Angry, Violent, SF Luxor Cab Driver update

As readers of this space will recall, last week, Tuesday night, this video-blogger, after riding BART (San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit) to Embarcadero Station, encountered a cab driver who seemed quite upset that he got an African American passenger and not a white passenger.

When the cab driver realized I was the person who yelled "Hey taxi," after I got into the Luxor Cab #1046, CA License # 8L46060, the cab driver said "no it was the other guy." I said there was no other person who wanted a cab, and the person the cab driver pointed to wasn't the least interested in getting a cab; the White Guy in A Suit was texting on his iPhone.

Agitated, I said "I think you're just upset that it turned out to be this Black Guy and not that White Guy," to which, after turning on to Spear Street from Market Street, the cab driver said "Get out of the car." I activated my video camera; this is what happened:



As you can see, the cab driver committed an assault. Later in the week, I filed a complaint with the San Francisco Taxi Commission. My frank desire is to see that the cab driver is not allowed behind the wheel again. But what I did notice in the process of filing the complaint are two things, one bad and one good.

The bad is that if one does a search in Google, for " San Francisco Taxi Commission" the result that appears first has a "non-working" phone number, (415) 553-1447, according to the recording, which does not provide the new number. You have to do more searching to learn that the Taxi Commission is now a part of the San Francisco Transportation Authority.

The good news is once you do get the right number, 415-553-1115, the person who answers and takes your report is very patient and helpful. But again, the phone number is not one that's listed online; I found it completely by accident.

At first, I called 415-553-0123 at the San Francisco Police Department which is how I was directed to call 415-553-1115. The recording reports that the number belongs to Sgt. Charles Mahoney of The San Francisco Permits and Taxi Section, but on the weekdays, the number takes you to a person who can take your complaint.

Got that?

So the San Francisco Taxi Commission needs to change the webpage with the wrong number on it, and put the right number in its place.

The other small complaint I have is with YouTube account holder RatedR7180, who wrote:

zennie62...you act like a little bitch. i live in SF. my fist will introduce itself to your face once you start rolling that video. face it. you're a cry baby.

When I first saw the comment I thought he was saying he wanted to hit me. So, I visited his YouTube channel but there was no real name or photo. People like that don't think and can be a menace to society; if I were to have hit the cab driver, then I would have been at fault as well. I have neither the desire or time to get into meaningless fights with psychotics; I'd rather have the guy arrested.

Fortunately the vast majority of people who bothered to comment or send an email seem mentally stable. People like RatedR7180 seem to forget that if the authorities wanted to find them, they could. Just ask the guy who threatened House Speaker Pelosi.