we're not in kansas anymore

I LOVE WATCHING PEOPLE IN THE MIDST OF BEING HAPPY. DON'T GET me wrong, I'm still reeled in by the unspoken suffering on a stranger's face. But I can get seriously mesmerized by witnessing bliss. Things like a kid overcome with laughter, couples clearly in love, glowing pregnant women, giddy drunks singing in a cab — I'm a sucker for all of it.

Even more satisfying than witnessing the bliss, though, is helping to instigate it. Which has been happening with much greater frequency since I've been making these 13-song CD mixes.

A couple weekends ago I picked up a group of friends from Kansas — 4 women near the corner of Congress and 6th — after 3 in the morning on a late Saturday night. The girls needed a ride to an apartment complex not far from our house in Hyde Park, which gave me about 13 minutes to give them a quick California Bob Moves To Texas synopsis before letting them know they were in a magical cab with serious karaoke mojo, thanks to these CDs I've been concocting.

"Well let's see what ya got then, Bob," said Heidi, the husky-voiced gal up front with me. "'Cause you're dealin' with a cab full of Kansas karaoke queens."

"Except for Ellen," a voice called out from the back, sparking a burst of Kansas corn-fed laughter.

"Awww," I said over their spasms of happy, feeling bad for whoever Ellen was.

"No, it's true," piped up the soft-spoken girl directly behind me. "I'm tone deaf. I can't carry a tune to save my life. It's okay though. I accept it."

Her friends kept laughing as everyone agreed Ellen can't sing for shit.

"C'mon, Ellen!" I said, my words getting lost in the laughter that would not die. "There are no bad singers in this car! Everyone's a rock star in karaoke Bobcab!"

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Seconds later I am scrolling through the various CD singalong possibilities. The first several selections — Flight of the Conchords, The Who, Bob Marley, Arcade Fire, The Band, Black Eyed Peas — are met with a mix of groans and tepid enthusiasm. Then the opening guitar notes to one my favorite Dave Matthews tunes enters the scene and the energy in the cab instantly changes. The gals in the back excitedly insist that I stop looking for the perfect song.

We've found a winner.

"Ohmygod, ohmygod," gushes Heidi, holding out her hands like she's Barbra Streisand getting ready to belt out a high note in Vegas. When Dave's falsetto finally arrives, Heidi is all in.

"You've got your ball
You've got your chain
Tied to me tight
Tie me up again..."

And it's not just Heidi. All 4 of them — best friends from college a decade ago — are singing at the top of their lungs. Even Ellen. And, yes, she was right. Despite the high decibels coming from the other 3 songbirds, Ellen's tone deafness is registering loud and clear in my nearby ears. But I have to smile, seeing as how the girl is singing with such unbridled gusto.

"Who's got their claws in you my friend
Into your heart I'll beat again..."

Nobody is singing with more gusto than my co-pilot Heidi. With the extra room the front seat affords her, Heidi is able to accentuate her passionate singing with a series of impressive arm movements and hand gestures. Her earnestly arched eyebrows sell the overwroughtness of it all.

"Sweet like candy to my soul
Sweet you rock and sweet you roll
Lost for you, I'm so lost for you..."

As we roll up Lamar towards Hyde Park, the taxi positively rocks. The Kansas karaoke queens are so into it they're oblivious to the stares at the North Loop red light. The energy inside the Dave-juiced cab continues to build.

"Hike up your skirt a little more
and show the world to me
Hike up your skirt a little more
and show your world to me..."

The quiet crescendo hits hard before Dave's falsetto climax and the ladies bring it home with a double shot of enthusiasm.

"Tied up and twisted
the way I like to be
for you
for me
come crash into me baby
craaaaaaaaash into me..."

As fate would have it, the song ends just as I'm pulling the Bobcab up to Heidi's apartment. The meter is almost at $13. The timing is perfect. So perfect, in fact, that the 4 ladies from Kansas don't want the ride to end.

"Can we just drive around with you until the meter hits $20 bucks?" someone asks before our little rolling karaoke club once again erupts into drunken howls of late night laughter.

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So back out into the Texas night we went.

Luckily the next song on the CD was met with another blast of enthusiasm and the Kansas crew seamlessly segued into Elton Johnsville. The lovely ladies of Lawrence had nearly wrapped up "Tiny Dancer" when Heidi spotted an Asian karaoke bar in an empty strip mall on Burnet Rd. that still looked open.

Forever bonded in karaoke, the girls tried to coax me into parking the Bobcab and joining them. I'd told them earlier that I would come in for a song, back when I was asking everyone in the car what their go-to karaoke song was. (I had confessed to "Hello, I Love You" by The Doors.)

But my inner Jim Morrison was gonna have to wait. It was now close to 4 in the morning and I had a hot Tamale at home waiting for me.

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that thing

"YOU'RE LUCKY YOU WEREN'T DRIVING 6, 7 YEARS AGO. THEY WERE killing cabbies back then."

I heard this troubling piece of information from a super-sized laid off programmer who barely sqeezed into my back seat on a warm Thursday afternoon. It was my first week on the job and I still wasn't sure how all this was gonna work. (As if I still do.)

"Oh, yeah," Big Man told me, "must've been 8 or 9 of 'em. Killed 'em for the cash. All the cabbies were carrying guns back then."

What, me, worry? That was 6, 7 years ago, right?

A week later the Austin Chronicle welcomed me into the wonderful world of cab driving by publishing a cover story on the local taxi trade. According to the article, thanks to the high weekly fees and long hours cabbies typically work, local drivers are "sharecropping on wheels." One veteran driver called the job particularly dangerous — a notion I hadn't given much thought to.

I am the eternal glass-is-half-full guy, sometimes to a fault.

Which may have been a factor when I pulled over for a young black guy who waved the Bobcab down well past 3 in the morning a couple months ago. Marcus looked into the open passenger window and asked if I minded if he sat up front.

"Come on in."

As he climbed in, he immediately started thanking me for picking him up. His gushing gratitude was disarming, if not slightly alarming.

"I must've had a dozen cabs drive right by me, man," Marcus told me. "Every one of 'em empty too."

I shook my head at the injustice of it all.

"How is that even possible?" I wondered. "They told me when I got this job that we weren't allowed to refuse anyone a ride."

Marcus scoffed.

"Yeah, well..."

"I can't believe they'd keep blowing you off like that," I said, feeling his pain. "Even the black cabbies?"

"Especially the black cabbies," he laughed, even though there was nothing funny about it.

Turned out Marcus — early 20s, perfectly friendly, if not a little beaten down — was a barback at one of the booming booze rooms on 6th Street and lived in one of the many east side apartment complexes off Riverside Drive. A hardworking kid still getting crapped on merely for the color of his skin. In 21st century America. Shameful.

I explained to Marcus that I often fly past people needing a ride, even though my cab is empty. "But it's not because I don't want to pick these people up. It's because I'm on my way to pick up someone who's called for me. Maybe that's what was happening with you."

"At 3:30 in the morning?" Marcus scoffed. "They're all on their way to get someone?"

He shook his head and laughed.

"Yeah. Maybe."

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A few weeks later I was confronted again with racism — this time my own. Did it exist within me? And if so, what do I do about it? I've always thought of myself as color blind, accepting of everyone. My view is that every race and religion is comprised of mostly good people, along with a small percentage who screw it up for everyone else. And my positive experience with Marcus reinforced my desire to treat every potential passenger equally.

I refused to refuse anyone a ride.

But when a trio of black dudes flagged me down an hour past last call and asked me to take them to east Austin, I have to admit — my senses went on high alert. According to everyone I've talked to, the east side has traditionally been Austin's version of the other side of the tracks. Where the crime rate is highest and danger lurks when the lights go down. I've been told 12th and Chicon is the last place you want to find yourself with a flat tire at 3 a.m.

So when these guys got in — 2 in the back, 1 up front with me — I can't say I was my usual cool, calm customer. Is it racist to say that I was a little more on edge heading off into the night with these guys than I would have been driving a trio of sorority girls back to west campus at 3 in the morning? Would I have been less tense if they'd been 3 tattooed hipsters from Liberty Bar? Probably. And I'm not proud to admit that.

But that ride to the east side may have changed my perception on this subject forever.

Because whatever tension I was internalizing soon melted thanks to a CD mix I'd just made that day. The 3 black dudes just happened to get in my car right as Lauryn Hill's "Doo Wop (That Thing)" began. And just like THAT...my new passengers perked up. A slight rumbling began. Shoulders started swaying. Heads began bobbing.

"Lookin' back on the boogie
When cats used to harmonize like..."

And that's when the 3 of them jumped in, a glorious spurt of spontaneous harmony:

"Ooooo-ooooo-oooo..."

The next several minutes were devoid of tension, race, age. It was 4 humans grooving in unison to a sweet tune. A moment of pure musical appreciation.

"Guys, you know you better watch out
Some girls, some girls are only about
That thing, that thing, that thiiiiii-iiiiing..."

By the time I dropped them off, we'd also vibed to a little Marvin Gaye ("What's Goin' On") and I was feeling guilty for ever feeling worried about these guys. But they weren't convinced that my West Side White Guy On the East Side Late At Night skepticism was gone.

"Mind if I run in the house and get my money?" the DJ-type dude in the front asked when we pulled up to his place. "I'll even leave these guys in the car until I get back, just in case you're worried that I'm gonna..."

"Nah, man, I'm not worried," I interrupted. "I trust you guys."

"Yeah, well...just in case," he said taking off for the house, leaving his buddies in the back seat. Before my mind could start conjuring up a worst case scenario, he was back. Handing me a $20 bill for my troubles.

"Thanks, man," he said shaking my hand. "I appreciate you trusting us like that."

I thanked him for the generous tip, gave them each one of my cards and drove off into the night. Assuming I'd never see them again.

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A couple weeks later I got an afternoon call from one of the guys who'd been in the back seat. He needed a ride from campus over to his cousin's place on the east side.

In the light of day, I found out this kid who'd been groovin' in my backseat during the witching hour a few weeks earlier is a defensive lineman on the Texas football team.

This time our ride to the east side featured the music of conversation. And instead of Lauryn Hill, I rocked out to the story of a big kid from Round Rock with dreams of playing in the NFL.

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karaoke kabbie

I HAVE YET TO MEET A LATE-NIGHT TAXI PASSENGER WHO DOESN'T become instantly happy, sappy and ready to karaoke upon hearing the opening piano riff from Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" wafting innocently from the BobCab car stereo.

One of the highlights of my first 4 months driving a cab has been the many nights when I've been witness to — and frequent participant in — a series of raucous rounds of drunken group singing. (Don't worry, I'm the smiling guy behind the wheel who isn't drunk.) How many wasted passengers, young and not-so-young alike, have channeled their inner Steve Perry as they wailed earnestly into my nearby welcoming ears?

"Strangers waiting, up and down the boulevard
Their shadows searching in the night
Streetlights people, living just to find emotion
Hiding, somewhere in the night..."

Bring it on, I say! With a cranked stereo, midnight lighting and sufficient gusto, nobody's a rotten singer. Everybody's a rock star in BobCab.

Or, at least that's how it's been a time or 13.

Don't believe me?

For the next 13 days I will recount 13 of the most memorable BobCab karaoke rides. As a writer, aspiring world-renowned blogger and collector of stories, this is something I must do. While it's still semi-fresh in my mind.

And if you've been a participant in any of this mayhem, feel free to chime in with your recollections.

What am I saying? Clearly, few, if any, of my regulars, semi-regulars or one-timers have been following this far-from-regular blog of mine — even though the URL is clearly visible on the kickass business cards I hand out to almost everyone who gets in my cab.

Can't say I blame them.

If they're like me, they might check out the blog once or twice, if at all. While rarely, if ever, leaving a comment. Then they'll either forget about it . . . or like it enough to keep coming back — only to lose interest when the blogger doesn't post anything new for long stretches of time.

So I will now attempt to stop being one of those aggravating bloggers who blows off writing anything for weeks on end. I intend to write and post on a regular basis — even if no one's listening.

Sort of like BobCab karaoke. Everyone's so busy belting out the song at the top of their lungs, they're not listening to anyone else singing.

"Don't stop believin'...hold on to that feeliiiiiing..."

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COMING TOMORROW: Lauryn Hill and a 3 a.m. trip to the Eastside with 3 black dudes.

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P.S. How do you like my new music player? Each of these songs has inspired a memorable BobCab moment or 2. With more to come, no doubt.

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