.:: The StrongBrain Collective ::.

Four years after moving to New York, there's one thing about this city I still haven't gotten used to or come to understand. Between two years of pedestrian commutation and another couple years reverse-commuting out of the city, this urban scourge easily tops the list of New York's major annoyances (just wait for my upcoming pieces on parking and FDNY barside-manners for the others).

They are the livery cab drivers. These are the Lincoln Towncar driving punks you see on the streets of the city in a 1 to 4 ratio to your standard yellow cabs.

They're the fellows seen driving the broken-down black cars with no less than six poorly tacked on decals in one of only three habitats; double parked in in the worst possible spot on the block obliviously scribbling on a clipboard, or careening around the corner in 6 inches of snow with slight regard for pedestrians or other drivers who own their own vehicle and care for its uptake, or six inches in front of you on the West Side Highway or Cross Bronx Expressway having just realized that the exit only lane they just got out of was precisely that.

So, it's finally come to the point that my mental dossier on the standard-issue livery cab jackass has gotten out of hand and needs to be committed to paper or bits or what not. These bastards don't deserve to add any more bottled up points to my blood pressure.

Before I get to my point about what goobers these guys are on the road, you must first understand the livery cab driver and his purpose, and to do that you must examine his clientele. Granted these kinds of passengers would drive any sane man to do what they do, but I'm not going to let them get off that easy.

The livery cab driver fills that niche that the standard cab driver won't or can't. These guys tend to work for dispatch agencies that are on call for corporations, are geared towards long distance fares, and tend to take fares late at night. As such, you'll see them at the outlying airports or boroughs and you'll see them double parked outside of midtown office buildings.

This means that they are dealing with one of roughly three internal distractions at any given time; a rich client potentially willing to drop a fat tip, a hapless tourist accidentally going to drop a fat tip, or a drunken paralegal struggling to keep down a strong drink.

Now, to illustrate my point I'm going to pose a few questions and scenarios based on my observations and see if your answers match mine ("$#@! sonofa %*^ livery cab"), with the hope that we can spark some debate and possibly put forth a petition to have this blight removed from the streets of our fair city.

- You're driving into the city on a Friday night in the rightmost of three sparsely populated lanes when you see a broken down 18-wheeler in the lane ahead of you. Who is hanging out in the middle lane, not letting you get out of your lane, while the leftmost lane is open?

- You're in one of two lanes of a highway that merge into one shortly ahead. Who do you see gunning ahead to cut everyone off (commonly known as "jamming the zipper" for its disregard of the one-merge-from-each-lane rule)?

- There is six inches of snow on the ground of a three lane highway that has broken down into two columns of traffic, to give more room to each vehicle and since no one can see the dashed line anyway. Who is the 2-wheel drive jackass splitting the lanes of traffic and coming at you at 55 mph?

- Who's the no-talent assmunch double-parked four feet from a car on his right, and 9 feet from a car on his left, at the entrance to the block, not letting anyone through, outside chatting with the doorman on the curb?

- Who do you suppose that motherless fucknut who hit and ran your parked truck on 100th street last June was?

- Who shows up out of nowhere and sped into the lane that you just turned your signal on to merge into? Who is the assclown flashing his lights and tailgating you now that you merged anyway?

- Of the following words, which is most difficult to pronounce: truck, cab, or livery?

Now, I hear you saying "Dude, you only notice them and create a stereotype in your mind because they are so distinct, in their black cabs." My reply to disprove that hypothesis is this - as I have used to dispel my own misgivings - keep track of all the people in vehicles that annoy you over any given week by vehicle type. Look at that list at the end of the week. Do the Ford F-150 trucks or Toyota Camrys that lead the lists of this country's best selling vehicles top that list? Thank you.

But, there are exceptions. And in the spirit of recognizing that one man can make a difference to bridge our differences, this article is dedicated to that one livery cab driver - who despite my prejudice and suspicion - got out and helped me through a particularly hairy parallel parking attempt on 118th street in November of 2003. Condescending fucknut.