Taxi Hate-Post

I knew it was coming eventually...I hate taxis in Mexico City. This feeling was solidified yesterday, after a rather unfortunate experience when I was simply crossing the street. I'm okay, first of all. But, here's what happened: I live about 5 minutes away from a large street called Patriotismo. This is a one-way street with 6 lanes. I crossed Patriotismo when I saw the intersecting street had a green light (the light for traffic actually on Patriotismo was red). I had just crossed the 4th lane when a taxi decided it was a good time to run the red light. This taxi was in the far left lane to begin with, but somehow decided it was a good idea to swerve all the way over to the 5th lane on the right. When I saw the taxi coming towards me, I started running, so he only clipped my right calf and foot. He didn't stop, didn't even slow down. My only "logical" thought is that he was drunk, had no perception of space, and was going to try to get me as a customer, but decided to keep going after he hit me. (The cab drivers here tend to drink and drive. A lot.) My leg is a bit purple and sore today, but it's alright, and I can walk just fine. However, this was the final straw for me with taxis here.

To the red and gold taxis: I hate you most.

My severe dislike of taxis began back when I was living with my dad's cousin, Cindy, in Cuajimalpa. Cuajimalpa is kind of like a suburb that's between 45 minutes and 90 minutes from my office (depending on traffic). Since there were no direct bus routes, I took taxis every day for a month. To leave from her house, I would call a taxi company and they would charge me the same rate every time. Since they could see that I wasn't from here, they overcharged me by about 30%. They didn't use the price-meters, and they wouldn't negotiate with me, since I'm obviously American. There was also one driver who I refer to as "The Creepy Cabby," who liked to talk with me about things that were way too personal, to say the least. I started avoiding conversations by pretending that I was really busy preparing my classes. Thankfully, I was able to survive that month.

My next bad taxi experience was when I was leaving from the office and going to Cuajimalpa. I always took taxis from a site, because that's safer than hailing one off the street. The site is near a busy intersection. When I got in the taxi, another driver ran a red light and almost hit my taxi. Both drivers blamed each other, got out of their cars, and had a nice little fist fight in the middle of the street. What the heck was that for???

Another, more annoying aspect of taxi culture here is that they kind of harass people to get customers. My thought is that if I want a taxi, I will signal for one. A taxi driver seems to think that if there is a person walking, they most certainly are wanting a taxi. They'll honk, flash their headlights, and literally pull up right next to you "Taxi, taxi, quiere taxi?". They remind me of the seagulls on Finding Nemo. (Mine? Mine?) Blatantly ignoring taxis seems to be the best policy here.

I'm also afraid of taxis, as I've heard lots of bad stories. Express muggings seem to be the most popular taxi crime, so everytime I get in a taxi, I have to be prepared to lose whatever I have with me. Though this has never happened to me, and hopefully never will (I never take taxis anymore anyways), it's something I have to keep in mind.

Also, taxis and buses can't get pulled over by the police here. So, they drive terribly. Red lights are like yield signs (sometimes), speed limits are nonexistant, and bike lanes are "bonus" lanes. And on top of that, the taxi drivers are often intoxicated.

Drinking and driving, hitting people, driving generally terribly, harassing people walking, express muggings, overcharging foreigners...Yes, I absolutely hate the taxis here.

El Metro

Ah, the metro. We have such a love/hate relationship. Well, not love. It's more of a toleration/hate relationship. The metro is definitely the quickest way to go somewhere 5+ kilometers away, which is really good (when you accidentally overslept and your class starts in less than an hour). It's also dirt cheap. For 3 pesos, or roughly 25 cents, you can enter the station and make unlimited transfers. They have these handy little prepaid cards that you just scan and enter. (I'm guessing they have these in every single subway system around the world, but as I have never taken a subway before arriving in D.F., to me these cards are magic.

My magic card!

So, step inside on of the D.F. metro stations.Take a deep breath in. No, wait, bad decision. Cough that out. Try not to breathe too deeply--the metro station smells like a mix of the 12 million people it serves daily, overheated machines, cheap cleaning products, and fast food. (Keep in mind that it's very hot in the metro stations--so those 12 million people? They're all sweating. Ewwwwww...)

If you listen hard enough, you can probably hear the DF metro from Iowa. It is so noisy! People chatting. Screeching trains. Vendors yelling advertisements for their products (both in the stations and on the train cars). They sell anything and everything: food and drinks, magazines and newspapers, toys for children, phone chargers and headphones, cleaning products, beauty and health products, even drain stoppers. The thing I absolutely despise is how the music vendors advertise their product. They hop on the subway car with speaker-backpacks, and blast terrible music at deafening volumes. Right among all the people, who are trapped in the car until the next stop. The live music performers, on the other hand, (well, some are still awful and probably tone-deaf), some are quite talented. I'm thinking of the man who plays the fiddle in the Tacubaya station, or the group of young men and women who play wooden drums in the cars that travel along the blue line, or the occasional talented singer/guitarist who hops on the train car. All looking for money, but all practicing an art (and they usually aren't pushy about asking for money). My favorite noise-makers are the live performers :) Except the tone deaf ones. They seem to think that the louder they sing, the better they get. Yikes!

My "home station," Patriotismo, is luckily one of the least busy stations in the city!

The picture above is of my "home station" which is almost never busy, but step into a station like Tacubaya, Chilpancingo, Auditorio, or Polanco and you really start to understand the quantity of people here. 21 million people live in this city, and the metro is the most popular mode of transportation. You see all types of people, all ages, all sizes, all attitudes. The grumpiest people to the sweetest people, the needy and those well-off. Lots of police, in theory to keep everything running smoothly. One thing I do genuinely like about subway culture is that chivalry is not dead. People immediately give up their seat to a pregnant woman, a woman carrying a baby, an elderly person, a handicapped person, or an injured person. Men give their seats to women. Even in the busiest, most crowded, and hottest metro lines, kindness lives on. It almost makes up for the times when the subway is so crowded that the outside people start pushing and cramming everybody together in the car like sardines. Almost.

The metro is hot, sticky, noisy, grubby, smelly, and crowded. But, it's cheap, really convenient, and somehow entertaining. With a little hand sanitizer, the metro is...tolerable.