In the Back Door of the New York Times

And out of the driver’s seat of a New York City taxi

photo by author’s friend 30 years ago. This is me behind the wheel of the Nick at Nite Checker cab the network rented for a promotional event in which we took part.

If a person wants to write for major league publications like the New York Times, the New York Daily News, or New York Magazine, step one would generally involve earning a Master's degree in Journalism from an elite school. Nobody would think that driving a taxi could be the portal that got them published in any of those prestigious media. But that is how it worked for me.

After ten years of performing all tasks musical at home and on the road, I had amassed $10,000 in savings and decided to turn that stash into a million bucks trading equities. As you can guess, I turned that 10k into 6k — and to punish myself, I went cold turkey on my new gambling habit and drove a taxi in between gigs until I earned back my losses. Little did I know that decision would change my life.

A driver I met at the garage published an 8-page taxi paper in which he raged against the machine. One day at shape-up (the time we stood around waiting to be dispatched), I related a road story to Michael who offered me $50 to type up the anecdote in three double-spaced pages.

So I whipped out my old Underwood and became the slice-of-life reporter for his ersatz medium. For five years, I drove and wrote in relative anonymity until one day, a New…