Trixi.com
23-03-2005, 13:26
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http://www.mytown.ca/uploads/user-NS/myt18.gif (http://www.mytown.ca/)
Riding and Writing Between the Lines:
Marc Maximov makes a living riding a tricycle in New York City.
MY DAY IN COURT
with Marc Maximov
“What do you think you’re doing here?”
I looked up to see an advancing police officer. His sarcastic tone and hostile swagger spelled trouble.
I’d been reading a flyer for an upcoming concert handed to me by one of my pedicabbing friends. Out of the corner of my eye I’d watched all the other pedicabbers parked on the block suddenly pull out and drive away. We’d been lined up on Broadway between 47th and 46th Streets, a popular hangout for its generous curb space and location at the heart of Times Square. As they headed downtown, I’d wrongly concluded there’d been a collective decision to break for the next Broadway show.
“I’m sorry, officer, I didn’t hear you tell us to leave.”
“Oh, really? Then let me give you something in writing.”
That’s how I got a ticket for disorderly conduct, requiring me to appear in court at 9:30 am on October 5th. A couple of officers in a police cruiser witnessed the exchange. They actually pulled up next to me as I pedaled away to express their disgust at their colleague’s judgment. “What’s the ticket for?” they asked. I had clearly done nothing to warrant the charge, which is defined as behavior that “endangers public morals or outrages public decency.”
In fact, my ticket was part of a pattern of harassment by certain elements of the New York Police Department. If the rest of the country was momentarily educated on the NYPD’s methods during the Republican convention in September, it’s something we pedicabbers have been dealing with for years.
For us, the trouble started in the summer of 2001. The Producers opened on Broadway in April and quickly became the hottest ticket in town. Scalpers were making a fortune, and The Producer’s producers took the unprecedented step of raising their ticket prices nearly five times higher than the previous record for a Broadway show, topping out at $480 for the prime seats.
The theater managers decided that a row of pedicabs lined up outside their theater didn’t fit the image they were aiming for. Admittedly, not all pedicabs are in mint condition; they take a pounding on our streets, but they’re all profitable, so some are a little banged-up and could use a fresh coat of paint. And to be fair, some drivers show a certain, ah, lack of restraint in their marketing methods. In any case, as of three years ago, whether you drove the Rolls Royce of pedicabs or a jalopy, whether your sales pitch called to mind a British butler or a carnival barker, your pedicab was banned from 44th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues.
To enforce the ban, the theater owners loosed upon us the evil Officer Schroder. Some policemen in Times Square are assigned a specific block to patrol at theater time, and 44th Street was Schroder’s beat. I had my first run-in with him when I naively stopped on his block, as I had on so many others, to fish for a ride from among the streams of theater patrons. Taking me by ambush, he demanded my driver’s license and menacingly informed me that if I ever—ever—stopped on his street again, I would be immediately arrested. I didn’t bother to ask on what charge.
Of course, Schroder couldn’t legally prevent us from driving on a public street, even at slow speeds, but I dared not test him. In the ensuing weeks, though, I noticed that yellow cabs were stopping to pick up fares on his block. I wasn’t going to challenge him by standing and soliciting, but I figured that if cabs could brake long enough to pick up passengers, then, by God, I could too, in the Land of the fucking Free and Home of the Brave.
So, one day, pedaling slowly across 44th after The Producers let out, I trolled for fares and found a nice elderly couple making their way slowly to Broadway. I scanned the area for Schroder, didn’t see him, and pulled to the curb to quickly negotiate a lift to their hotel. They eagerly agreed and started to board my cab.
BOOM! came a slap on the back of the canopy. “Wanna get locked up?” shouted Schroder. The would-be passengers were of course horrified. I tried to save face: “Uh, guys, you can meet me at the corner if you still want a ride,” I stammered. But they wanted no part of this street scene and disappeared in a hurry.
It was my first negative experience with law enforcement. I’d grown up in Tucson with the idea that police officers were hardworking public servants who took their jobs seriously and dealt with the public in a fair and businesslike fashion. I got a different view of policework in New York, where a conspicuous segment of the force uses badges as a license to bully and abuse their power. As a pedicabber, I’d become a target of police harassment.
I remember an incident last Halloween, when I was carrying three costumed revelers through Chelsea at four in the morning. In the wee hours traffic had died down and I was preparing to get the jump on a red light. A 200-pound pedicab has a lot of inertia, especially with three passengers, so we sometimes anticipate the light change and start a downstroke on the pedals a couple of seconds in advance. This time I didn’t see the police SUV pulling up behind me.
“Where do you think you’re going?” came a voice on the loudspeaker. I immediately stopped and turned around.
Now the officer leaned out the window. “You were going to run that red light, weren’t you? I’ll take you downtown. Look at me! I’m not your father. You think I’m your father?”
I wasn’t sure how the question of my patrimony played into the situation. I shook my head to indicate that I did not, in fact, think the officer was my father (though the exchange did provide me with some comic material; after he’d gone and I continued on my way, I quipped to my passengers, “Actually, that was my dad! How embarrassing is that?”)
Feeling he wasn’t finished lecturing me, the officer went on, “You think it’s funny? Well, keep laughing. You may be riding a bicycle now, but by the time I get through with you, you’ll be riding a tricycle!” There was a moment of uncomfortable silence as the passengers and I, and possibly also the officer, reflected on the fact that I was, in fact, riding a tricycle.
He let me go without a ticket or a warning but with a new appreciation for the very wide range of topics that can be contained within the police lecture as oratorical form.
Most pedicabbers have similar stories to tell of police run-ins, but none compare with the events of the summer of 2004. On a Saturday afternoon, I was pedaling near Central Park when I got a call on my cell phone from one of the five major pedicab fleet owners in the city. “Watch out for cops in Times Square,” Andy told me, “they’re confiscating cabs!” Apparently an overzealous police officer, of his own initiative or perhaps responding to orders from above, had come to Times Square with a hauling truck and started a pedicab collection.
Word quickly spread through the ranks: obey the letter of the law or have your vehicle snatched. For those of us who rely on our cabs for the whole of our livelihood, the risk was great. Rumors ran wild about the number of seizures. Noone knew the fate of the confiscated cabs.
At the end of the day it was determined that only two pedicabs had been taken. I later talked to one of the drivers, an actor and performance artist named David Sirk, who had made a right turn on red. For this action, he’d not only had his pedicab seized, he’d also been charged, like me, with disorderly conduct.
I won’t defend pedicabbers’ right to make right turns at red lights; but please note the absurdity of the police reaction. When you commit a traffic infraction, you generally receive a traffic ticket. Fair enough. But how often does a minor traffic infraction result in vehicle seizure and a misdemeanor charge? The unfortunate reality is that the New York Police Department doesn’t just enforce the law. Sometimes they make it up as they go along.
When he appeared in court to face his disorderly conduct charge, David was faced with a choice: admit no guilt and come back for a trial date, or plead guilty, listen to a half-hour lecture on civic responsibility and have the charge wiped from his record. Wanting to simply get it over with, David took the second option. With righteous indignation that I’d done nothing wrong, I was going to insist on my day in court.
So on the bitterly cold morning of October 5th I reported to Midtown Community Court on West 54th Street. Like David, in a brief meeting with a public defender I was presented with the choice of trial date or guilty plea and lecture. I told her my choice and went downstairs to wait my turn before the judge. Almost everyone else in the court seemed to be there on charges of public drunkenness or solicitation of prostitution.
When my name was called, I approached the bench and the Hon. Eileen Koretz read the officer’s report and asked for my plea. When the public defender told her, “My client wants his day in court,” I was secretly thrilled about her choice of words: in my mind the phrase evokes courtroom drama rather than bureaucratic paper shuffling. My day in court! I’ll argue my case with righteous zeal and show the police they’ve messed with the wrong pedicabber! Let’s see, I’ll need witnesses, signed affidavits, some digital photos, not without artistic merit, of the alleged “crime scene”…
The police officer hadn’t shown up, and I think the judge could read the earnest resolve in my face, because before I even knew what was happening she moved to dismiss. Suddenly I was free to go. I muttered a confused “Uh, thanks” to the judge and the public defender and stumbled onto the street, emerging into a sunny, brisk autumn day as a free and orderly man.
In the end I suffered only the inconvenience of a shortened sleep and a cold trip to and from the courthouse. I rewarded myself for my troubles with a puff pastry from a new bakery near my apartment and reflected on my good fortune. It had actually been kind of interesting to get an inside look at the workings of the court. And the retinue of drunks and johns whose cases were heard before mine gave me a new view of the broad tapestry of the New York story, the daily colorful drama that I weave through, on the streets and avenues, with my trusty pedicab.
Note to the NYPD: Interesting experience, wouldn’t have missed it, but once is enough, thank you very much!
Marc Maximov makes a living riding a tricycle in New
York City. Marc is MyTown Columnist
http://www.mytown.ca/uploads/user-NS/myt18.gif (http://www.mytown.ca/)
http://www.mytown.ca/uploads/user-NS/myt18.gif (http://www.mytown.ca/)
Riding and Writing Between the Lines:
Marc Maximov makes a living riding a tricycle in New York City.
MY DAY IN COURT
with Marc Maximov
“What do you think you’re doing here?”
I looked up to see an advancing police officer. His sarcastic tone and hostile swagger spelled trouble.
I’d been reading a flyer for an upcoming concert handed to me by one of my pedicabbing friends. Out of the corner of my eye I’d watched all the other pedicabbers parked on the block suddenly pull out and drive away. We’d been lined up on Broadway between 47th and 46th Streets, a popular hangout for its generous curb space and location at the heart of Times Square. As they headed downtown, I’d wrongly concluded there’d been a collective decision to break for the next Broadway show.
“I’m sorry, officer, I didn’t hear you tell us to leave.”
“Oh, really? Then let me give you something in writing.”
That’s how I got a ticket for disorderly conduct, requiring me to appear in court at 9:30 am on October 5th. A couple of officers in a police cruiser witnessed the exchange. They actually pulled up next to me as I pedaled away to express their disgust at their colleague’s judgment. “What’s the ticket for?” they asked. I had clearly done nothing to warrant the charge, which is defined as behavior that “endangers public morals or outrages public decency.”
In fact, my ticket was part of a pattern of harassment by certain elements of the New York Police Department. If the rest of the country was momentarily educated on the NYPD’s methods during the Republican convention in September, it’s something we pedicabbers have been dealing with for years.
For us, the trouble started in the summer of 2001. The Producers opened on Broadway in April and quickly became the hottest ticket in town. Scalpers were making a fortune, and The Producer’s producers took the unprecedented step of raising their ticket prices nearly five times higher than the previous record for a Broadway show, topping out at $480 for the prime seats.
The theater managers decided that a row of pedicabs lined up outside their theater didn’t fit the image they were aiming for. Admittedly, not all pedicabs are in mint condition; they take a pounding on our streets, but they’re all profitable, so some are a little banged-up and could use a fresh coat of paint. And to be fair, some drivers show a certain, ah, lack of restraint in their marketing methods. In any case, as of three years ago, whether you drove the Rolls Royce of pedicabs or a jalopy, whether your sales pitch called to mind a British butler or a carnival barker, your pedicab was banned from 44th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues.
To enforce the ban, the theater owners loosed upon us the evil Officer Schroder. Some policemen in Times Square are assigned a specific block to patrol at theater time, and 44th Street was Schroder’s beat. I had my first run-in with him when I naively stopped on his block, as I had on so many others, to fish for a ride from among the streams of theater patrons. Taking me by ambush, he demanded my driver’s license and menacingly informed me that if I ever—ever—stopped on his street again, I would be immediately arrested. I didn’t bother to ask on what charge.
Of course, Schroder couldn’t legally prevent us from driving on a public street, even at slow speeds, but I dared not test him. In the ensuing weeks, though, I noticed that yellow cabs were stopping to pick up fares on his block. I wasn’t going to challenge him by standing and soliciting, but I figured that if cabs could brake long enough to pick up passengers, then, by God, I could too, in the Land of the fucking Free and Home of the Brave.
So, one day, pedaling slowly across 44th after The Producers let out, I trolled for fares and found a nice elderly couple making their way slowly to Broadway. I scanned the area for Schroder, didn’t see him, and pulled to the curb to quickly negotiate a lift to their hotel. They eagerly agreed and started to board my cab.
BOOM! came a slap on the back of the canopy. “Wanna get locked up?” shouted Schroder. The would-be passengers were of course horrified. I tried to save face: “Uh, guys, you can meet me at the corner if you still want a ride,” I stammered. But they wanted no part of this street scene and disappeared in a hurry.
It was my first negative experience with law enforcement. I’d grown up in Tucson with the idea that police officers were hardworking public servants who took their jobs seriously and dealt with the public in a fair and businesslike fashion. I got a different view of policework in New York, where a conspicuous segment of the force uses badges as a license to bully and abuse their power. As a pedicabber, I’d become a target of police harassment.
I remember an incident last Halloween, when I was carrying three costumed revelers through Chelsea at four in the morning. In the wee hours traffic had died down and I was preparing to get the jump on a red light. A 200-pound pedicab has a lot of inertia, especially with three passengers, so we sometimes anticipate the light change and start a downstroke on the pedals a couple of seconds in advance. This time I didn’t see the police SUV pulling up behind me.
“Where do you think you’re going?” came a voice on the loudspeaker. I immediately stopped and turned around.
Now the officer leaned out the window. “You were going to run that red light, weren’t you? I’ll take you downtown. Look at me! I’m not your father. You think I’m your father?”
I wasn’t sure how the question of my patrimony played into the situation. I shook my head to indicate that I did not, in fact, think the officer was my father (though the exchange did provide me with some comic material; after he’d gone and I continued on my way, I quipped to my passengers, “Actually, that was my dad! How embarrassing is that?”)
Feeling he wasn’t finished lecturing me, the officer went on, “You think it’s funny? Well, keep laughing. You may be riding a bicycle now, but by the time I get through with you, you’ll be riding a tricycle!” There was a moment of uncomfortable silence as the passengers and I, and possibly also the officer, reflected on the fact that I was, in fact, riding a tricycle.
He let me go without a ticket or a warning but with a new appreciation for the very wide range of topics that can be contained within the police lecture as oratorical form.
Most pedicabbers have similar stories to tell of police run-ins, but none compare with the events of the summer of 2004. On a Saturday afternoon, I was pedaling near Central Park when I got a call on my cell phone from one of the five major pedicab fleet owners in the city. “Watch out for cops in Times Square,” Andy told me, “they’re confiscating cabs!” Apparently an overzealous police officer, of his own initiative or perhaps responding to orders from above, had come to Times Square with a hauling truck and started a pedicab collection.
Word quickly spread through the ranks: obey the letter of the law or have your vehicle snatched. For those of us who rely on our cabs for the whole of our livelihood, the risk was great. Rumors ran wild about the number of seizures. Noone knew the fate of the confiscated cabs.
At the end of the day it was determined that only two pedicabs had been taken. I later talked to one of the drivers, an actor and performance artist named David Sirk, who had made a right turn on red. For this action, he’d not only had his pedicab seized, he’d also been charged, like me, with disorderly conduct.
I won’t defend pedicabbers’ right to make right turns at red lights; but please note the absurdity of the police reaction. When you commit a traffic infraction, you generally receive a traffic ticket. Fair enough. But how often does a minor traffic infraction result in vehicle seizure and a misdemeanor charge? The unfortunate reality is that the New York Police Department doesn’t just enforce the law. Sometimes they make it up as they go along.
When he appeared in court to face his disorderly conduct charge, David was faced with a choice: admit no guilt and come back for a trial date, or plead guilty, listen to a half-hour lecture on civic responsibility and have the charge wiped from his record. Wanting to simply get it over with, David took the second option. With righteous indignation that I’d done nothing wrong, I was going to insist on my day in court.
So on the bitterly cold morning of October 5th I reported to Midtown Community Court on West 54th Street. Like David, in a brief meeting with a public defender I was presented with the choice of trial date or guilty plea and lecture. I told her my choice and went downstairs to wait my turn before the judge. Almost everyone else in the court seemed to be there on charges of public drunkenness or solicitation of prostitution.
When my name was called, I approached the bench and the Hon. Eileen Koretz read the officer’s report and asked for my plea. When the public defender told her, “My client wants his day in court,” I was secretly thrilled about her choice of words: in my mind the phrase evokes courtroom drama rather than bureaucratic paper shuffling. My day in court! I’ll argue my case with righteous zeal and show the police they’ve messed with the wrong pedicabber! Let’s see, I’ll need witnesses, signed affidavits, some digital photos, not without artistic merit, of the alleged “crime scene”…
The police officer hadn’t shown up, and I think the judge could read the earnest resolve in my face, because before I even knew what was happening she moved to dismiss. Suddenly I was free to go. I muttered a confused “Uh, thanks” to the judge and the public defender and stumbled onto the street, emerging into a sunny, brisk autumn day as a free and orderly man.
In the end I suffered only the inconvenience of a shortened sleep and a cold trip to and from the courthouse. I rewarded myself for my troubles with a puff pastry from a new bakery near my apartment and reflected on my good fortune. It had actually been kind of interesting to get an inside look at the workings of the court. And the retinue of drunks and johns whose cases were heard before mine gave me a new view of the broad tapestry of the New York story, the daily colorful drama that I weave through, on the streets and avenues, with my trusty pedicab.
Note to the NYPD: Interesting experience, wouldn’t have missed it, but once is enough, thank you very much!
Marc Maximov makes a living riding a tricycle in New
York City. Marc is MyTown Columnist
http://www.mytown.ca/uploads/user-NS/myt18.gif (http://www.mytown.ca/)