The search is over. I have met the best — and I do mean the very best — cab driver in New York. (Possibly the world, but lack of experience prevents me from being able to back up that claim.)
His name is Samuel. He is from Ghana. I don’t know how many NYC cab drivers there are from Ghana who are named Samuel, but assuming he’s the only one, should you get into his cab, please tell him I said hello and give him a big tip. He deserves it. Here’s why:
My birthday was a couple weeks ago. I went out with a small group to Pegu Club (I’d wanted to go for some time, apparently needed a reason. The trip also inaugurated a joint exploration of the swanky and often hidden cocktail joints of the city, but more on that later). Though I’d had some food, by the time I left I’d also consumed a good deal of gin and assorted other alcohols and was hungry again. Starving. In desperate need of a sandwich. But it was way past the time at which all the places in my neighborhood were still open, and I didn’t know where the 24-hour bodegas around W. Houston were. I walked around for a couple blocks but came up empty. My feet were absolutely killing me (I got a little dolled up and was wearing “nice” shoes. I’d worn these “nice” shoes to Col’s wedding a few months before and they hadn’t given me grief then. I don’t know what flew up their butt to make them turn on me that night) and I just couldn’t walk anymore. I found my way back to Houston and hailed a cab.
Transitional tangent: I lived 31 years without much need for cabs, and even now I don’t take them all that often, but whenever I am elsewhere and require the services of a cab I truly appreciate what we have here. It’s wholly dependent on location, of course on Houston at any time of day or night I’m going to catch a cab with little difficulty, but still — that I’m able to just stick my arm out and one stops within seconds is something I occasionally take for granted.
I slid into my seat in the cab, and said, “So, I eventually need to get to Brooklyn but I am SO HUNGRY. Do you know a nearby deli that’s still open and can we go there first?” And Samuel (for such was his name) said, “I know just the place.” He asked why I was so hungry, did I not have dinner? And I explained that I’d been out celebrating my birthday and had had more to drink than eat (like you do). He laughed, and then started to sing “Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday dear . . . what is your name?” If he hadn’t already won my admiration by agreeing to take me to food, that would’ve done it. I’ve had garrulous cab drivers before, and I even had one cab driver recite original poems to me (“That was lovely. Um, you’re going to take the next right”) but I’ve never been serenaded by a cabbie before.
He took me a couple blocks east and then turned on Broadway, and I realized, much to my navigational embarassment, that I work on this street and had I not been 3 sheets to the wind (well, more like 4 sheets at this point. Well, 4 sheets and a pillowcase) I might have remembered when I was wandering around that there’s a sandwich shop on this street (but then, I really was hobbling at this point and might have needed to crawl and hence ruin my clothes). But no matter.
Samuel pulled up to the sandwich shop and I started to get out of the car and said, “I’ll just be a second, can I get you anything?” but he’d already stopped the car and was making to get out as well. He also wanted a sandwich. I noticed that the meter was still on, but that was fine — I would’ve wanted to keep it going out of my (perhaps inflated?) sense of fairness.
The guys in the sandwich shop knew Samuel, who introduced me and told them it was my birthday. They also sang “Happy Birthday” to me while my corned beef and swiss on rye was getting made, and said many complimentary things about how pretty I was and how young I looked. That sounds creepy but it wasn’t. It was all very New York Romantic. You know what I mean. Not like that time at 2nd Ave. Deli when the crazy lady eating next to me and my date tried to get him to propose to me. That was just nuts.
I insisted on paying for Samuel’s sandwich. I would’ve done this under ordinary circumstances (you know, those ordinary circumstances that prompt one to ask a cab driver to make a detour to get food) but that night was special, because despite my best efforts to make it otherwise I didn’t pay for a damn thing at Pegu Club (honestly, you guys? I feel very guilty about taking people to this expensive place, having food before some of you even got there, and then so much to drink and having you all pay for it. Honestly. Wrong) and I needed to assuage my guilt somehow, and the means at my immediate disposal were to buy this sandwich.
But I still wound up breaking even because we got back into his cab and Samuel restarted the meter. I suspect that the difference was the cost of his sandwich, but even so. He restarted the meter.
It occurred to me later that the whole thing was all very New York Romantic, that this is the sort of thing that up until recently I would’ve said only happens in fiction. Yes, there was that one time I got into a cab and then realized I didn’t have enough cash on me so we had to stop at an ATM (obviously in the days before cabs were all outfitted with credit card readers) but that’s different — it was in the driver’s best interest to stop. This was a selfless act. And it was the perfect way to cap off an excellent birthday weekend.
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