Trixi.com
23-03-2005, 23:15
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Riding and Writing Between the Lines:
Marc Maximov makes a living riding a tricycle in New York City.
PEDICABBING IN PRACTICE
with Marc Maximov
In theory, pedicabbing is all upside. For the passengers, it's transportainment; a fun way to see the city, and also a practical way to get from here to there. For the driver, it keeps you in shape while it keeps you in food and rent. You get to work outdoors and you can be your own boss. You spend the day meeting new people, and a discouraging hour brings the consolation of the pedicab fraternity, whose healthy camaraderie salves the flagging spirits of its members.
In practice, pedicabbing is the most frustrating, exhilarating, depressing, uplifting, soul-crushing, maddening job you'll ever have. It's never boring; in a typical day giving rides, you'll careen through a ride of your own on an emotional rollercoaster, veering from cool confidence, to grim determination, to abject hopelessness, to grateful relief, to manic jubilation and back again. By turns the work reaffirms your faith in humanity and reduces you to a steely-eyed misanthrope.
It's hard to describe the realities of the pedicabbing life to the uninitiated. A bike messenger knows what it is to zoom through the canyons of midtown, jousting with traffic and pedaling your heart out; but we do it on a 200-pound trike with a smile on our face. A taxi driver knows the loneliness of a long shift spent cruising the streets cruise for fares; but his pickups are effortless and frequent, while we must wheedle and cajole our sparse customers in a never-ending series of street hassles.
The people who know best what it is to pedicab are probably telemarketers. Anyone who works in an industry where 9/10ths of one's sales attempts are met with rejection, if not outright hostility, knows the score. Passengers often assume that the hardest part of our job is the physical rigor, but that's the least of our concerns. Sure, you may spend the first couple of weeks icing your knees, the body quickly adjusts to
its new demands. The occasional runner's high and the bone-deep weariness after a hard day at physical labor are two of the job's rewards.
No, the hardest part of the job is repeatedly summoning the effort to persuade pedestrians to "hop on!"
The Next Ride
All we want is to get that next ride. Sometimes our passengers, on reaching their destinations, will invite us in for a drink, or remark, "Hey, you look tired, why don't you take the next hour off?" But instantly we're back on the prowl. If one ride followed the other in uninterrupted sequence, as with the yellow cabs (and on a few rare occasions like Halloween, New Year's Eve, a couple of hours following the New York City marathon, and, most prominently in the memories of veteran drivers, the blackout of 2003), we'd all be filthy rich. As it is, we spend more than half our time empty.
There are two methods to getting customers: you can pick a busy corner and sit in your cab, waiting to be approached, or you can cruise the streets and pick out likely targets from among the taxi hailers, the vacationing amblers, the confused map-consulters and the well-dressed with somewhere to go. The pedicabbing ranks are pretty evenly split between the Ploppers and the Cruisers. The Ploppers cope with ennui and less control over their own destiny; the Cruiser camp puts in the extra effort and generally comes out ahead.
When cruising, there are three main skills needed to snare the next ride. First, you need a good approach. Even if you've failed in your last 20 attempts, you must treat each engagement with a potential rider as a fresh opportunity. You size up the customer and adapt your persona: helpful, savvy, fun, or efficient (try to avoid exhausted, cranky, bored and desperate). It takes a close study of human nature and an attention to detail to adjust your pitch to the clientele at hand, whether to convince a native that, yes, you really can get her to her meeting crosstown faster than a taxi, or to impress upon a red-state tourist that, while our price is, admittedly, roughly four times that of the cabs, nobody goes back home with fond memories of a ride in a yellow car.
The real challenge of pedicabbing boils down to maintaining some level of enthusiasm, real or feigned, with which to communicate the worthiness of one's services to would-be passengers. Rides are usually won or lost even before any negotiating begins, so it's important to make a good impression in the first few seconds of contact. Every pedicabber has a different opening line: some swear by "How far are you going?" as it doesn't invite a yes-or-no answer, hence initiating a discussion; I'm partial to "Would you like a ride?" Polite and efficient. Pull up, smile, greet; fail; repeat. Repeat. Repeat. And. repeat. Don't forget to smile!
Nine times out of ten an approach will result in a blowoff, something akin to the fate of the persistent yet pathetically outclassed loser in a singles bar. In fact, it goes beyond that: pedicabbing is one of the few jobs in New York City where one can momentarily experience the public reception of a homeless person. Half of the cab-hailers will meet our solicitation with a stony silence and a refusal to even acknowledge our presence. Many of the privileged few, who can afford to take taxis in a city where one of the best subway systems in the world will get you anywhere for a couple of dollars, regard us as street trash, a nuisance, not a human being worthy of a simple "No thank you" in answer to a simple question. I believe every American in the top half of the economy would benefit from seeing what this is like, just once.
For those few opportunities when a prospective fare does consider a ride, the second essential pedicabbing skill comes into play: the ability to quickly determine the right price for a given ride. Every driver is a working market economist, continually gauging supply and demand like a commodities trader. Charge too much, and watch promising customers walk away; charge too little, and spend a demoralizing day slaving for peanuts. Veteran drivers instantly perform a range of evaluations when calculating prices: the exact distance of the ride, whether it's uphill or down, the weight of the passengers, a quick estimation of their means and motivation. It's a complex formula, but take more than a second or two to arrive at your figure and the price will appear arbitrary, which may doom your chances.
The third important pedicabbing skill, and perhaps the most crucial to one's success, is the ability to state the fare with confidence, and answer any questions or doubts with aplomb. This is harder than it sounds. It's easy to second-guess yourself on a fare, wishing you'd blurted a different number, and it's hard not to get annoyed when a customer asks, "Are we going to get hit by a car?" (Gosh, I hope so! Might save me some pedaling). Somewhere between pleading and irritation is the voice of smooth self-assurance that best convinces passengers that you've set a fair price and you can deliver the ride that they want or need.
What You Can Learn From Your Bike
The pedicab is a positive feedback mechanism. Give lots of rides, make lots of money, and you're imbued with confidence and charm, which makes it easier to sell the next ride. Conversely, when things go badly, they go terribly. Pedicabbing thus rewards the successful and punishes the unlucky. I remember an extreme example of this principle, when I saw a young driver named Shane, normally a high-earner but beginning to suffer from burnout, with a 50-yard stare on a bleak October night. I asked him how his day was going; he answered, with psychotic vitriol, "If I don't get a ride in the next half-hour I'm going to fucking kill somebody." He rode off, a seething ball of rage. You can guess how quickly he got that next ride.
Since success at pedicabbing will follow your mood, managing your emotions becomes paramount. It's easy to recognize a driver in the middle of a string of victories by the crazed grin of pedimania. But you can't rely on this energy fuel you, as it's rare and fleeting. A long-term strategy of equanimity is called for. Above all you must guard against pedixhaustion. When you feel you're near the tipping point, sometimes
it's best to pull over in a secluded area and wait on your cab until the feeling passes.
When I first started pedicabbing, I had to take a daily break to gather up the shards of my shattered psyche. I was experiencing a common phenomenon in the pedicab community, which occurs especially among those of us with degrees in higher education. When you're not getting any rides no matter how hard you try, and meanwhile in the back of your mind you're wondering how you ended up as a rickshaw-for-hire and what this could possibly mean in the grand scheme of your life, you can be plunged into full-fledged existential despair. You ask yourself, Why am I seated on an overgrown tricycle, yelling at people on the sidewalk? How the hell did I get to this point?
Such episodes call for an in-depth examination of your feelings about work and your identity in the world. Many people assume it's inherently demeaning to use one's physical labor to transport another: I'm reminded of the film City of Joy, in which the distinguished Indian actor Om Puri portrays a peasant who destroys his body pulling a rickshaw through Calcutta to provide for his impoverished family. The issue of social class is one I've come to terms with, but only after much reflection. My time on the pedicab has helped me understand that assigning status to oneself or others is nothing more than a choice we make, which can be brought under conscious scrutiny. We like to imagine for ourselves a position in a hierarchy of the human race, but the economy that employs us is really a collective endeavor in which we all work for each other. We're commingled in an interconnected web of labor and reward, and there's no point in thinking of oneself as above or below anyone else (if you really can't resist the impulse to feel superior, get a dog).
Pedicabbing makes many metaphors concrete. There's no more direct illustration of the principle of exchange than to use your own muscle power to physically move someone from one place to another and then watch them put money in your hand. To succeed, you must learn to balance your moods and cede your nightly income to fate. It's no wonder that the job attracts many people of the "spiritual seeker" variety. An example is Arjuna, a pleasant fellow from Buenos Aires who suddenly quit his office job when he realized that it was fulfilling his monetary needs, but little else. Now, roaming the crazy-quilt streets of Gotham, he's discovering more about himself and the world than he could sitting behind a desk. "The bike," he observes, "is my teacher."
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.
PEDICABBING IN PRACTICE
with Marc Maximov
In theory, pedicabbing is all upside. For the passengers, it's transportainment; a fun way to see the city, and also a practical way to get from here to there. For the driver, it keeps you in shape while it keeps you in food and rent. You get to work outdoors and you can be your own boss. You spend the day meeting new people, and a discouraging hour brings the consolation of the pedicab fraternity, whose healthy camaraderie salves the flagging spirits of its members.
In practice, pedicabbing is the most frustrating, exhilarating, depressing, uplifting, soul-crushing, maddening job you'll ever have. It's never boring; in a typical day giving rides, you'll careen through a ride of your own on an emotional rollercoaster, veering from cool confidence, to grim determination, to abject hopelessness, to grateful relief, to manic jubilation and back again. By turns the work reaffirms your faith in humanity and reduces you to a steely-eyed misanthrope.
It's hard to describe the realities of the pedicabbing life to the uninitiated. A bike messenger knows what it is to zoom through the canyons of midtown, jousting with traffic and pedaling your heart out; but we do it on a 200-pound trike with a smile on our face. A taxi driver knows the loneliness of a long shift spent cruising the streets cruise for fares; but his pickups are effortless and frequent, while we must wheedle and cajole our sparse customers in a never-ending series of street hassles.
The people who know best what it is to pedicab are probably telemarketers. Anyone who works in an industry where 9/10ths of one's sales attempts are met with rejection, if not outright hostility, knows the score. Passengers often assume that the hardest part of our job is the physical rigor, but that's the least of our concerns. Sure, you may spend the first couple of weeks icing your knees, the body quickly adjusts to
its new demands. The occasional runner's high and the bone-deep weariness after a hard day at physical labor are two of the job's rewards.
No, the hardest part of the job is repeatedly summoning the effort to persuade pedestrians to "hop on!"
The Next Ride
All we want is to get that next ride. Sometimes our passengers, on reaching their destinations, will invite us in for a drink, or remark, "Hey, you look tired, why don't you take the next hour off?" But instantly we're back on the prowl. If one ride followed the other in uninterrupted sequence, as with the yellow cabs (and on a few rare occasions like Halloween, New Year's Eve, a couple of hours following the New York City marathon, and, most prominently in the memories of veteran drivers, the blackout of 2003), we'd all be filthy rich. As it is, we spend more than half our time empty.
There are two methods to getting customers: you can pick a busy corner and sit in your cab, waiting to be approached, or you can cruise the streets and pick out likely targets from among the taxi hailers, the vacationing amblers, the confused map-consulters and the well-dressed with somewhere to go. The pedicabbing ranks are pretty evenly split between the Ploppers and the Cruisers. The Ploppers cope with ennui and less control over their own destiny; the Cruiser camp puts in the extra effort and generally comes out ahead.
When cruising, there are three main skills needed to snare the next ride. First, you need a good approach. Even if you've failed in your last 20 attempts, you must treat each engagement with a potential rider as a fresh opportunity. You size up the customer and adapt your persona: helpful, savvy, fun, or efficient (try to avoid exhausted, cranky, bored and desperate). It takes a close study of human nature and an attention to detail to adjust your pitch to the clientele at hand, whether to convince a native that, yes, you really can get her to her meeting crosstown faster than a taxi, or to impress upon a red-state tourist that, while our price is, admittedly, roughly four times that of the cabs, nobody goes back home with fond memories of a ride in a yellow car.
The real challenge of pedicabbing boils down to maintaining some level of enthusiasm, real or feigned, with which to communicate the worthiness of one's services to would-be passengers. Rides are usually won or lost even before any negotiating begins, so it's important to make a good impression in the first few seconds of contact. Every pedicabber has a different opening line: some swear by "How far are you going?" as it doesn't invite a yes-or-no answer, hence initiating a discussion; I'm partial to "Would you like a ride?" Polite and efficient. Pull up, smile, greet; fail; repeat. Repeat. Repeat. And. repeat. Don't forget to smile!
Nine times out of ten an approach will result in a blowoff, something akin to the fate of the persistent yet pathetically outclassed loser in a singles bar. In fact, it goes beyond that: pedicabbing is one of the few jobs in New York City where one can momentarily experience the public reception of a homeless person. Half of the cab-hailers will meet our solicitation with a stony silence and a refusal to even acknowledge our presence. Many of the privileged few, who can afford to take taxis in a city where one of the best subway systems in the world will get you anywhere for a couple of dollars, regard us as street trash, a nuisance, not a human being worthy of a simple "No thank you" in answer to a simple question. I believe every American in the top half of the economy would benefit from seeing what this is like, just once.
For those few opportunities when a prospective fare does consider a ride, the second essential pedicabbing skill comes into play: the ability to quickly determine the right price for a given ride. Every driver is a working market economist, continually gauging supply and demand like a commodities trader. Charge too much, and watch promising customers walk away; charge too little, and spend a demoralizing day slaving for peanuts. Veteran drivers instantly perform a range of evaluations when calculating prices: the exact distance of the ride, whether it's uphill or down, the weight of the passengers, a quick estimation of their means and motivation. It's a complex formula, but take more than a second or two to arrive at your figure and the price will appear arbitrary, which may doom your chances.
The third important pedicabbing skill, and perhaps the most crucial to one's success, is the ability to state the fare with confidence, and answer any questions or doubts with aplomb. This is harder than it sounds. It's easy to second-guess yourself on a fare, wishing you'd blurted a different number, and it's hard not to get annoyed when a customer asks, "Are we going to get hit by a car?" (Gosh, I hope so! Might save me some pedaling). Somewhere between pleading and irritation is the voice of smooth self-assurance that best convinces passengers that you've set a fair price and you can deliver the ride that they want or need.
What You Can Learn From Your Bike
The pedicab is a positive feedback mechanism. Give lots of rides, make lots of money, and you're imbued with confidence and charm, which makes it easier to sell the next ride. Conversely, when things go badly, they go terribly. Pedicabbing thus rewards the successful and punishes the unlucky. I remember an extreme example of this principle, when I saw a young driver named Shane, normally a high-earner but beginning to suffer from burnout, with a 50-yard stare on a bleak October night. I asked him how his day was going; he answered, with psychotic vitriol, "If I don't get a ride in the next half-hour I'm going to fucking kill somebody." He rode off, a seething ball of rage. You can guess how quickly he got that next ride.
Since success at pedicabbing will follow your mood, managing your emotions becomes paramount. It's easy to recognize a driver in the middle of a string of victories by the crazed grin of pedimania. But you can't rely on this energy fuel you, as it's rare and fleeting. A long-term strategy of equanimity is called for. Above all you must guard against pedixhaustion. When you feel you're near the tipping point, sometimes
it's best to pull over in a secluded area and wait on your cab until the feeling passes.
When I first started pedicabbing, I had to take a daily break to gather up the shards of my shattered psyche. I was experiencing a common phenomenon in the pedicab community, which occurs especially among those of us with degrees in higher education. When you're not getting any rides no matter how hard you try, and meanwhile in the back of your mind you're wondering how you ended up as a rickshaw-for-hire and what this could possibly mean in the grand scheme of your life, you can be plunged into full-fledged existential despair. You ask yourself, Why am I seated on an overgrown tricycle, yelling at people on the sidewalk? How the hell did I get to this point?
Such episodes call for an in-depth examination of your feelings about work and your identity in the world. Many people assume it's inherently demeaning to use one's physical labor to transport another: I'm reminded of the film City of Joy, in which the distinguished Indian actor Om Puri portrays a peasant who destroys his body pulling a rickshaw through Calcutta to provide for his impoverished family. The issue of social class is one I've come to terms with, but only after much reflection. My time on the pedicab has helped me understand that assigning status to oneself or others is nothing more than a choice we make, which can be brought under conscious scrutiny. We like to imagine for ourselves a position in a hierarchy of the human race, but the economy that employs us is really a collective endeavor in which we all work for each other. We're commingled in an interconnected web of labor and reward, and there's no point in thinking of oneself as above or below anyone else (if you really can't resist the impulse to feel superior, get a dog).
Pedicabbing makes many metaphors concrete. There's no more direct illustration of the principle of exchange than to use your own muscle power to physically move someone from one place to another and then watch them put money in your hand. To succeed, you must learn to balance your moods and cede your nightly income to fate. It's no wonder that the job attracts many people of the "spiritual seeker" variety. An example is Arjuna, a pleasant fellow from Buenos Aires who suddenly quit his office job when he realized that it was fulfilling his monetary needs, but little else. Now, roaming the crazy-quilt streets of Gotham, he's discovering more about himself and the world than he could sitting behind a desk. "The bike," he observes, "is my teacher."
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/)