Seen and Not Unseen

Well, No, Not Like This

It's a 50-degree day with rain and wind in San Francisco's Castro district. I'm running a shared ride on relatively low energy, having already done the hustle for too many hours that week. After dropping off several passengers, I'm left with one woman in the front seat, and she's praying to her phone. I don't usually disrupt prayers, so the car is quiet.

As I'm waiting for a light to change, I see... well, dude is naked. Well, almost entirely naked. He's wearing a red swimmers' cap and sandals, and nothing in between. White dude, probably in his '40s or '50s, no big tattoos or piercings that I can see on my very cursory glance.

Now, naked in the Castro isn't all that unusual; it is the Castro, for heaven's sake. But normally there's *context*, some event or group or protest or *something* better than I Just Teleported Out Of A Naked Pool.

And I want to ask my passenger if she knows if there's something special going on today, or just to acknowledge that I'm not hallucinating this from too many hours behind the wheel. It's not as if anyone else is paying him any mind.

But it's creepy if your driver is like "Hey, lady, lookit the nekked guy!", right?

So we drive on in silence... until three blocks later, when I just have to know.

"Hey, did you also..."

"Yeah, yeah, I saw him."

"What the hell, right? I mean, it's cold outside..."

And we had a fun five minute conversation after that, until I dropped her off.

So thanks, Naked Teleporting Swimmer!

Which is a sentence which has probably never been written before, and I really hope I don't have to ever write again...

When The Rideshare Gods Smile Upon You

Hi, Ron!

I get a ping on a Saturday night in the Bay Area a few weeks ago. The pick up is at a nice hotel, and the profile picture is of an older white dude. I arrive, find a place to pull over, and press the button that tells me where I'm going...

and it's just under the limit where Lyft warns you it's a crazy long ride, but it's a crazy long ride. Over two bridges to the far recesses of the East Bay, and I'm *very* tempted to cancel the ride and get back to shorter and easier fares, especially with Saturday night surge pricing and a ride threshold to reach before I qualify for bonus pay.

But, well, not how I roll and bad for the karma... so I wait and in walks Ron here.

Who turns out to be, well, just about the best passenger I've ever had, at least in terms of mutual interests.

It turns out that Ron is Ron Adams, an NBA coaching lifer and current assistant coach for the world champion Golden State Warriors. He's also just exited from a charity poker tournament, where he's donkeyed off his chips in a big hurry because he just realized he's double-booked back in the East Bay.

So he's thrilled to find a Lyft that will take him where he's going, and also more than willing to spill the beans with his driver, who is a lifelong NBA fan and all too happy to soak up his knowledge of what the game is like now, how players are managed, who the real competition is in the West, and so on, and so on.

If I were still the sportswriter and journalist that I was 20 odd years ago, this would have been a strong scoop moment, and the start of a long and useful friendship with a cultivated source. 

Instead, it's just more proof (not that I needed it) that when you are on the right side of the Rideshare Gods, good things happen.

Thanks for making my night, Ron.

And Go Dubs! (But not if they are playing my Sixers.)

Scene From Santacon

Heads, We All Win

If you don't know what Santacon is... it's a 20-year tradition that started as an SF flash mob of people in Santa suits, but is now just an all-day pub crawl where the Bros and Brodettes of the town try to see how, um, heroic they can be in their intake. So to speak.

It's a dangerous but lucrative day to do the side hustle, so I do it. For the full 14-hour shift.

Cut to the scene in Hour 12 of both my shift and four weary Bros in attire.

They stagger their way into my subcompact Honda for a 10 minute ride of Please Don't Be Sick. My iPod shuffes until a certain song comes on, which... they all know and sing along to. Not even all that badly.

Yes, it's the Talking Heads with "Naive Melody (This Must Be The Place)", which is, I am certain, what you were about to guess.

Not exactly an experience everyone gets to have, that...

Why Terry Gross Doesn't Work For Rideshare Conversations

Terry, Tell Me About Leather

As a rideshare driver with a desire to seem smarter than I actually am, I listen to a lot of NPR and podcasts in my time in the car. (It's either that, a football, baseball or basketball game, or my iPod that's clearly infested by Trickster Gods. See the rest of the blog for evidence on the latter.) I also read newsletters from the NY Times, Poynter (an insider account on what's happening in journalism), a bunch of stuff related to my career in marketing and advertising, and so on. I've also worked as a music and sports journalist, written books, performed as a stand-up, and logged a couple of hundred gigs as a solo musician and frontman.

So I can carry and spur conversation, and I've also learned something from over 3,000 hours and around 10,000 passengers (7,500 rides, but many with more than one passengers) being in close proximity while I fulfill their transportation needs.

Having established my professional standing, I'd like to tell NPR's Terry Gross that she's out of her mind for one specific point in a recent interview. To wit, that "tell me about yourself" is all of the icebreaker you will ever need, because people like to talk about themselves.

Well, sure... maybe in a well-lit world.

In mine, people are trying to overcome some amount of fear from being in the car of a total stranger with TBD levels of driving skill and attentiveness, not to mention fatigue and an inability to respect personal boundaries.

For a rideshare drive, the largest percentage of passengers are going to be single unaccompanied females who get to do the silent calculus of Is This Driver A Creep in the pickup stage.

Which is why I'm often name dropping my wife and kids, flashing my wedding ring, or mentioning the number of rides that I've completed.

So, tell me about yourself?

Sure.

But only after I show you that it's OK to...

The One Question I'm Not Going To Answer

Take It Outside!

I suspect that I am a more candid and talkative driver than most.

Part of this stems from the fact that the overwhelming majority of rides that a rideshare driver is going to catch in a major metropolitan area are for people you will never see again. Especially if you hang out in the airport queue, or in the tourist areas. (Hint for other drivers: these are both good areas.)

But there's one question that I'm not going to answer, and it comes up often enough that I feel it deserves its own post.

Namely... "Has anyone ever thrown up in your car?"

Usually, this question crops up when someone looks at the spray bottles of glass and upholstery cleaners in the seat pocket behind the front passenger seat. (When, realistically, those are just there because where else should they be, really? I mean, I clean the car pretty routinely. Not having the stuff that I use to clean it close at hand would just be silly.)

Here's the thing about answering that question... there's really no good answer for me.

If I say yes, then the passenger is suddenly going to visualize that, and if it indeed happened, where it might have occurred. Especially in relation to where they are currently sitting.

If I say no, then the intelligent passenger will start to do the math on the number of rides I've completed (will pass 7,500 this week, assuming nothing unexpected happens) and wonder if I'm being honest.

I don't really want you think about either of these things. I'd much rather keep the conversation going to a more fun place.

What I can tell you is that throwing up in a rideshare car is an expensive practice for all parties. Lyft generally hits the passenger with a $150 charge that goes directly to the driver for that, and honestly, I feel that it's completely justified. As a driver, you are going to lose working hours while getting your car clean and the odor removed, and it's just work that no one signs up for. Beyond that, it's a risk of long-term damage to your livelihood.

(Note: this doesn't in any way excuse the smash and grab tactic from a driver staging an illness event. Fraud is fraud. Drivers who engage in that give the rest of us a bad name, and I want them out of the system. You should too.)

Drivers can, of course, limit their risk of an illness event by not driving when bars close, and by keeping a sharp eye on impaired passengers.

But sometimes you have to be out at those hours to make your number, and there are plenty of places where pulling over to let someone ruin the shrubbery isn't an option.

But has it actually happened to me?

Again, it's the question I don't answer. Even when I ask it. :)