip drop. A few fares turned to a steady stream by the time I had to turn my cab back in at 3:30 pm.

I can’t imagine how days like this will be when they add 119 new cabs on the streets next year. The obvious need for a variable supply of cabs in the City hits me like a ton of bricks when I drive the taxi around empty for whole hours at a time.

• I earned about $70 today spread over less than 15 fares.
• I didn’t wait in any taxi stands, but I considered doing so more than I usually would. I even toyed with the idea of ‘deadheading’ to the airport. (Deadheading is when a cabbie goes to SFO without a fare to wait in the taxi queue.)
• I did have a couple of cool fares, though.
• I took a group of Kiwis from downtown to the Fisherman’s Wharf. They were a fun group to chat with. I talked with them about the one year working visa available from Bunac. I have been thinking about New Zealand as a working holiday destination and always like to quiz Kiwis on which city to live in. They strongly suggested Wellington.
• I took a young City couple and their visiting parents from the Wharf to Haight/Ashbury. It reminded me a lot of the fun I had showing my parents around the City when they visited earlier this year. It’s fun to show friends and family around the hidden treasures of the City, outside of the Wharf and the downtown touristy areas.
• I took a lady from the Haight to her home in the Richmond. She was tired of waiting for the 33-Stanyan which was stuck in the tourist-snarled Haight traffic. When I picked her up I was in a foul, foul mood. It was 2:30 pm and I had only made $40 after nearly 10 hours of work. I angrily turned onto Stanyan from Haight and came to an abrupt stop at the Fell/Oak light. I looked back in the mirror and realized she didn’t have any idea how shitty my day was. She was happy to get a ride to the Richmond in the midst of the Haight chaos. Something clicked in my brain and I smiled and asked, “How are you today?” I spent all of my attention on her (and driving safely, of course) and we had a great, great chat. Turns out she is from Columbia and some family friends at home drive taxi too. Wow, what a change in mood she brought me. It’s amazing how much each person has in common with each other. We’re all human after all. (I know it’s f***ing cheesy but it’s true, so deal.)
• I had to be back to the garage by 3:30. The cab company charges roughly $1/minute in 12 minute increments if you’re late and didn’t get permission in advance. You gotta be back on time. So, I wound my way back to the garage around 2:50. Sometimes I’ll get a fare and I’ll be happy to take it if they’re heading in the same direction as the garage. This time I came across a desperate looking guy hailing at Fell and Divisadero. Of course I was desperate as well since it was a slow day from hell. He was heading out to the Sunset near 40th Avenue. Ouch. But, I needed the money and was willing to risk it. I got him to 40th/Lincoln by 3:05 with 25 minutes to get back to the garage on the other end of the City. I got back to the garage at 3:25. Nice.

After my frustrating day I wondered if December was my worst month so far. Instead of measuring absolute earnings, which is skewed by the irregular number of days I work each month, I chose to compute the average take-home pay from each shift over each time period of a month. It turns out December wasn’t the worst month — November takes home that prize. Here is the chart:

Blue blobs mark mean shift take-home pay during a month period. The pink line is a polynomial trend line. (Don’t put too much faith in the trend line, it’s bound to head up soon.)

I didn’t want to fart around and write more blog entries yesterday, so I showed up to DeSoto early in the morning to see if they had an extra shift available. They had plenty of cars.

• It was a tough time to drive taxi in the City. Many of the locals are still out of town and those that remain in the City aren’t working as usual. So decreased population combined with decreased demand. Ouch.
• A saving grace was (what I perceived to be) a large number of tourists in town for the Emerald Bowl at AT&T Park.
• I was driving a van. There were quite a few van calls from low-end hotels to take loads of young college kids (mostly from Oregon) to bars near the ballpark so they could booze up before the big game.
• I was impressed by the politeness and general friendliness of the Oregon fans. They reminded me of the personality type I more commonly associate with Canadians. They were friendly, inquired about my profession, wanted to learn more about the City and expressed above average compassion for fellow humans. Of course, it’s not possible to generalize about two huge populations from a day of driving a cab, but I’m just telling what I saw.
• An officially sanctioned t-shirt and clothing vendor staying at a nice downtown hotel called a van cab (me) to help move boxes of shirts to the ballpark. We went from hotel to hotel picking up his staff and additional boxes, finally ending up at the stadium where I helped him unload. His tip was significant, more than the actual meter cost of the fare.
• It reminded me of the summer after I graduated from Indiana University when I offered moving services for $10 per hour with my dad’s old pickup truck in Bloomington. It was a fun job, very similar to driving a cab. A big portion of the income was tips. Just like cab driving, it was also a way to gain a ‘secret’ inside scoop on the lives of others in the community that I couldn’t normally get. A big portion of the moving clients were international students who had no friends or family in the country, but had a real need for an extra pair of arms (and an old red Toyota truck) to get them into their new apartment.
• I realized early on in the day that I was going to have a hard time making much money. I ended up making about $90 which is pretty good considering how dead it was in the morning. The City rested most of the morning, not waking up until around 1 or 2pm. The afternoon grew to be moderately busy with a mixture of downtown shoppers and Emerald Bowl revelers.
• Earlier in the morning I took a guy to work while listening to Fresh Air on 91.7 FM. When we arrived he mentioned he wanted to stay and finish listening to Terry Gross interview Al Jean, a producer and writer for the Simpsons. It was a fun interview, great for lifting spirits on a sluggish and foggy Friday.
• I took a group of guys from the Haight to their hotel downtown. Driving to and from the Haight is one of my favorite drives. First, and perhaps most important, it’s a quick and lucrative trip, like a mini-airport run. If you choose the right route going to/from the Haight can be done pretty quickly and it’s bound to be at least $15 after tip. But I also like the drive itself — it’s a fine pleasure indeed to have exclusively one-way, timed-light boulevards (Oak>Franklin>O’Farrell) on a fare. I also think the neighborhoods are beautiful. I love the look of Fell St. as you continue west up and down hillcrests which reveal sweeping views of the City out to Golden Gate Park. And, finally, the trip is long enough to get to know my passengers. A good chat makes everyone happy.
• I’m working on mastering the art of ‘zen taxi driving’ which I saw on this great blog post. As long as you drive ‘smart’ there’s really not much you can do to make more money by driving like a maniac. I am working to calm down and accept what fares come my way. It’s hard, but it’s make me much happier in the end. I had a good day.

After a disappointing shift on Monday (Christmas Eve Eve?) from midnight ’till 11, I figured Christmas Day from midnight ’till 11 would be even worse.

It turns out the Christmas Eve revelers were out in full swing. Summary after the break.

During my Christmas Eve / Christmas Day shift

• Early in the morning I took a young guy from near the Castro to Hayes Valley. He had walked for about 30 minutes until he found a convenience store that was open, so that he could get some Sprite and soup for his sick girlfriend. I was impressed and said that he’ll get plenty of ‘browny points’ for his good deed. He chuckled and added, “Hopefully I’ll get ‘head points’ instead.”
• Early in the morning I took a lot of folks to or from work. It was great to work Christmas Day and see all the people that work Christmas year after year. Some of them get double overtime, some just see it as just another day.
• Yuppie parts of town were completely dead. Nob Hill, Russian Hill, Marina, Pacific Heights all dead. Most of the bars in that area weren’t even open. Whereas most Castro and Mission bars were open, some downtown clubs were hopping, Richmond and even Outer Richmond bars were full. The yuppies completely leave town. That made me think — do a lot of the yuppies really ‘live’ in San Francisco? I think it’s an important step toward ‘living’ in a place to spend major holidays there.
• A van cab was called at a hotel downtown. When the dispatcher called the order he asked first if anybody was in line. Of course, I radioed in that I was the only van in line and could take the order. Another van driver came around the corner and jumped the line to steal the order, which, of course, was an airport run. Poop on you, evil van driver.
• I picked up a couple from the Haight and took them to the Tendernob late in the evening. The guy was quite a character, he seemed to have tried every job under the sun, including having worked for Yellow for a few months. He quit after being mugged for a second time. Yikes! I haven’t been mugged yet, knock on wood let’s hope it won’t happen anytime soon.
• Drunk people smell funny. It’s not the smell of alcohol, though. It smells like some weird chemical. I wonder if it’s something in the way the body metabolizes alcohol. This is the first time I’ve been exposed in a small area to drunk people on a regular basis while I’m completely sober.
• I took a lady home who used to work as a media buyer at an ad agency like me. She enjoyed the social atmosphere but didn’t like the work. She eventually became a social worker like my mom. Funny.
• I took a guy back to his downtown hotel from the Castro. It turns out he was visiting San Francisco for the first time from Indiana! It was fun to have a customer from my home state.

I showed up as an ‘extra’ to work on Thursday. I wasn’t regularly scheduled to work, so that makes me an ‘extra’. I show up to the garage around 6am and wait for a car to become available. As a day driver, I always have to be back at the garage by no later than 5pm, so the earlier I get out, the better. Cars become available when scheduled drivers or owners don’t show up, or when someone out on the road wants to end their shift early — a ‘short shift’ (they pay a prorated amount for the hours used). I was lucky and got out on the road by 6:30am with plenty of time to make good money.

Summary follows after the break.

During my Thursday shift

• The City was busy most of the day, especially downtown. The afternoon crowd starts leaving work earlier on Thursdays (at least it seems), and they have more varied destinations besides just going home like Mon-Wed. A lot of people were going out or had to rush home after work to change before hitting the bars and restaurants.
• For the first few hours of the morning, DeSoto’s garage dispatch radio wasn’t receiving our calls clearly due to interference from illegal users of their frequency. It was tough for the dispatchers to hear some cabs in the Marina or North Beach, so we would call in with our cell phones to the dispatcher if we were near a radio order. I imagined that if someone listened in on that call they might think we were terrorists or something:
  • Me: Hi, this is 381 at Van Ness and Geary
  • Dispatcher: 1554 Van Ness Apartment 405
  • Me: Thanks. (click!)
• A lot of holiday shoppers were downtown. They make vehicular and pedestrian traffic tough, but man there are a lot of hails.
• I picked up a guy in the Castro who needed to stop by his house before going to work in the Sunset. I thought he was going home to change clothes but evidently he needed a weed-based ‘pick-me-up’ before slaving it at work.
• I picked up a guy near Hayes Valley who was taking his two friendly dogs to Pets Unlimited (coincidentally where my girlfriend was working). One was a chocolate lab and the other was a golden/lab mix who shed a massive amount of hair on the seats. It was a pleasure to have some sweet canine companions. Most of the day I ride with the windows open, and for about 30 minutes after I dropped them off hair flew all directions whenever I would accelerate.
• I am beginning to feel a lot more comfortable being ‘myself’ in the cab, not just presenting an air of what a cab driver should be like. I am, of course, a geeky guy with opinions about local politics, econ, transit, technology, copyright law, etc. It made for much more interesting conversation than usual. I had a few great chats with people about Muni since Nat Ford was on KQED’s Forum during the morning.
• I picked up 3 Scandinavian girls who just finished shopping downtown. They were in college and had completed a semester abroad in Canada. Before returning home they were doing a west-coast US/Canada tour of some cool cities. They wanted to go to the Mission, but didn’t really know where they were going or what they wanted to see. Again, it was fun to play tour-guide and show them around on our way to the Mission. They headed off to see some Taquerias and then were gonna foot it to the Castro and Haight Ashbury. It’s great to see people exploring the neighborhoods instead of the Wharf.
• Fares seemed to just come and come, especially downtown. As I was driving by Nordstrom in the City Center, I saw a lady across the street that looked distressed, holding 5 big shopping bags from different stores. She didn’t appear to be hailing a cab, but I ‘had a hunch’ and pulled a u-turn. It turned out she had been waiting for like 15 minutes for a cab and was tired of even trying. She was so enthusisastically happy that I turned around for her that she gave me a $10 tip on a $5 fare! Sweet! She lived in the City for more than 30 years and just recently moved to Las Vegas. She comes back with her husband often to experience the City.
• I had to be back at the garage by 5pm. Usually I start heading back by 4:30pm just to be safe.
  • I was flagged down by a girl around my age near Broadway and Battery at 4:25pm — I told her I could do a quick trip but had to be back to the garage by 5pm. It turns out she had to run by her apartment in the Marina and then go to SFO (needless to say, a very nice fare).
  • She was very nice about it but I could tell she was majorly disappointed when I said I probably couldn’t do it. I felt bad, it looked like she had been waiting for a long time (she sprinted to my cab when she saw it was available) and was probably going to be late for her flight if she had to wait any longer for another cab. So I said, okay, I’ll take you to your apartment and I’ll call dispatch to see if I can get an extension. Worst comes to worst, we’ll call another DeSoto to meet us there.
  • The cashier on duty was so nice about it. I am continually impressed with the staff at DeSoto. He understood my situation: it’s a customer service issue (we don’t want to leave this girl stranded) AND it’s a way to help out a driver get a good fare. He worked out a deal – I had an extension until 5:30pm, but a minute late and I owe them $45 bucks (about the cost of the fare). Fair deal, sir.
  • It worked out nicely. It made me happy to get that sweet fare, and we had a full conversation on the way to the airport. Of course, like all 20 somethings, she wasn’t doing the ideal job by any means and was looking for something more. It’s nice to share the angst of the quarter life crisis — or, odyssey, should I say? It also made me happy that she was able to get to the airport stress-free. She gave me a great tip.
• It was a great day.