Last week Amardeep mentioned the new book by Biju Mathew who organizes and fights for the rights of taxi workers in New York City. The book is titled, Taxi!: Cabs and Capitalism in New York City.

FROM THE PUBLISHER: A back roads ride through the yellow cab industry of New York City by lead Taxi Workers’ Alliance organizer Biju Mathew.As the point of entry for many of the city’s visitors, the yellow cab has become an enduring metaphor for New York City and its exuberant twenty-four-hours-a-day rush. But just as the city has changed in recent years, so too has the industry that keeps it on the move. Indeed, as Biju Mathew reveals in this highly readable, fast-paced survey of New York’s taxi business, just about everything has been dramatically altered except the yellow paint. Drawing on conversations with the drivers themselves, Taxi! details both the pressures and triumphs of life behind the wheel, from the effects of ex-Mayor Giuliani’s “quality of life” and “zero tolerance” programs and the structure of car and medallion ownership that often results in minimal earnings after a 12-hour shift, to the unexpected ease with which a workforce representing 80 ethnicities—and at least as many languages—organized, culminating in the 1998 strike of 24,000 taxi workers. One of the organizers of the Taxi Workers’ Alliance, Mathew is uniquely qualified to survey the fascinating world of the yellow cab. Buckle up, sit back, and enjoy the ride.

This week’s New Yorker has an article about Biju’s book and the drivers that he writes about.

A book party with no cocktails: ouch. In fairness to the folks at the New Press, which helped organize such a dreaded event recently, at a restaurant on West Twenty-ninth Street, there were a few limiting circumstances. For one thing, almost all of the invited guests were driving. Also, most of them were Muslims and, more to the point, among the city’s best experts on the consequences of excessive social drinking. They were cabbies. The book being celebrated was “Taxi! Cabs and Capitalism in New York City,” by Biju Mathew, a business professor at Rider University, and a founding member of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, a fast-growing labor union.

Compounding the problem was the fact that the party didn’t begin until 1 a.m.—the start of the slow period for drivers working the night shift. Many of the cabbies, at least, would likely have been in the neighborhood anyway. The stretch of the upper Twenties bounded by Lexington and Broadway is their sanctuary—featuring not only the union’s headquarters but also free and plentiful late-night parking, a popular mosque, and several subcontinental restaurants, including Lasani, where the party took place.

The article in the New Yorker goes on to detail the thankless job of the New York cabbies as they shuttle drunks like you and I around NYC, in the wee hours of the morning. Apparently a cabbie’s car is his castle, but too many cheap customers don’t give it them the respect they deserve:

“They treat the car like they’re slobs,” a driver whose handle on the Bengal Cabbie Association’s CB radio channel is Babar said of his passengers. He added that those who sit in the front seat, and who make radio requests, are usually drunk. Drunk passengers occasionally throw up, and the smell lingers for weeks.

“There are so many things,” Rizwan Raja, a Pakistani driver, said, rattling off a list of his pet peeves: putting one’s feet up on the partition, smoking, crossing the street lackadaisically. Requesting multiple stops is also frowned upon. “These people come out of expensive, posh bars, where one beer is twenty dollars, but they make groups together so they can share a taxi and save a couple of dollars,” Raja said. “ ‘Three stops’—that really, really blows me off.” Tips, ever since the fare increase, have been meagre: “Sometimes forty cents, sometimes twenty cents.”

Ha! I know countless numbers of you are guilty of that last sin. The last time I was in New York my friends and I made our way over to the Pakistan Tea House at 3:30a.m. for some good eats. It’s a cabbie hang out and the type of place they usually go to get away from obnoxious people like us.

Raja went on, “The worst is when they ask, ‘Where are you from?’ Once you answer that question, then it’s ‘What is the relationship between Al Qaeda and the Pakistani government?’ ” Raja, who says he is asked that question “almost every day,” has recommended that his passengers see “Fahrenheit 9/11.”

At least the cabbies in New York are nicer. The ones in LA are just paranoid.