Connecting

Taxi drivers and local bus companies, in the Journal Square area of Jersey City, tend to make up their own rules. I discovered this in 1998 when I moved to the area. I would be waiting on line for a cab and presumed that being next I would hop in and we would just go.

Instead, the door would remain locked. The driver would roll down his window and ask “Heights?”

“No,” I would respond.

Dismissing my communication- he would ask again to people behind me as if I wasn’t there-

“Heights”?

And 3 or 4 people would happily jump in the cab and go…

Inconvenient, annoying and unpleasant but not…

I rarely take cabs anymore. I manage my life to be able to take the last bus from the Port Authority to where I have lived in (you guessed it…)

“Heights?” since 2004. I do take local bus companies to go to Journal Square. They either go into the Journal Square structure Bus Lane B4 – or across the street in front of a bank. Yesterday, the bus driver didn’t stop at either place. He drove another two blocks and prepared to drop us off four long blocks from Journal Square.

“Where the hell are you going?”, I shouted.

“Oh”, he responded happily. “The bus stop is down there”, pointing another block to the right.

I had him stop- and I paid my fare and got off the bus quickly as did the only other passenger, a muscular young black man with short locs.

We were waiting for the light to change and commented to one another about the challenge of transportation in the area.

I talked about cabbies choosing what areas they wanted to go to and how unfair that was.

“You know”, he began, “I have a problem getting cabs to go downtown where I live. And one cab actually wanted me and my wife, with our two children and a stroller, to take two cabs – because they “couldn’t fit us all in.”

I stood there. I looked at this lovely man and my heart broke into a million pieces. We talked a bit more about how often stupid and selfish and racist often share common space.

” Because”, I said. “At the end of the day, it comes down to this-

There’s a mommy and daddy and their kids – and they just want to go home.”

And that’s how I became Facebook friends with @Anthony Rashan Chambers.

I am A King surrounded by Kings and Queens.

And so it is.

@Coach MeDave