Sunday, 01 May 2005 | Escort

On Saturday, Amanda and I rode around with Joe, a friendly 74-year-old taxi driver from the Lower East Side. His cab was brand new (it still smelled new, even) and lacked the partition that usually separates the driver from his passengers. (Joe said he didn't need any such thing, that no one would dare give him trouble. He also referred to himself as a "people person," pronouncing each syllable with conviction.)

He spoke with an accent that was so perfectly New York that it seemed entirely fake; he's one of the only people I've ever conversed with who used the phrase "fuggedaboudit" in full sincerity, and dismissed people he didn't trust simply by calling them "crooks." (It briefly occurred to me to take a picture of his accent, before my subconscious reminded me that that wasn't possible.)

He'd been driving a cab for 47 years, he said, before making us guess his age. I asked him if he had any crazy office stories, and he replied, "Just wait till you read the book! You'd better believe I got stories." I coaxed him into telling me just one of them, which turned out to be about a 15-year-old runaway from Ohio who wanted to be dropped off on the Upper West Side in the middle of the night. (He didn't mention what year it was this happened, but earlier he'd said that he stopped working nights long ago, in order to spend more time with his wife.) I feel like he skipped some important information, or that I might've misunderstood him, because next he said, "To make a long story short, she threw her breast over the seat. And you know what? I threw it right back at her!"

The three of us rode around Tribeca for more than two hours. I was on assignment, taking pictures (in various locations) of the digital sign that was mounted on the top of his car. At one point, after being shooed away by film festival security guards, Amanda and I walked down the median of the West Side Highway and photographed the vehicle from afar. Mostly, though, no one bothered us.