Alan Platt
The other day I was in a taxi and the cabbie had a classic Noo Yawk accent. The photo ID in the partition separating the front seat from the back looked unusual -- I guessed that he was one of the rare cabbies who owned his own cab and asked if that were true. "Yeah," he said, then, "Well, I used to," and finally finished with a bemused, slightly surprised reflection of "Actually, I still do...!" We'll never know the story behind that one.
His name was Alan Platt. I asked if "Platt" was English, since I'm always on the lookout for traces of WASPery left in New York City, whether white-collar or blue-collar. "Naw, I'm half-Jewish, half-Italian. But yeah, it's also an English name. Dere was dis guy who wrote for The Village Voice, he was from England and his name was Alan Platt. People would ask me if I was him. And one day, he actually got in my cab, and he said, 'So you're the uddah Alan Platt!' He'd heard about me, ya see."
Initially, he thought my friends and I were full-time musicians, because we'd gotten into the cab with our guitars. "Wait a second. You guys aren't famous, ah you?" We kept him in suspense for a moment, then admitted we were computer programmers. "Computah programmahs? I was gonna do that myself. Took a test from IBM in 1968, did really well, like 99th puhcentile. But I woulda hadda cut my hair, ya know? So I decided to drive a cab." [Is there anything more exotic than a thoroughly Noo Yawker hippie?]
I asked him how he dealt with driving a cab in the bad old days of the crime-filled New York of the '70s and '80s, and whether he'd ever had some dangerous passengers. "Nah. I mean, yeah, sometimes, but I'd just offah dem a J, and soon we'd be friends. Like the time I heard this black woman tellin' her boyfriend, 'Get him to pull ovah!' so they could rob me. And I leaned back and handed him a J and said, 'Heah, have some o' this. And get yuh woman to shut up.' And he did!" He went on to explain that he generally only ever drove his taxi while stoned or high on coke, but that Giuliani had ruined that for him.
His name was Alan Platt. I asked if "Platt" was English, since I'm always on the lookout for traces of WASPery left in New York City, whether white-collar or blue-collar. "Naw, I'm half-Jewish, half-Italian. But yeah, it's also an English name. Dere was dis guy who wrote for The Village Voice, he was from England and his name was Alan Platt. People would ask me if I was him. And one day, he actually got in my cab, and he said, 'So you're the uddah Alan Platt!' He'd heard about me, ya see."
Initially, he thought my friends and I were full-time musicians, because we'd gotten into the cab with our guitars. "Wait a second. You guys aren't famous, ah you?" We kept him in suspense for a moment, then admitted we were computer programmers. "Computah programmahs? I was gonna do that myself. Took a test from IBM in 1968, did really well, like 99th puhcentile. But I woulda hadda cut my hair, ya know? So I decided to drive a cab." [Is there anything more exotic than a thoroughly Noo Yawker hippie?]
I asked him how he dealt with driving a cab in the bad old days of the crime-filled New York of the '70s and '80s, and whether he'd ever had some dangerous passengers. "Nah. I mean, yeah, sometimes, but I'd just offah dem a J, and soon we'd be friends. Like the time I heard this black woman tellin' her boyfriend, 'Get him to pull ovah!' so they could rob me. And I leaned back and handed him a J and said, 'Heah, have some o' this. And get yuh woman to shut up.' And he did!" He went on to explain that he generally only ever drove his taxi while stoned or high on coke, but that Giuliani had ruined that for him.