Dean’s Last Ride: A Farewell to Taxi Drivers

Dean has been driving a cab in San Francisco for almost 50 years and is what you might call a true original. He entertained his passengers with the saxophone he played while he drove, saw speed limits as recommendations rather than regulations, and once kidnapped a 13-year-old girl and locked her in his apartment. What sounds bad, however, was a rescue for the girl, who had been held as a prostitute by a gang and whom Dean was able to help out and bring back to her mother.

In this 22-minute documentary on YouTube, we follow Dean and meet other cab drivers, and learn how the cab industry has changed over the years. While Dean earned $700 a day in the 1980s – which would be more than $2,000 when adjusted for inflation – today he often has to search for a very long time before he picks up a passenger. And those he picks up often have no other option. Because today it is common to order an Uber or Lyft via an app, or increasingly often, a driverless Waymo. Only those who don’t have a smartphone, or whose battery is dead, have to resort to a cab. Unsurprisingly, Dean and his colleagues have little good to say about Waymo.

Following the example of driving instructors (see this article), cab drivers are now also beginning to realize that their time is coming to an end. Cab drivers have fallen out of time, just like the elevator boys and ladies from the office. And in San Francisco, this can already be clearly felt today.

PS: Dean has apparently also provided the documentary team with his collection of videotapes of his cab rides in San Francisco from the 1990s, which they will now view and possibly make another documentary.

This article was also published in German.