I recently had the good fortune to travel to New York City for the first time. Billed as one of the "world's great cities", the financial centre of the universe and subject of countless movies and TV shows, I was fascinated to see what the car culture was like in a place that, on the surface, seems like the last place on earth you would need a driver's license. Famous for its subway system, traffic congestion and plentiful supply of interesting things to do within walking distance of anywhere, is the car relegated to mere public transport instead of the aspirational, freedom-enhancing tool it is in Sydney? I even entertained visions of hiring a car in Manhattan and driving north to see the reputedly interesting coastline north of New York. Once I got there, however, those thoughts quickly evaporated.
If somebody kidnapped you, Alfred Hitchcock-style, and dropped you halfway across the world, you would instantly know you were in New York by the incessant honking of car horns. Not just any horn - not the dissimilar cacophony that plagues the odd busy intersection in other towns - but the numbing repetition of identical tones that could only be hundreds of Ford Crown Victorias tooting in monotone.
The "Crown Vic" is to New York taxis what the Checker cab used to be. Big, accident-warning yellow barges swimming in packs down Manhattan's busy avenues, their terminally destroyed suspensions allowing them to wallow and heave rhythmically up and down on the uneven pavement as if that were the way they breathed. A Crown Victoria might well have been Queen Victoria's favourite transport, given the technology involved in its construction. They are big, simple, tough and ugly. With preposterous-looking overhangs either side of a surprisingly short wheelbase, they take up an enormous amount of road while still managing to be squeezy in the back seat for three people. This is something of an engineering achievement, given the acres of room available in even a modest modern car.
The guidebooks to New York warn you that New York cab drivers aren't the cigar-chomping, Brooklyn-accented stereotypes of old Hollywood. Nothing quite prepares you for a New York cab driver. Accents often contain that old Brooklyn-sounding twang, but most often it's mixed with Pakistani or French-West Indian patois that is at once familiar and incomprehensible.
It's lucky that Yellow Cabs are so cheap. You can go half the length of the island for $10USD, something of a bargain given the amount of time it usually takes. The ride is never less than entertaining and occasionally downright frightening. The New York cab driver loves his horn. He beeps when you get in his way, he beeps when you get out of it. He beeps in frustration at the traffic, or the glee of an open intersection. He beeps for attention, to make you look away, to make you get in or make you get out of the cab. He beeps for freedom, for Buddha, Shiva and Allah, or the almighty US dollars he wants as a tip. The noise never stops; it reaches all the way to the top of the open-air platform of the Empire State building. There is, it seems, nowhere in Manhattan to escape it, except where the yellow cabs won't go: ie further than 106th street.
So how do you get home if you live in Harlem (the northern end of Manhattan island)? You catch a "black cab" or "limo". The Crown Victoria's upwardly mobile cousin, the Lincoln Town Car, in one of life's little ironies, is relegated to the seemingly dangerous parts of town. The black cabs, in various states of repair from completely whipped to unbelievably pristine, skulk around behind the Yellows like doppelgangers. They aren't allowed to pick up off the street; you have to call for them. It is a criminal offence for them to accept a fare without that call. Not that they won't do it.
Guidebooks also tell you to avoid the black cabs, as they are sometimes driven by unlicensed, uninsured drivers of occasionally dubious background. Guidebooks also don't tell you that Yellow cabs disappear in the rain like the wicked witch from the west. In desperation one evening, I hailed one of the black cabs to escape the rain and make an appointment on time. After admonishments from the Pakistani driving it, we negotiated a price from 54th street down to the World Trade Centre that was about three times the metered yellow cab rate. In return, the black cab was leather lined, clean-smelling, didn't have the huge plexiglass divider inside and was generally a very nice way to travel. I was regaled with a tale of this driver's 8 year struggle to obtain US citizenship after being convicted of (gasp!) picking up a lady at JFK airport without being called first, when there were no Yellow cabs to be seen.
Manhattan is not car friendly in any way, shape or form. The roads are in poor condition, uneven and potholed, poorly repaired and always busy. I had no desire to take up behind the wheel in that city. On my last visit to the US four years ago, I had relished the driving experience in California - the whole state is so car friendly that people just get in the way. Manhattan roads are best left to public transport or plumbers' vans. Letting other people drive was vastly preferable, especially since I hadn't fathomed how the road system even worked. The entire middle of Manhattan seems to be made of one-way streets. You could drive for months and never know that they drive on a different side of the road to Australia. The only thing that looks odd is all those people sitting on the passenger side of the car holding a steering wheel!
Compared with car-obsessed California, Manhattan is like visiting an entirely different country (an impression not helped by the incredible ethnic variations of the cab drivers). It's very much like the city depicted in the film Dark City: there are posters for nice places in travel agents' windows, but instead of being fake like in Dark City, they are simply inaccessible. This may well explain why New Yorkers rarely talk about anything except their traffic-logged island.
Not that there isn't some fabulous car spotting to be done here. I saw more late model Rolls Royce on the streets than the dealership in Sydney has seen in 20 years. The occasional, pristine, classic US muscle car could be seen hulking around business districts. Japanese cars are almost non-existent (eaten by the Crown Vics, I think). When you do see one, the paint is flat, all four corners are stoved, some sort of monster sound system has been installed and the occupants look like they paid for the stereo with an occupation somewhere south of lawful. Most natives of Manhattan don't own a car and don't want to. I don't blame them: there's nowhere to park, or the parking fees would pay your mortgage (except, of course, in Manhattan, where your mortgage would easily buy four adjoining mansions in Double Bay).
The car is not a status symbol here. There are plenty of long, white "Krystal" stretched limousines in the classic US style, but all sorts of worthless slobs pile out of them. Cars are for people from the suburbs: New Jersey or Hoboken. People of no class or distinction, who have no appreciation for the myriad of entertainment and fine dining that Manhattan has to offer. Manhattanites are, of course, dead wrong in their assessment. Their desires to leave Manhattan any old time they like have been repressed by the sheer difficulty of doing so. No car means trying to get a cab, or getting on a train. You are suddenly subject to the whims of car-horn worshipping madmen, the rule of law that stops black cabs picking you up on instant demand, or the vagaries of train and bus schedules. Not that New York isn't fun, it's that there are only so many variations on the delivery of food and booze that even I got bored after a week. Even that old standby, gardening (a task reserved for when your Alfa is broken and you can't get parts) isn't available to the citizens of Manhattan, as there's no room for a garden except one big, huge one you aren't allowed to dig up - Central Park.
This leaves walking as the only personal transport freedom. You can walk anywhere you like, and often have to. You see a lot of interesting stuff, a lot of pointlessly expensive stuff (only somebody who doesn't own a car could possibly yearn for an $11,000USD white gold Rolex wristwatch), a lot of strange people (in Central Park, a hippy man wearing a dress, smoking a Bob Marley sized joint and smiling at everybody - as you would I suppose), and a lot of parked cars with people getting out and finishing their journey on foot, the vehicle parked 20 blocks from their eventual destination. I don't mind walking, but I hated having no choice about it for two weeks.
For all the hassle of owning a car (from repair bills to extortionate taxes to worrying about having the thing stolen or disfigured by a key-wielding simpleton), the simple peace of mind that comes from being able to transport yourself wherever you like, whenever you like is pretty hard to live without once you're used to it. Except when you're drunk. Taxi!
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