“Mason and Vallejo please.” Then almost immediately, I asked, “Is it difficult to find a cab on Saturday nights in the city?” I asked as I got into the cab.<\/p>\n
“Yeah…there’s a lot of xmas parties going on. Where to again?”<\/p>\n
For the first part of the evening, I was in Potrero Hill and planned to leave the area for North Beach around 10:15 pm. Despite preparing ahead of time with a list of cab companies numbers, I wasn’t able to get a cab out to that distant “far” area of Potrero Hill. Most of the numbers had an “error in connection” or a busy signal. I would try again and again (thank god for easy redial). When I did get through, the call would suddenly drop. At one point, I got to a dispatcher and said that I would get a cab “soon”. I waited until 11:30 pm until I started thinking about how I could just walk down to a busier area and flag down a cab.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, a few friends were driving to the Tenderloin to pick up something left at a party. They dropped me off on Van Ness and Eddy. There, I saw a flurry of cabs going up and down the street. This has got to be easy. So I start flailing about, you know, hailing the cab. But as I paid more attention, it turned out all the cabs on this street had the “for hire” sign turned off. Some had passengers. Some were just empty cabs cruising the streets.<\/p>\n
At one point, a white passenger van pulled over and backed up to me “do you need a ride?”<\/p>\n
Despite my frustration, I said with common sense, “Uh…no!”<\/p>\n
The van went away. And somehow miraculously, a cab saw me and was for hire. I gave the cab driver a hefty tip for my relief. And arrived to North Beach at 12:15 am.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“Mason and Vallejo please.” Then almost immediately, I asked, “Is it difficult to find a cab on Saturday nights in the city?” I asked as I got into the cab. “Yeah…there’s a lot of xmas parties going on. Where to … Continue reading