In the Cellphone Zone, Cabbies and Passengers Drive Each Other Crazy

Oh, it was very boring, he says. Very boring. He can remember those days well; he's been driving since 1989. Lots of waiting, nothing to do on days when passengers trickled.

Then again, when passengers did get in his car, they would talk about politics, or the economy, or his native country of Ethiopia. He had some good conversations -- some bad ones, but some good ones, too.

It's silly, he says. "But I do miss it sometimes."

James Katz studies why this might be so. Katz is the director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Rutgers University. Founded in 2004, CMCS researches the social and psychological ramifications of the cellphone explosion.

"It used to be that when people came to a new town they would use the cabdriver to learn what was what, to get a cracker-barrel philosophy of the town," Katz says. Cabbies acted as information pollinators, steering people away from the Hard Rock Cafe and toward the unknown holes in the wall. "It's been part of our cultural tradition and initiation, and it's disappearing."

Disappearing Americana, mobile cultural exchanges . . . Why must we wax nostalgic about everything, including those miserable crosstown jaunts in which the driver would expound on everything from the Bush family to his bunions? And for drivers -- why talk to a stranger when you can talk to your spouse, or sell a used car or two?

For Greenberg, the "Today" correspondent, the benefits of cab talk have been tangible. He began a decade-old friendship in one after enjoying a ride with driver William Magella so much that he requested his taxi every time he was in New York. "For the next eight years he drove me, he drove my friends, he drove my mother, my mother started buying him new shirts," Greenberg says. One day Magella, originally from Egypt, invited Greenberg to the overseas wedding of his cousin Billy, who had occasionally driven Magella's cab.

"In New York, Billy is a cabdriver," Greenberg says. "In Egypt he's a god."

The wedding took place in the old palace of King Farouk, an all-night affair with 500 Egyptian guests "and one New Yorker having the time of his life."

For drivers, the benefits can be tangible, too.

"If you talk a lot, they tip a lot," says Chester Wooten, who has driven a cab in the District for 36 years. Wooten is the type of driver who has cabology down to a science, who knows that the radio must be turned down to a low hum, that the plastic mats on the floor of the back seat must be freshly scrubbed. People think drivers can predict tips just by looking at a potential fare, he says, but that's not true. A little tipper can become a big tipper in the course of one ride. "It's about the conversation," says Wooten, about the whole experience of the trip.

On a gray Tuesday morning Wooten cruises the streets near Union Station, where a line of tired-looking travelers hold their luggage and wait for cabs. Out of the five drivers at the front of the taxi line, three are talking on their phones. Out of the five potential passengers at the front of the line, four are talking on theirs.

But in midst of this lack of human interaction, a ray of hope: Leon Swain, chairman of the District's Taxicab Commission, reports that the next version of the cab rider's bill of rights will include an amendment related to cellphones.

He's coy on specifics.

But cabbies and passengers will probably be awarded the right to talk to each other.