My view of bumper-to-bumper yellow taxis in Manhattan traffic

I usually take the subway or bus to get around Manhattan, but I sometimes hail yellow taxis like most New Yorkers. Today was an exception (a real treat, as I call it) because I took a taxi all the way from Harlem down to Chinatown, and then another taxi from Chinatown back up to Harlem. If you don’t know the city, that’s about 10 miles and usually takes 25 minutes by car each way. Manhattan is 13.4 miles (21.5 km) long and around 2.3 miles (3.7 km) wide. So basically, I was traveling from one end of Manhattan to the other. It feels luxurious to make the whole trip by taxi, like becoming the princess of a deep yellow Ford Crown Victoria chariot (ok full-size 4-door sedan) for the afternoon. As I relished the afternoon sun, I wondered why the city felt more tense than usual. Even for the Big Apple. What I thought was going to be a delight turned out to be more like an unsettling Indian rickshaw than the gliding chariot of a princess.

Source: nyctourist.com

On my way downtown, my first cabbie, a perfectly nice older man from Eastern Europe who was very sweet to me, was driving aggressively, impatiently swerving, cursing at other drivers through his open window, slamming on the brakes. It was off the charts, even for New York standards. I was taken aback. “They closed the E102 entrance to the FDR!” he yelled to me in the back seat, “Why the hell did they do that??!” and then shouted out the window at a burgundy BMW that cut him off, “What the f$%&!!” He drove with a vengeance, as if he hated both his vehicle and the concept of driving. I started to feel nauseated so held my breath hoping it would end quickly. In between his cursing he kept apologizing to me for the delay, saying “I’m sorry sweetheart,” which was a strange mix of rapidly changing moods in a small, confined space, I didn’t know exactly what to feel — traumatized but protected at the same time. On my way back uptown, my second cabbie was an equally nice man from Pakistan, more quiet and soft spoken, but just as irritated, grumbling and mumbling, exhaling, grinding the breaks, and abruptly changing lanes like we were in a video game. In between swerving he patiently explained he would not take the FDR and assured me that all would be smooth after we crossed 28th Street. When he said the following words to me through the plastic partition it suddenly all made sense: “The President is here today, miss.”

“Obama halts New York evening rush hour traffic en route to $40,000 per head fundraiser”

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

MONDAY, JULY 30, 2012

Any time the mercury level in New York City rises well beyond the normal level of sophisticatedly organized chaos, it’s because President Obama has touched down in Manhattan for the day. Depending on where you are, traffic can become gridlocked like Times Square on New Year’s Eve, whether you’re in a taxi, on foot, or waiting for the bus. Police barricades go up faster than you can say ‘Mitt Romney.’ This happens no matter who the President is. It’s the President of the United States of America. Full stop. There is nothing you can do but wait. And watch the taxi fare meter tick upwards, in my case. This has already happened to my commute three times in the last few months, why do I keep forgetting? It’s a Presidential Election year after all, so I’ll have to remember this between now and November because it will undoubtedly happen again…otherwise, I just end up wondering why everyone has gone nuts.