Readers and writers blog

Despite living fairly close to New York City, I’m not a city guy — our two-room schoolhouse had vacant seats in all eight grades — so I’m not sure why I find the weblog New York Hack so appealing.

Well, for one thing, cab driver Melissa Plaut is a good writer. And she has an independent — actually, gutsy — attitude toward the people, places and situations she deals with. But I think it’s the way she has us deal with them that makes New York so accessible.

She gives us the city in small chunks — vignettes with passengers, descriptions of traffic, squabbles with other drivers, sometimes accompanied by photos that have a snapshot quality like someone’s family album.

Her entries often begin by telling us business was slow or routine — June 16, 2006, for example, after grousing mildly about Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New Jersey drivers being “either brain dead or meth heads,” she adds:

Oh, and around 2:30 am there was one crazy, possibly drunk, lady in a Nissan Maxima. She pulled up alongside me at a red light and started yelling at me. My window was up so I couldn’t really hear what she was saying . . . I just ignored her, but when the light changed, she veered directly into me, forcing me to swerve into the other lane to avoid getting hit by her. I still have no idea why she did that.

Or this past May 9:

Tonight was pretty good overall. I mean, it wasn’t perfect. I did indeed get my window punched by some stupid angry road raging bitch in Williamsburg (because I wouldn’t let her cut me off, mind you), but that’s so annoyingly typical, it barely merits mention at this point.

And it’s not all women drivers, as in an entry Jan. 23, 2006, accompanied by a photo of an SUV from New Jersey:

Seen above is yet another Jersey fuck who doesn’t know how to drive. This guy decided that, rather than pulling off to the side, he needed to stop dead in the middle of Bleecker St to ask a parked cab driver for directions . . . Only when he finally did start driving again did he decide to pull off to the side, but only for a second because apparently he wanted to get behind me so he could honk back at me . . . A lady standing on the sidewalk finally got so annoyed with him, she yelled, ‘Shut the fuck up and go back to Jersey!’

Pedestrians, April 17, 2006:

The only real asshole I encountered was some guy who was strolling across the street against the light with his family. As I was bearing down on them, I tapped my horn . . . The women of the group quickened their step but the man slowed down . . . I understand getting angry at a driver because you got scared, even if you were the one in the wrong, but the above type of behavior is . . . dangerous, completely unnecessary, and utterly stupid. This guy wanted to prove something, and boy did he — he proved that he is a total idiot.

The NYPD, Jan. 20, 2006:

Later, while on the FDR going towards the Brooklyn Bridge, I got stuck in this fucked up traffic. What annoys me most about this is it’s a totally unnecessary backup. For whatever reason, the NYPD seems to think that placing two cop cars in the left lane at the beginning of the bridge will act as a deterrent to terrorism . . . It’s not like they ever pull anyone over to make sure they’re not terrorists, and besides, how could they possibly know? Meanwhile, anyone who has to go to Brooklyn at night is completely terrorized by the traffic.

Plaut, 31, a native of the New York suburbs, began driving a yellow cab three years ago and about a year later began blogging about it. Her weblog attracted so many readers that it led to a book, “Hack: How I stopped worrying about what to do with my life and started driving a yellow cab,” coming out this August.

All I know is that on my trips to New York, the city has been too big for my digestion. Plaut cuts it down to size and makes it, well, like oysters. Appetizing if you don’t mind a little grit.

– Sid Leavitt