The Cab in a Bad Town

Getting a taxi is not difficult. Getting a taxi in a city where you do not speak the language well, do not know the streets, and have a bag you would rather not lose — that is a different exercise, and it begins long before you raise your arm.

Where you stand is half of it

Amateurs stand wherever they happen to be when they decide they want a cab. This is how you end up mid-block, between parked cars, in a doorway, signalling into a stream of traffic that cannot stop for you even if a driver wanted to.

Stand on a corner. A corner gives you sightlines in two directions, gives the driver room to pull in, and gives traffic somewhere to flow around the stop. It also means you are not boxed against a wall with one way to move. Avoid the construction hoarding, the double-parked van, the dark stretch between streetlights. You want to be where a driver naturally looks and where you can see what is coming toward you on foot.

Timing the city

Every town has a rhythm to its cabs, and in a strange one you learn it by watching for ten minutes before you need anything. There is usually a build, when cars are plentiful and few people want them; a peak, when everyone wants one and there are none; and a fade, when the crush eases and supply returns. If you can, arrive at the curb a few minutes ahead of your real need, in the build or the fade, not the peak. Desperation at peak is when you take the wrong car.

Look like the easy fare, not the easy mark

There is a balance here. You want to read as confident and decisive — the driver picks the passenger who is obviously ready, arm up early, palm out, a clear signal, a step forward at the right moment, no fumbling. Drivers, like everyone, choose the path of least friction.

But confident is not the same as conspicuous. You do not crowd other people waiting, you do not chase a cab down the street, you do not stand there counting a thick fold of cash to be ready. Calm reads as local. Frantic reads as a tourist who is lost, and a tourist who is lost is a target in any town that has them.

The car itself

In a place I won't name, I learned to glance at the cab before I committed: the markings, the licence on the dash, whether the meter is where it should be, whether the locks and handles on the rear doors actually work. A few seconds. If something is off — no markings, a driver who waves away the meter, a second man in the front seat — you let it go and you wait for the next one. There is always a next one. ████.

Always a Plan B

If the curb is dead, you do not stand there hardening into a fixed point on the pavement. You move — to a hotel rank, a known stand, a call to a dispatcher, a different street with a different flow. A person who stays put and frustrated is a person being studied.

Names changed, the city blurred. The habits travel anywhere.

The right cab is the one you chose, not the one that chose you.

— M.