I've been taking a lot of Uber rides lately and also the occasional lift from Lyft. The three most interesting have all been Ubers, at least at the start…
En route to WonderCon a few weeks ago, my Uber was being shadowed by a conventional taxi. The driver, who didn't have a fare at the moment, had his window down and was yelling at us: "Uber is dangerous! Their drivers are untrained! They have no insurance and most of them are pedophiles! You'll get raped in an Uber! You'll get killed in an Uber! Taxi drivers are trained and tested and insured and professional!" The taxi guy sure seemed to be serious…and angry.
Being a pro-union guy at heart, I am not unsympathetic to that part of the anti-Uber argument. I just have had such (generally) better experiences with Uber and Lyft than in cabs. The taxi industry needs to modernize and compete — and many of them are now scrambling to do things like that. I wouldn't even mind paying more to ride in a taxi if they could match the service and comfort levels I've had with Uber and Lyft. That will get my business back…not being shouted-at by militant taxi drivers.
My Uber driver, by the way, laughed it off and said it isn't the first time this has happened.
Second Uber story: I go back and forth to the Magic Castle in Hollywood a lot. For some reason, Google Maps thinks one street near it connects to another but it doesn't. I've written to them about this but for now, any G.P.S. which uses Google Maps data may try to route you to the Castle via a street which just plain won't get you there. And even if it did connect, it would be a much longer route than the correct, direct one.
This is no problem when I'm on my way there because I tell the driver which way to go. When a driver comes to pick me up though, he or she sometimes gets hopelessly lost in the Hollywood Hills and I have to phone them and tell them how to find me. One time recently, the driver refused to believe me over his G.P.S. and I had no choice but to cancel that ride and I instead phoned Lyft which assigned my ride to…the same guy. He drove for both and even though he was wandering blindly up near the Hollywood Bowl and Alex Toth's old house, he was the closest driver.
I was staring at my iPhone trying to figure out what to do when he phoned me. He said, "Now that I look at the other G.P.S., I see right where you are. I will be there in three minutes!" He was…and the ride was fine.
Third Uber story: This one happened last night. I got a driver who was from Indonesia, though he's been in this country since the late nineties. He was a delightful, chatty fellow and every fourth or fifth sentence he uttered was about how America is the greatest country on Earth. That's usually a sentiment that makes me flinch, not because I particularly disagree but because most times when people say it, it just sounds to me like mindless "we're the greatest because it's us" talk.
Back when I cared a smidgen about baseball, I'd hear fellow Angelenos I knew tell me, "The Dodgers are the greatest team ever and the San Francisco Giants suck!" If I was in the mood for a Monty Python-style argument, I'd say, "No team that has the Giants' track record and Willie Mays sucks." When the Giants beat the Dodgers, as they did about half the time, my friend Stanley would moan about how there was no fairness in the universe if a sucky team like the Giants could beat the magnificent Dodgers. Well, maybe. Or maybe his evaluations were a bit untethered to reality.
Still, the way this Uber driver said America was the greatest country ever had some meaning to it. Unlike a lot of folks who say that, he'd lived in other countries and not just in Indonesia. For about three miles, he told me why America was so wonderful and in meaningful ways, like its dedication — flawed though it may be at times — to caring for the ill and elderly; like the freedom he feels to speak his mind; like the much better health care he's received than he did in other countries; like the feeling that even when the government is wrong, it can be changed. It was very much a fun, fascinating conversation.
Just before he got me home, he asked me who I thought would be the next President of the United States. I told him I thought it would probably be Hillary and he said he'd be fine with that and also with Bernie. He said he definitely did not want to see Cruz or Trump and I asked him why. He said, "I do not know about them personally but the people supporting them…they are the most selfish people around. Like me, they agree this is the greatest country on Earth but they want to keep it all for themselves!"