Taxi Cab Concessions

Jeez... just a few nights ago on Thursday, I took my niece out for night on the town. She's twenty-one and I figured to improve her club knowledge. Afterward, We took a yellow cab from the city. The cab grumbled a bit when we gave the address an admittedly rough edge of Bedford-Stuyvesant. The cabbie got us there and I brought her back to my sister's apt before starting to walk home accepting that it would be a long wait before another yellow cab appeared and a longer wait before one would stop for me.

As I walked down DeKalb Avenue at 2 in the morning (easily more than a few miles from my apt) I thought as I do about some notion of equality. Basically I just wanted a cab to drive me home and was annoyed at the thought of the sea of yellow cabs that I knew were on Bedford Ave in Williamsburg at that moment huddled up like goldfish at feeding time.

My thoughts grumbled with recollections of drivers who wouldn't drive me and of me stopping for taxis that wouldn't stop, and I tried using that to fuel my 2am walk home.

So just now I saw the news; that some time later that night, one of three women riding another yellow cab to DeKalb and Franklin pulled a gun and shot the cabbie in the face.

The accused shooter is in custody. The cabbie is alive though probably blinded. I can't imagine he'll want to pick up a fare going to Bedford-Stuyvesant any time soon and for a moment I wondered who to blame for the problems of our world.