John Clark: Before the Birth of Uber and Lyft: Driving Cab in The City in the 70s

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Halloween, North Beach, early 1970s: photo by Mr Flikker, c 1975

I was knocking around San Francisco in the 1970's looking for a way to make a few bucks. A friend, a jazz saxophone player, who drove a taxi suggested getting a hack license. I did and drove cab for two years. At the time there were numerous small cab companies, fly by the seat of the pants operations, hiring anyone without a felony conviction who could steer an automobile. There were also four larger companies that had radio dispatch service -- you could supplement street pickups with home calls. Yellow had most of the radio business, followed by DeSoto and Veterans Cabs, the Grey Ghosts. You'd see them working the higher elevations, Pacific Heights and Nob Hill residences. Their drivers were often older, nicely attired. The fourth, City Cab, where I worked, got the scraps from the table. City Cab radio service covered Tenderloin bars and dives in the Outer Mission too shabby for the other companies. If you needed a cab in Hunter's Point, it was a waste of time to call Yellow, you called City. We had more in common with the independents -- no dress code, lots of writers, artists, stoners and a few miscreants. Many of the cabs were in a state of automotive decay, but all had a radio. You paid the company to rent the cab, your "gate," paid for gas and tipped out the dispatchers and doormen who could reward you with lucrative airport runs. It took the better part of the shift to make expenses. Anything you took in after that was in your pocket. Any time you didn't have a fare you were losing money. Anyone together enough to raise their hand streetside could get into a tiny room with you. You might guess this led to a lot of situations demanding a high degree of resourcefulness, and that guess would be right, but that's not what I want to talk about -- I want to tell you about Jimmy the Glove. Jimmy was the gas man. You'd get your car from him at the start of the shift and return it to him at shift's end. Jimmy was a short guy with greying hair who wore overalls that started clean at the beginning of the shift but acquired multiple layers of oil and grime by the end. And outsize gloves of course. He was often in a rage, directed at management, regarding the sorry state of the cab fleet. It wasn't unusual to find him throwing empty oil cans against the wall intoning exotic and profane fulminations directed at the company. He was always kind to the drivers and I liked him a lot. Once a month Jimmy would show up at the cab barn dressed in a swank suit, vest and tie, unroll a craps layout on top of the pool table and run an all night craps game for which he was both croupier and stickman. City Cab had its own literary magazine, the New Deep City Press. It featured poetry, journalism, short stories and art by drivers with the occasional contribution from locals like Gary Snyder and Spain Rodriguez. A 75 cent cover price and a few ads (Keystone Korner was an advertiser) kept it afloat for several years. Somewhere along the line the idea came up that it'd be a good idea to have a centerfold and the honor went to Jimmy the Glove. He appeared reclining on a sofa, naked but for gloves covering his genitals. It ran next to his "Fading the Main" column on craps strategy and was a hit with everyone. I think the cab barn, a metal shed, is still standing out near Bayshore and Oakdale but City Cab is gone, having splintered into several smaller companies. At that time San Francisco was a city with plenty of room for writers and artists who had day jobs to pay the rent. The "sharing economy" services, Uber and Lyft, and the faceless behemoths of the google bus fleet are a cold bore next to the color of the cab business back then. The New Deep City Press is a window into a bohemian subculture at a very particular time in San Francisco.

@jacobevans #sftaxi: image via Ethan @braunethan, 13 October 2012

Will Smith made me late for work. Old school San Francisco taxi parked in the Tenderloin during use as movie prop in the Will Smith film Pursuit of Happiness.: photo by peko-chan, 26 September 2005

  The New Deep City Press, Spring 1977, cover by Jamie Maddox. The New Deep City Press presented the world as seen by San Francisco taxicab drivers in the 1970s. The publication nicely captured the spirit of the times in words, images and original art.: image via World of Taxis



Drivers pose for the camera at City Cab in San Francisco, 1976.: image by The New Deep City Press via World of Taxis