Spy Taxis

When I worked at Spy, I often wondered what kind of "training" a cab driver in New York City had to receive, if any, to get a hack license. In order to find out, I signed up at the "Taxidrivers Institute," the mandatory first step in a cabbie's career, to see exactly what it entailed. The piece I wrote was much longer (funnier, too, or at least it seems so now, in memory) than what actually ran: It had the misfortune of being in the inventory when a small slice of a page suddenly became available, and the article was hacked down, Procrustian-bed-style, to fit the available space. I actually cried when I found out what happened, (the day after the page was sent to the printers,) and was told it wasn't worth crying about. But you know, it was. And I should have kicked and screamed, too.