SFist Rants: Toro Toro Taxi, See You Tomorrow, My Son
SFist had to leave work early last week for a four o'clock doctor's appointment downtown. Because we're several varieties of bonehead, we left something at home and had to run back to our apartment in the Mission before our appointment. By the time we grabbed what we needed, we had a little less than half an hour and were unsure of our ability to make it via MUNI. No problem, thought us, we can always hail a cab. After all, we live right off 16th & Valencia. How hard could getting a cab be?
Actually, having lived there for over three years, we know that hailing a cab there in the middle of the day ain't so easy. Hailing a cab at night, when everyone is shuffling in and out of bars, is pretty easy. During the day? Not so much. It's not Outer Richmond hard, but still not as easy as you'd think. Luckily, we still had plenty of time and knew that if it took us the customary ten minutes to get a cab, we’d still be able to get to appointment in plenty of time.
Fifteen minutes later, we were still there, out on the corner chasing down anything that looked like a cab. What was really getting to us wasn't the preponderance of cabs that had people in them, but the occasional cab that passed right by us without stopping. Considering we were right on the corner, standing right off the curb and waving vociferously, we thought we'd be picked up, but no. Nada.
We finally found out what the what was when we actually got picked up. The driver took us about fifteen feet, but when we told him where we wanted to go,that being downtown, he told us that his shift was about up and he didn't have time to go to where we needed to go. This led to a Seinfeldian type conversation in which the driver said he couldn't take us to where we wanted to go while we argued that as he was a cab driver and we were a fare, that means he should do what a cab driver is supposed to do and cab. Our bit of logic, however, didn't work as we were promptly out on the curb a few seconds later, once again hailing for a cab. Five minutes later, pretty much five minutes before we needed to be at the doctor's, we finally found a cab. One that could actually take us to where we wanted to go.
The problem that we discovered is that we wanted to get a cab around four. Unfortunately for us, it turns out that four is when one shift ends and another one starts. All those cabs that rode past us totally empty, were not blowing us off as much as returning back to their base. The lesson of all this is that if you want to hail a cab when a company's shift ends, you're basically S.O.L.
We can't proclaim to know all the ins and outs of cabbie-dom. We suspect that when the shift is over, the shift is over and that a cabbie gets in trouble if they're late back to the garage. On the other hand, we know that there aren't enough cabs in this city and that a city that proclaims itself to be world class can't be considered world class if it there ain't enough cabs. We also know that any attempt to add more cabs usually gets met with major whining from cab drivers complaining that more cabs equals less fares for them. All of which is why we wonder that if we don't have enough cabs out there so the cabbies who are out there can get more fares, shouldn't they then not be turning down a chance to get a fare?
Either way, these pretzels are making us thirsty.