“No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky,”
- EB White, 1948
Winter Solstice. Second day of the strike. Bright, windy, cold, clear. Decided not to walk to work. Shared a cab through Central Park with two other people- one of them a school administrator and lifelong Democrat. Like most New Yorkers after 9/11, she bought Bloomberg’s industrious pitch. Her beloved city was in shambles and she wanted it fixed. 
Billionaire Mayors come, first to mind, then to Gracie Mansion. She was a lithe, sharply-featured Jewish woman in her late-50’s with grey shoulder-length hair pulled back and up into a loose, sporty tail. She and her girlfriends have a tradition: each time one of them turns 60, they all go hiking in a foreign country together. This year, they’re off to India for the holidays, which led her to ask the cab driver his ethnicity – Morrocan. “I could never go there, could I? They don’t like Jews there, do they?” The driver politely protested, insisting his country was as cosmopolitan as the self-proclaimed Center of the World we called home. We disagreed about the strike, with due politesse. I found myself waiting for her to ask about my nationality, but she never did.
I sipped my coffee, eavesdropping and texting the office as the cab curved over the slopes, past people walking to work. 
We exited on 57th then pulled up in front the Ed Sullivan theater under the David Letterman marquee. The other man who didn’t say much and I paid our flat rate – $20, said goodbye then stepped out of the cab and onto Broadway, without receipts.
The cab ride home, I rode shotgun with a husky Senegalese driver. He was playing a CD. “Qui est l’artist? Comment s’apelle ce musique?” I asked. He said things I didn’t even try to remember. We exchanged a few more bon mots, listening to the catchy hybrid of African hip hop. We headed north on 5th Avenue, past the Playboy office in the Crown building on 57th St. where I shared an elevator to a rooftop party with Oscar Dela Hoya. “Nice to see another EasLos person here,” I winked. Even though Silverlake is, like so totally on the West side of the river.
Our third fare, a stocky WASPy 30-something flagged us down from the middle of the avenue, traffic swerving and honking around him as he leaned in the window – “85th/West End?” “$15,” came the reply. As we wound through the park, the driver told us about a maid who spent $40 in transportation to make $80; and a Texas tycoon who tried to bribe him with $300 for a ride to Newark airport and out of Manhattan hell. I asked about receipts. “No more,” he exclaimed “they’re all gone!” He fished through his arm rest and turned up a couple crumpled scraps, one for $45. “Who wants this one?!”
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