Kicking Ass, Taking Credit Cards

Date: 19 November 2010
Day of Chronicles: 16
Hours: 5:00-8:45pm
Rides Given: 4

As a result of my moment of truth on 7th Avenue in the 50s last night (when 3 different taxi seekers declined rides on the grounds of no cash), I decided to acquire credit-card-processing capability. Tonight - Hallelujah! - on 7th Avenue, in the 50s, I picked up my first credit card ride (to 70th & 1st - hey, I was in the neighborhood, you know?). I was worried that the processing process would be cumbersome, that the passenger would get impatient with the plod through the fields on the touch screen - but actually it was very quick and easy and the iPhone did a great job! My passenger did have a bit of a hard time accepting that the whole experience was for real - I think she'd never even ridden in a pedicab before, and getting a pedicab driver who spoke English and took credit cards and was happy to go to 70th & 1st (for a reasonable price, I might add) was just too many weird things at once.

Coasting back to Midtown from 70th & 1st, by way of Park, I passed within a half block of my old high school, on East 68th Street. Taking in the majestic light show, laid out between me and Grand Central, I recalled a prediction my mother made twenty years ago, when I was choosing between Stuyvesant (at that time a dump on 14th Street with puke-green lockers) and the tiny Catholic girls' school with the grand marble staircase and red velvet carpet. She said, "Someday, when you see Park Avenue all lit up in front of you, you're going to know you made the right choice." I didn't really get what she meant at the time, but over the years I did come to appreciate the grandeur of that area, and did feel a certain reverence, riding down that hill tonight. 

In other news, a strange thing happened to me in Times Square this evening. To wit, I sort of rejected two prospective fares: One for being too large a party, not knowing where they were going ("I don't know where Chipotle is around here! You're supposed to tell me!"), and whining about the price; the other for wishing to be taken to an address that struck me as apocryphal (Church & Sutton? Anybody ever heard of it?). (I didn't exactly reject the second prospective passenger - he changed his mind about getting in as a result of my questioning his destination.) Maybe it's a good thing - being a little picky. Not too long after I picked up a jolly British couple on the 31st Street side of Penn Station (yup, there's a taxi stand there too) and took them to the Hilton Garden Inn (49th & 8th) and everybody won.