Taxing Taxis

5:30 AM. We just got home and we’re cold, pissed off and tired. Why? Well, let me tell you a little story. About twelve hours before, I was preparing my wife to a surprise party for her to celebrate her birthday. It had been two weeks in the making and everything was going excellently. She didn’t have a clue of what was coming and we executed the plan to perfection.
The cake was excellent (If you haven’t tasted Werner Krulla’s pastries, you haven’t lived), the people were having a great time and time flew. By the time it was about one or two AM, we started to head out to our good friend’s DJ KUMi’s and DJ Jules Nerve’s gig downtown and we had to take taxis for the first time in the evening. Eight people, need to cabs cuz there’s no way to get a bigger cab one in the morning on a saturday (technically Sunday). Anyhoo, first cab comes after like 10 minutes, second one doesn’t show up and we need to call another one. Remember that it’s cold here and it’s mostly raining whole fall anyway, so it kind of sucks waiting for a cab that doesn’t show up.

Eventually we get to the party place and enjoy the evening there until the last beat drops at about three in the morning, we head out and call two cabs again for our posse. Now if you haven’t been to Finland on a weekend night, you should know that there are always huge cues for taxis because there’s hardly any public transportation available at nights besides trains (which only go north.) We have hundreds of people freezing their ass off during winters, because it can take hours to get a cab. Then again if you dress accordingly to survive the taxi wait, you will be dehydrated and boiling your brain inside, so it’s a real win-win situation.

So, back to the story – we didn’t get those first cabs, we had empty cabs driving past us but not stopping, because in Finland, they have this stupid rule that they need to go to the taxi stops, where there naturally are at least tens of people in line. So, after like 30 minutes of waiting and calling three cabs, we decided to walk to the nearest hotel and its taxi stop. The line was about 40 people, so 10-20 cars – shouldn’t take too long. How wrong we were. 2 hours later we had seen TWO taxis take clients and just the shock and tiredness kept us there for a while. We called the dispatch center about 30 times during that time and still no cars. Taxis were driving past us constantly, but they didn’t bother stopping – although they were empty.

Eventually we started walking, even though some people in our entourage were tired from the dancing and people who are performers for a living, so getting a cold is not in the plan. About half-way home, we spotted a free taxi and took it over instantly. I asked the driver about why the cabs can’t take rides on the street, but are driving empty. He said that “if everybody would start to take rides from the street, it would be chaos” .. I wanted to say that that’s how every other fucking city works their cabs, which they have enough of. The irony was, that this cab driver TOOK US from the street, and still has the audacity to tell that it doesn’t work.

Sure, I know that there aren’t enough cars and blah blah – still 2 hours is WAY too long.

Better if they could actually operate the subway or trams on weekend nights, how much can it cost?

np: Positive Aspect Of Negative Thinking from the album “Against the Grain” by Bad Religion

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