Hair Conditioner

It has been a year since I drove a cab, but the old garage still looks the same. (…)

Shape-up time at Dover Taxi Garage #2 still happens every afternoon, rain or shine, winter or summer, from two to six. That’s when the night-line drivers stumble into the red-brick garage on Hudson Street in Greenwich Village and wait for the day liners, old-timers with backsides contoured to the crease in the seat of a Checker cab, to bring in the taxis. The day guys are supposed to have the cabs in by four, but if the streets are hopping they cheat a little bit, maybe by two hours. That gives the night liners plenty of time to stand around in the puddles on the floor, inhale the carbon monoxide, and listen to the cab stories.

Cab stories are tales of survived disasters. They are the major source of conversation during shape-up. (…)

A year ago or so, any woman hanging out at shape-up was either waiting to report a driver for stealing her pocketbook, a Dover stiff’s girl friend, or some sort of crazy cabdriver groupie. In those days, the two or three women who were driving were banned from the night line, which is notably unfair because you can make a lot more money with a lot less traffic driving at night. Claire, a long-time Dover driver, challenged the rule and won; now fifteen women drive for Dover, most on the night line. (…)

It doesn’t take a cabdriver too long to realize that once you leave the joy of shape-up and start uptown on Hudson Street, you’re fair game. You’re at the mercy of the Fear Variables, which are (not necessarily in order): the traffic, which will be in your way; the other cabdrivers, who want to take your business; the police, who want to give you tickets; the people in your cab, lunatics who will peck you with nudges and dent you with knives; and your car, which is capable of killing you at any time. Throw in your bosses and the back inspectors and you begin to realize that a good night is not when you make a living wage. That’s a great night. A good night is when you survive to tell your stories at tomorrow’s shape-up. But all the Fear Variables are garbage compared with the Big Fear. The Big Fear is that times will get so hard that you’ll have to drive five or six nights a week instead of three.

{ NY mag | Continue reading }

Of the many thousands of events canceled by the snow, it might have been convenient if Friday’s scheduled rollout of the great New York share-a-taxicab-with-a-stranger experiment of 2010 were not among them.

Alas.

Communal rides in the city’s yellow cab fleet will now start Wednesday, the Taxi and Limousine Commission said.

The share-a-cab program will allow up to four passengers to ride carpool-style along three preset routes in Manhattan, at a flat fare of $3 or $4 a head. Drop-offs will be allowed along Park Avenue down to Grand Central Terminal. For now, shared rides will only be allowed between 6 and 10 a.m. on weekdays.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

photo { David Stewart }

{ Nicolai Howalt }

In 2005, the French city of Lyon introduced a shared bicycle system called Velo’v that has since inspired numerous other schemes around the world.

Velo’v differed from earlier schemes in its innovative technology, such as electronic locks, onboard computers and access via smart cards. The system now offers some 4000 bikes at almost 350 stations around the city. (…)

Since its introduction, the system has kept track of the start and finishing location plus travel time of every journey. Today, we get a detailed analysis of this data. (…)

Some of what they found is unsurprising. Over an average trip, cyclists travel 2.49 km in 14.7 minutes so their average speed is about 10 km/h. (…) During the rush hour, however, the average speed rises to almost 15 km/h, a speed which outstrips the average car speed. (…)

Curiously, the Wednesday morning speeds are systematically higher than on other days, even though there is no change in other factors such as the number of cars. This, say Jensen and co, is probably because women tend to stay at home and look after their children on a Wednesday in France. So the higher proportion of men pushes up the average speed.

{ The Physics arXiv Blog | Continue reading }

The Ford Crown Victoria has long been the most widely used vehicle in New York City’s taxi fleet. But Ford is retiring the Crown Vic next year, and that means NYC needs to find a replacement.

Enter the Taxi of Tomorrow competition, a project created by city officials to find the next major taxi model.

So far, the city has narrowed the competition down to three finalists. The winner, which will be picked next year, will have an exclusive contract to provide the city with taxi cabs.

{ Fast Company | Continue reading }

In 2007, TLC’s Board of Commissioners approved a new package of taxi stickers. Smart Design, a design firm, produced and donated the new logo designs to TLC.


Taxi drivers and owners purchased the stickers from authorized printers.

The 4 stickers (per vehicle side) in the logo package were: a fare panel, the NYCTAXI sticker, the medallion number and a checker stripe decal.

{ NYC.gov | Continue reading }

…areas of science, technology and medicine that are regressing. (…) I mean fields of research that actually go backward, as measured by some specific benchmark. Some examples:

* The end of infectious disease: Decades ago antibiotics, vaccines, pesticides, water chlorination and other public health measures were vanquishing diseases such as malaria, yellow fever, polio, whooping cough, tuberculosis and smallpox, particularly in First World nations. (…) Hopes for the end of infectious disease were soon crushed, however, by the emergence of AIDS, mutant flu viruses and antibiotic-resistant forms of old killers such as tuberculosis. (…)

* The origin of life: In 1953 Harold Urey of the University of Chicago and his graduate student Stanley Miller simulated the “primordial soup” in which life supposedly began on Earth some four billion years ago. They filled a flask with methane, ammonia and hydrogen (representing the primordial atmosphere) and water (the oceans) and zapped it with a spark-discharge device (lightning). The flask was soon coated with a reddish goo containing amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. This famous experiment raised the hopes of many scientists that one of nature’s deepest mysteries—genesis, the origin of life on Earth—would soon be replicated in the laboratory and hence solved. It hasn’t worked out that way. Scientists have failed to show how mere chemicals can become animate, and the origin of life now appears more improbable and mysterious than ever.

{ John Horgan/Scientific American | Continue reading }

artwork { Barnett Newman, The Promise, 1949 | Oil on canvas | Whitney Museum of American Art, New York }

{ Interborough Subway, 14 St. to 42nd St., New York, May 21, 1905 | More: Brooklyn to New York via Brooklyn Bridge, 1899 | video }

related { 50 Reasons to Be Pretty Damn Euphoric You Live in New York City }

I answered, “If you’re a terrorist, you’re going to hide your weapons in your anus or your vagina.”

“Yes, but starting tomorrow, we’re going to start searching your crotchal area–this is the word he used, ‘crotchal’–and you’re not going to like it.”

“What am I not going to like?” I asked.

“We have to search up your thighs and between your legs until we meet resistance,” he explained.

{ The Atlantic | Continue reading }

photo { Ralph Mecke }

{ Harder to notice was that the person at the wheel was not actually driving. The car is a project of Google, which has been working in secret but in plain view on vehicles that can drive themselves, using artificial-intelligence software that can sense anything near the car and mimic the decisions made by a human driver. | NY Times | Continue reading }

Laws banning texting or talking on a mobile phone while driving don’t reduce car accidents.

“In fact,” concludes the US Highway Loss Data Institute, “[texting] bans are associated with a slight increase in the frequency of insurance claims filed under collision coverage for damage to vehicles in crashes.”

This counter-intuitive revelation comes from a study by the HLDI, which compared insurance-claim data in states that enacted texting bans with the same data in states where no such laws exist. Data from after the bans took affect was also compared to stats before the bans took effect.

Texting bans did not reduce accident rates, and in some states the accident rates increased after the bans went into effect. “In California, Louisiana and Minnesota,” the HDLI reports, “the bans are associated with small but statistically significant increases in collision claims (7.6%, 6.7%, and 8.9%, respectively).”

{ The Register | Continue reading }

{ Michael Sailstorfer, Zeit ist keine Autobahn, 2008 }

{ Colleen Nika }

{ 1. Unsourced image | 2. Maurizio Cattelan, Untitled, 2000 }

{ The causes of logistics uncertainty | Full story }

{ A Lamborghini BLEW UP on Rodney Street, which serves as the off-ramp for the BQE’s Metropolitan Avenue exit. | New York Shitty | via Copyranter }

unrelated { unrelated: For the last two years of his life, after an attempted suicide, Schumann was confined to a mental institution at his own request. }

{ Steven Humour | Thanks Bucky }

Transportation Security Administration
Service Animals

It is recommended that persons using an animal for assistance carry appropriate identification. Identification may include: cards or documentation, presence of a harness or markings on the harness, or other credible assurance of the passenger using the animal for their disability. (…)

Monkey Helpers

When a service monkey is being transported in a carrier, the monkey must be removed from the carrier by the handler prior to screening,

The service monkey must be controlled by the handler throughout the screening process.

The service monkey handler should carry the monkey through the walk through metal detector while the monkey remains on a leash.

When the handler and service monkey go through the walk through metal detector and the detector alarms, both the handler and the monkey must undergo additional screening.

Since service monkeys may likely draw attention, the handler will be escorted to the physical inspection area where a table is available for the monkey to sit on. Only the handler will touch or interact with the service monkey.

Security Officers have been trained to not touch the service monkey during the screening process.

Security Officers will conduct a visual inspection on the service monkey and will coach the handler on how to hold the monkey during the visual inspection.

The inspection process may require that the handler to take off the monkey’s diaper as part of the visual inspection.

{ TSA.gov | Continue reading }