The streets were jamming last night, despite the cold weather and the three day weekend. I went to work right on time, thinking that as San Francisco’s indian summer had taken a momentary lapse toward fall and Columbus Day being the last three-day weekend before the holidays, business would be slow.
It wasn’t.
Off the bat, it was go time. My first ride led me to my second, third, fourth and fifth, all with less than a block between them. One group was so boisterous and drunk at six in the evening that a girl in the backseat handed me a twenty on an eight dollar fare and thanked me for putting up with them. I bounced around town for two hours, slipping past the traffic, bombing up and down the hills from hotel to hotel, before my number one regular called for her usual ride to work. I dropped my fare at Westfield Shopping Center, looked for the cops, pulled a tight U-turn on Market Street and boom, out to the avenues.
It’s always nice to get fifteen minutes to myself while I head out to Ocean Beach, and I listened to the news on the way out on Fell to Lincoln. I swooped her up, flipped right back around and headed towards North Beach. The whole ride out and back took about a half an hour and getting to see a familiar smiling face who tips well and always has a story is a nice breather in the middle of a Friday night shift full of drunken strangers.
I got a transgendered kid from London in the Castro who was so drunk and high that she slobbered all over her big fake tits in the front seat of my cab until I had to gently wake her up when we got to her hotel. Then came a couple of heavily inked workers from a tattoo shop headed to the new Emperor Norton’s Boozeland, who told me dirty jokes the whole way, only to drop their generously tipping selves off in front of the bar and have a young Mexican kid jump in who wanted to roll all the way from the TL out to Geneva and Mission.
“As quickly as you can, please,” he said. “My girlfriend is drunk in a taqueria and I have to get her home before she passes out on the sidewalk again.”
“No problem,” I said, hitting 10th Street to the 101 to the 280, getting him there in ten minutes for another twenty-five bucks.
On my way back down Mission, I scooped another ride at Mission and Brazil, and when I stopped for them to get in I saw a memorial of lit candles and empty booze bottles on the corner where a kid had gotten shot earlier in the week, a shooting where I had heard the gunshots firsthand. I dropped in the Mission, and then ping-ponged around the bars and clubs for another couple of hours, never more than ten minutes between a ride.
After midnight an old friend of mine called from his job downtown and I went to get him. He greeted me at the curb with a red bull and we set off towards the Haight, swapping stories of our week the whole way back.
The leadup to last call stayed busy, and I never had to stray far away from a strip of bars with my customers, always coming right back to Valencia or Polk or Union or Haight or Divis within a matter of blocks after dropping. I got ride after ride after ride until I found myself picking up three men in vintage tuxedos coming out of the Grubsteak.
I asked them who got married and the two men in the back seat piped up.
“We did,” they said.
“Congratulations.”
They talked about the wedding the whole way back and it was sweet to see two people in love finally able to marry after a decade of legal rigmarole. The best man tipped me well and just like that, my night was over. I crawled back from the Sunset, hit the gas station and then the freeway, my pockets swoll with cash.
And now I get to do it all over again. Time to get dressed and go to work.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
