Conan O'Brien: NYC Pedicab Driver

I've got some really cool colleagues. Like this guy, Conan, for instance.

The best pedicabbie pickup line ever! (If only it were mine.)

I find myself doing the three second sales pitch (also known as the pedicabbie pickup line) much less frequently now then when I first started the job. In general, folks who flag me down are willing to pay more than the ones that I have to persuade to get on the trike. These days, I generally save the sales pitch for slow nights when I have to be more aggressive in order to pick up fares.

Last night after we got off work a couple of colleagues and I went out for burgers. (Technically, it wasn't last night; it was 3 AM this morning). One of these fellow pedicabbies, who started riding  around the same time as me told me this story about committing an act of desperation on a dull, dreary day:

It had been raining for hours and the colleague had spent the day hunkered down under a tree feeling miserable and not getting a single ride. Finally the rain stopped, and he spotted a couple approaching at a distance. He hopped in the driver's seat and pedaled toward them furiously, screeching to a halt beside them.

"Get on the pedicab now!" he ordered breathlessly. "I'll explain later." Looking at one another in bewilderment, the couple complied. (I should explain that this colleague is in the Marine Reserves. He's not a big guy, but he's probably pretty imposing when he wants to be.)

I asked my friend whether the couple actually ended up paying for their ride and what kind of explanation he offered them. He said that, yes, they did pay and that he merely explained how desperate he was to get a ride.

I have to say that I'm a bit jealous. I don't think that any of the pickup lines I've come up with could touch that one for creativity and humor. And even if I were imaginative enough to think up something that outrageous, I doubt that I would have whatever it takes to actually pull it off.

The city's smellscape

Riding around in a car there's a curtain of glass and steel separating you from the sounds, sights and smells of the streets. Roll the windows down if you want to, but there’s still no way that you’re going to get the kind of intimate experience of the city that you would get on the back of a pedicab. Lest this sound like some clumsy pedicab propaganda piece, let me hasten to say that the street-level intimacy I’m talking about is not necessarily pleasant. Sometimes it's pure bliss, but not always.

I mentioned sounds, sights and smells, so let's begin by considering a couple of examples from the auditory realm. Having nothing between you and the melodies of the musicians on Royal Street may be nice. On the other hand there’s that car with the shock and awe stereo system blasting out something that resembles the sound of a jackhammer, only less melodic and about a hundred decibels louder. That will make you wish fervently for some windows to roll up.

What about the city's sights? You may well appreciate the improved opportunities for admiring the Spanish colonial architecture from the passenger seat of the pedicab; but sit in that same seat for long, and you'll start to feel like you’re on an urban safari in which Rattus norvegicus (the common rat) is not early as rare and elusive as we all might wish.  (Early on in my pedicab career I saw a rat darting between a drain and a dumpster, and without thinking I blurted out: “Wow, look at that rat!” to which one of my riders responded: “Umm… I don’t think that’s the tour we paid for.”)

Then there’s the olfactory experience, to which the remainder of this post will be devoted.

On the plus side there's the warm, sweet fragrance of frying beignets at Cafe du Monde.

In the minus column, there are those piles of manure left behind by the carriage mules and police horses. (Read here about the controversy this has been creating lately.) In the interest of full disclosure, I've been working lately as a buggy driver in addition to the pedicab gig. The company I work for, Royal Carriages, recently had an hour-and-half meeting to discuss creative solutions to the mule poo problem. (Our mules wear "diapers", but they're not entirely effective. Of course, the horses used by the mounted police don't wear diapers.)

Back to French Quarter fragrances: The block of St. Phillip between Chartres and Decatur is especially nice. At the Chartres end, there's the enticing smell of Creole/Italian cooking coming from Irene's; at the Decatur end, there's the French Market Restaurant with its exquisite, spicy and distinctly New Orleans boiled-seafood aroma. I think they're pumping it out to the street on purpose. No doubt New Orleans has much better restaurants, but as far as I'm concerned, 1001 Decatur might just be the sweetest smelling spot in the city.

When it comes to picking the Quarter's stinkiest spot, I don't think that there would be much controversy in the pedicabbie community. The stench of vomit is common up and down Bourbon, but the corner of Bourbon and Iberville is the foulest by far. Not just the corner actually, but that whole right-angle stretch from Canal and Bourbon to Bourbon and Iberville to Iberville and Royal. I'm not sure what it is that makes that bit so bad. It must have something to do with the cluster of oyster houses there. If you think about it, they have to be discarding gillions of oyster shells, and all those juices are dripping out of the dumpsters and draining right into the streets.  

It was a fellow pedicabbie who suggested that I devote a post to the smells of the city, so I decided that it would be a good idea to solicit input from my colleagues for this piece. I put the word out on the our Facebook page, and I got an enthusiastic response, the highlights of which I now pass on to you my readers. (The quotes are in italics. My comments are in plain text.)

• You can't forget about marijuana. There have been a couple of occasions in which I have become aware that someone was smoking pot on the back of my bike. Strangely enough I didn't smell it those times. I'm guessing that the smoke just drifted along behind us like exhaust from a car. But whenever I ride past someone who's toking on the side of the street the acrid odor is unmistakable.
• The jerk chicken man on Frenchmen St. This is a Jamaican dude with a barbecue grill. I bought his chicken once. It was OK, but definitely one of those things that doesn't taste nearly as good as it smells.
• You can smell those crust punks from 50 feet away sometimes. Three different people mentioned the body odor of crust punks.
• You can't leave out the sweet olive trees and confederate jasmine during springtime. 
• Piss-covered, passed-out frat boy with a hint of sugary Hand Grenade vomit. 
• Coffee roasting at the P&G plant in the Marigny that wafts over to us in the Quarter sometimes.
• Standard coffee and Aunt Sally's in the Marigny. Candy and coffee. Are there any better smells?

One colleague was so inspired by this whole discussion that he proposed a scratch-and-sniff map of New Orleans. Sounds like a great idea! I wonder how you would go about capturing the essence of crust punk body odor for a scratch-and-sniff map.

A good cop story (which has nothing to do with the pedicab)

New Orleans has long been infamous for its corrupt cops, but today I heard a story about a New Orleans police officer who, with one simple act of kindness and creativity, helped transform the lives of six troubled teens.

My car's in the shop, and my bicycle has a flat, so I called a cab this morning to come pick me up today. (Yes, I called a car cab. Hey, I'm all for patronizing pedicabs, and I do so whenever the circumstances allow it. And you can be sure that I pay generous tips. But I'm living in Gentilly -- about three miles from downtown -- so running my errands in a pedicab would cost a lot more time and money than I have to spare. We all have our niche, right?) 


After greeting the driver and giving him my destination, I expressed my condolences for the murder of his colleague earlier this week. He told me that although they worked for the same company, he only knew the victim in passing. However, he was close friends with another cab driver who was murdered in May 2011.


I asked my driver whether he had ever been robbed on the job, and he said no, which wasn't all that surprising. He was a big, burly African-American dude with his hair pulled back tight in a little ponytail. If I were in charge of casting someone to play the part of a bouncer, I don't think I could do any better than this guy. If, on the other hand, I was out looking for someone to rob, I'd probably look elsewhere. As it turned out he didn't just look fierce; he was actually an ex cop. He had started working as a cabby only after retiring from a full career with the police force. 


He had gotten into quite a bit of trouble in his younger years he told me. "I was never really bad," he said. "Just mischievous." But that mischievous streak might have eventually pulled him down a darker path had it not been for one particular encounter with the law. Here's the story as he told it to me.


Some friends and I had climbed over the fence at the school to shoot some hoops. After a while we got thirsty, so we pried a door open to go inside and drink some water. Without knowing it we had set off an alarm. We went back outside to play and suddenly found ourselves surrounded by police cars. Some of the cops got out carrying shotguns. We were really scared.


The chief came over to me and pulled me aside. "I know you from somewhere," he said.


I said, "Yeah, I work over there at Winn Dixie by the precinct station, so you've probably seen me around."


"Look," the chief said. "I don't think you're a bad kid. Tell me what was going on here."


"Nothing, man. We just broke in to get some water."


He walked back over to his colleagues and ordered them all to leave. "I'll handle this one," he said. Then he cuffed all six of us and put us all in his car. It was tight, but he made us all squeeze in. Then he asked us where we lived, and one by one he took every one of us home and talked to our parents. I vowed that day that the next time I met up with the law, I was going to be the policeman. 


After I got out of the academy, I saw that same police chief, and he recognized me. He cried!


Of the six of us who got into trouble that day, me and another guy went on to become policemen. One became an attorney. One became an executive of a big financial firm. One owns a construction company. And one is a social worker with a PhD in psychology. 

By the time he was done with his story, I had tears in my eyes. "Look, I hate to bring this up," I said. "But you know how it is here in New Orleans. Whenever you talk about crime and police -- or anything else, for that matter -- race is always part of the picture. So, your friends... They were all African American?"

"Yes," he said.

"And the policeman?"

"No, he was white."

I told the cab driver that I write a blog and that I would love to share his story. He said that was okay. I asked permission to use his name, and he respectfully declined.

Assuming that his story was accurate, he and his companions definitely beat the odds. You've probably heard the grim statistics about African-American men. If anything the situation is worse around here. A couple of years ago a report calculated that a black male in Jefferson Parish (an area which includes most of New Orleans' suburbs) was more likely to be murdered than a U.S. soldier deployed to Iraq was to be killed there.

I want to be careful not to put more weight on this story than it can bear. First of all, I can't say whether that policeman's behavior was anything out of the ordinary. For all I know he may have merely been following the police policy manual. Secondly, there must have been many other people who helped point these young men toward a productive path -- schoolteachers, pastors, social workers, and who knows who else -- to say nothing of their parents. Let's not overlook the fact that involving the boys' parents was a key component of the policeman's plan. 


Still, the cop-turned-cabby who shared his story with me today credits that one policeman and his wise action at a critical time with setting him on the road for a successful life. 

A nice ride rudely interrupted. (Plus bonus interactive survey.)

I was doing a drop off at a French Quarter hotel just before midnight last week. A couple of soccer-mom types, one blonde and the other brunette, were standing in front of the hotel entrance.

"Hey, let's see your calves!" demanded the blonde as my passengers disembarked. I dutifully flexed my calf muscles for her.

"Do you go Uptown?" asked the brunette.

This is a common question and one that is almost never sincere. People seem to get a big kick out of asking me to take them to outlandish places: the airport, the West Bank, California... Technically Uptown doesn't fit in this category since it is located inside Orleans Parish and is therefore, in theory at least, a possible pedicab destination. (See here for a previous post on distance rides including the story of a trip Uptown.) But nine times out of ten, when someone asks to go Uptown the request is intended as a joke.

I gave my stock reply: "It's not a question of how far I can go; it's a question of how far you can afford."

"Hmmm... Well, how much would it be to --?" asked the lady, naming an Uptown address well beyond the Garden District.

So maybe this one was serious. Or more likely, she had been joking initially but on a sudden whim was giving the idea serious consideration.

I hesitated a moment. Did I really want to do this? It would be the furthest I had ever traveled on a single, one-way ride. There was almost zero chance of picking up a fare on the return. It was hard to estimate how long it might take, but I figured that it would be more than an hour round trip -- probably a good bit more.

On the other hand, it had been a slow night with slim tips so far. It was a warm summer evening, and the prospect of a long, leisurely ride Uptown with moonlight filtering through the leafy branches of the live oak trees overhead was very appealing.  In the interest of full disclosure, I should probably also mention that these ladies were very pretty. (It turned out that only one of them needed a ride, but I didn’t know that yet.) Not that I had any untoward intentions, but if you read my last post you may not be surprised to know that I’m a bit hungry for any kind of female companionship lately.

"Thirty dollars," I said.

This was a lot more than it would have cost to make the trip by taxi -- but dirt cheap for that distance on the pedicab. I really wanted to do the ride but not badly enough to do it for nothing.

"Oh, I see," the lady said, sounding a little disappointed. "I'm probably better off just taking a cab."

"Yes, I'm sure you can get a cab a lot cheaper if that's what you're looking for," I admitted.

She hesitated a moment before blurting out. "You know what? I'm going to do it!"

"Are you serious?" her friend said, suddenly realizing that the joke had gone farther than she had expected.

"Sure! Why not? It'll be fun," the brunette replied.

"You've got to be kidding!" the blonde protested. "I'm going to tell your husband."

The brunette ignored the threat and settled into the seat behind me.

"Take good care of her," the blonde ordered me as I began pedaling away. "She's got three kids and a husband at home."

"Yes, please be careful," echoed the brunette. "I've got three kids and a husband."

"Hey, do I look dangerous?" I asked.

"No," she admitted. "But the dangerous ones never look dangerous."

The ride started out well. She was friendly without being flirtatious. I don't think she told me her name; if so, I don't remember it. I did learn that she was a school administrator. I asked about her Katrina experience, which is a pretty reliable way to open up a conversation in New Orleans, and she told me a brief version of her story. Our conversation moved on, and we both talked about our kids a bit.

About five minutes into the ride she got a call on her cell phone. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I couldn’t help overhearing.

Yeah, I’m fine. I’ll be home in a little bit.

…I’m on my way now. It’ll be a few minutes.

…Yes.

…Yes. I’m on my way.

…I uh…took a uh...pedicab.

…Did she really call you? I’m going to get her! She betrayed me!

…No! I could have gotten a taxi if that’s what I wanted.

…I’m going to pay him forty dollars.

…No!

…NO!

…NO! I’m fine. Really.

…NO! I don’t need you to come get me.

…No, really, I’m fine. I’m OK, hear? I’ll be home soon!

“Uh-oh,” I said when she hung up. “Sounds like you’re in trouble.”

“Oh yeah, a little,” she said dismissively. “It’s no big deal.”

We picked up the conversation where we had left off as we continued the ride. Another ten minutes passed pleasantly before a car came zooming up out of nowhere and screeched to a halt beside us. The driver shouted something that I didn’t quite catch through the open window, presumably my passenger’s name.

“Oh no!” she gasped.

“Your husband?”

“Yes, my husband. I can’t believe it! This is so embarrassing! I’m really sorry,” she said as she fumbled through her purse for the money to pay me.

“No need to apologize,” I reassured her. “No damage done to me.”

Of course there wasn’t any damage done to me. To the contrary, she paid me the price we had agreed upon plus a ten dollar tip, so I ended up getting a fairly decent fare for the distance, which would not have been the case had I carried her all the way to her destination. No damage at all. Just a twinge of disappointment.

______________________________

Here’s a chance for you, my readers, to weigh in on this story. I’m interested in knowing what you think about the husband’s behavior.

A. His action was reasonable and responsible. His wife had put herself in a potentially dangerous situation that demanded his intervention.

B. His action was romantic. He went above and beyond the call of duty out of a noble desire to protect his lady. Any girl should be grateful to be so well cared for.

C. He was acting like an overbearing jerk.

D. Other. (Explain.)