In New York, a taxi instead of the Statue of Liberty welcomes immigrants in America. This vestibule on the way to the country quickly and certainly the first to earn cash. Art of the same taks driver is simplicity: there is not such a simple relationship between labor and wages. Of course, this is just the arithmetic of business, simple rules of addition, which take place in the Preparatory class American dream. Naturally, this little repetition. In New York driver’s body is updated annually by a quarter. Taxi – the state is not permanent and interim, it is – not a profession, a job, not a goal but a tool, a means of transport, carrying emigrants from the place of arrival at its destination.
Cabby might be born in any country – from Albania to Japan, or by moving to the English alphabet – from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. As always eclectic New World utriruet free features taxi mythology. Taxi incessantly reproduces the situation unpredictable. It’s random – the route, customers, communications.
By gross smell admix weak aroma of other people’s adventures. Taxis, like the wind, or Gypsies, fraught with the temptation of freedom. (Characteristically, the illegal taxis called in America gypsy – gypsy.) Figure of the taxi driver also accrete dense tropical fringe. It is an image of a random, «abandoned» in life, and failed to take root in the human. Taxi driver – anonymous witness of love and death – remains forever outside it – strange that Trizna that the celebration of life. Past this natural existentialist could not pass today’s music. Indeed, it often falls to the heroes of films, including, of course, the famous «taxi driver» Martin Scorsese, but this time the taxi driver got in the book binding Graham Russell Gao Hodges, which is called: «Taxi!» *.
* (Graham Russell Gao Hodges: «Taxi! A social History of the New York City Cabdriver». «Taxi! History of New York drivers»)
«Drivers of New York taxis – the most oppressed minority in the history of New York. And the reason for their oppression – not race, not nationality, not religion, but only the nature of their profession. Working 12 hours a day in the most heinous in the entire American road, taxi drivers should have a minute to deal with such hazards as nerazbiriha street congestion, obstruction of double parking, the immense, covering an overview of cargo vans, and drivers from neighboring New Jersey. This taxi can not afford even psychotherapy explosions driving fury – because their lives and jobs are directly dependent on the self ».
So writes in the book «Taxi! History of New York drivers »Graham Russell Gao Hodges – in the past, taxi driver, now a professor of two universities. That’s what adds to this reviewer the book – a journalist of «The New York Times» Peter Hemmil:
«Taxi drivers are confronted daily with a mass of other dangers: from drunken passengers, with a sophisticated non-payers, with the raiders, with a crazy, with fans for the team« Nix », sadyaschimisya in a taxi in a state of despair after a new Bible game, with the traveling, make certain that everyone taxi driver in New York – pimp on wheels. I’m really not talking about the passenger who all the way to talk loudly on mobile phones or listen «rap» without headphones.
Every taxi driver expects a decent tip, everyone hopes that the next passenger does not have to travel from distant areas Midtauna in Brooklyn and Queens, but at night everyone expects to live up to the next passenger, a hand waving from under the street lamp. But judging from the book of Hodges, chief test of taxi drivers, with the beginning of their history in 1907 and until the present day, is loneliness. If Hodges had not chosen a name for the book, it could be called «One Hundred Years of Solitude».
Graham Hodges describes ways to combat loneliness by the taxi drivers among the previous generations – 40-50-60-s:
«In my youth, the majority of drivers’ strategy for coping with loneliness was superficial intimacy in communication with passengers. This was the era when the New York taxi drivers (usually Jewish, Irish and Italians) were comic and philosophers. They produced an observation skills and story-teller, they are accumulated arsenal of travel stories about New York and its inhabitants, as well as a fairly diverse set of ideas and jokes on the topic of policies, sports and women. By creating this still is not called the actor’s genre, taxi drivers have killed two birds with one stone: achieving human contact and the generous tip. Among them were wise, talented comic actors and terrible sickener. But one morning, in the 72 th, I noticed that they all disappeared ».
The writer and screenwriter Edward Adler, also a former taxi driver, described his experiences in the novel «Notes from a dark street», explains change of personality New York taxi driver in 70 years:
«In my youth, people who drive the taxi mainly to ensure that their children have the opportunity to be educated and do NOT drive a taxi. And when their children graduated from universities, they turned the case ».
However, people choose a career taxi drivers, for various reasons and causes are often determined by time. During the «dry law» taxi driving gave as saying, «fast dollar» – for the delivery of passengers (and sometimes goods) in the underground drinking establishments «speakeasy». During the Depression – it was the temporary replacement of a stable service. During the Second World War, a taxi in New York on the need vodili women.
Since the end of the crisis, some people threw the work of drivers, the others – stuck there for life for the inertia, and third to finish the job to love. First, it gave independence, so dear to the hearts American. Secondly, the variety – each change was not similar to the previous: impression changed, taxis listed in different parts of the city, he got different people (one driver all his life remembering how to taxi in the middle of the night sat English actor Richard Burton with antiques chair).
In any case, since the early 70-ies of the type of the New York taxi drivers has changed, and changed its New York:
«Over the century of its existence, the profession became a taxi driver popular figure in the mass culture. But it has changed markedly: from Dick Powell, singing opera arias of the passengers in the movie of 1935 «Broadway gondolier», to the ominous figures of the hero of Robert De Niro in Scorsese film of 1976 «taxi» – and to the immigrant from East Germany (without the language and without a driver’s license) in the film «Night in the City». In the 70 years of New York was for the taxi drivers nightmare. The number of robberies of taxi drivers has increased from 400 in 1963 to 3000 in 1979. Taxis are often vodili disguised police. Scared taxi passengers do not take African-Americans, and a bullet-proof glass machines, between the driver and passenger, ever violated the intimacy of their relationship. Only 90-years of Mayor Giuliani drastic measures had reduced crime in New York. But older drivers had already left the profession ».
And they changed a new generation of taxi drivers: Indian, Pakistani, Russian, Haitians, Africans. By 2004, 90 per cent of taxis in New York owned by immigrants. «The most eloquent of all the New York Minority – wrote reviewer Pete Hemil – has become an almost silent minority. The Times of philosophy and jokes ran out. There only hope for a tip ».