Reykjavík Grapevine - 05.06.2009, Side 14

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What beauty the girl possessed but a
minute ago – and I remember it being
ample – has now been severely tarnished.
Perhaps irreparably so in the eyes of her
boyfriend who, hot-dog in one hand and
coke in the other, follows me out the gas
station doors at 4 in the morning.
As we round the black taxicab, I
around the hood and he behind the
trunk, we come upon a scene hilari-
ous beyond sadness and too pitiful for
words. The slender blonde who, just
a single traffic light ago, was deliver-
ing obscenities in that sweet ramble of
contempt that drunks deem articulate,
all the while punching the back of my
driver’s seat, has hit the oncoming wall
of karma. Presently her ass and lower ex-
tremities, left leg on the f loor, right leg
on the back seat, are still inside the car,
while her upper body closely resembles
a crime scene photo of a mob execution.
Muttering bitter, incoherent, nothings
she lays upon a freezing slab of concrete
with a large pool of blood red vomit as
halo, the trail of her indiscretion streak-
ing a path from her mouth, down her
torso, and with a short stop on the back
seat, to its original colony atop her purse
which lays befouled on the f loor mat.
Looking down I see her glazed blue eyes
framed by a forehead bruised and black-
ened from colliding with the rubber sid-
ing off the car door frame, and specks of
partially digested tomato skin randomly
placed in the f lood of bile tinged f luid.
The boyfriend – staring in utter
disbelief, his hands engaged with food
items, his furtive eyes darting between
whether to lovingly assist, or to high-tail
it into the woods – never to speak to her
again, only springs into action when the
girl scornfully deflects my attempts at
assistance. A hasty clean up later I’m
back in the driver’s seat, with Nile grind-
ing a death-metal dirge at full blast in or-
der to fade the guy’s incessant apologies.
The night has reached its zenith and the
stench of the woman’s transgression
gives me a much wanted excuse to hit
the town.
A slight rewind finds a guy of the
“Hnakki” persuasion with a similar
level of blood alcohol passed out besides
me in the shotgun seat. Had Giapetto in
his implicitly paedophile urges wished a
Ken doll to life (instead of a child sized
wooden string puppet), the object of his
dreams could easily be this passenger:
bejewelled and decked out in creased at-
tire, late model cell phone in hand. Clos-
ing in on his native suburb I nudge the
fool to ask for an address, but get no reply
aside from his mass leaning even closer
to me. Noticing his limp body swaying
to and fro with each turn, I attempt to
lull him out of his stupor by jerking the
wheel with ever increasing force at every
intersection – to no avail.
Bored and aimless, with the me-
ter ticking in my favour, I cruise the
city streets making increasingly hasty
lane switches that bang the side of his
bleached coiffure ever harder into the
passenger window. His skull sounds a
beat to my momentary amusement as
I ponder my gainful predicament for
a minute, until a particularly abrupt
revolution of the steering wheel brings
awareness back into the man’s opaque
mind. I soon rid me of his orange hued
presence at an apartment block in the
seedier part of Breiðholt, but not be-
fore discovering that along with his
consciousness he’s also momentarily
mislaid his wallet. Clinging to the last
remnants of my temper I coach his gym
tightened ass through a thorough search
of every pocket available, only to come up
empty handed. Not until he gets out of
the vehicle is his pocket book discovered
lying on the f loor.
Valuable time wasted, I f loor the gas
pedal on my mission to herd further tes-
ters of patience, but minutes later catch
a breath of fresh air and a moment’s re-
spite from a night going terribly awry.
A hobby rampant among modern
teenagers is an achingly slow and mind
numbingly repetitive drive down the
Laugavegur high street late on weekend
nights. Sadly this activity is yet to be
outlawed. Yet, had my progress not now
been halted by an infinite queue of these
happy campers, a fetching blond woman
in her upper twenties could not have tip-
sily strolled up and rapped the knuckle
of her index finger on my window.
“Wanna dance with me?” is her initial
proposition.
To which I respond, “Sorry, I’m work-
ing!”…upon which she leans forth and
shoves a surprising, but pretty damn
welcome, tongue down my throat; where
it saunters for a while in manifold, arbi-
trary patterns until the woman breaks
away and hopscotches round the corner
with a gleeful giggle drifting in her per-
fumed wake. -“TRAVIS BICKLE”
So it turns out that even though Ice-
land is, like, really small in comparison
with most borderline-functional nation
states (we are still borderline-functional,
right?), people still have problems get-
ting around here to some extent. Finding
restaurants, hospitals, advise, services.
Hell, even home addresses for friends
and loved ones.
We try our best to accommodate you
“Lost in Iceland” types, but our space
is limited and we pretty much stick to
printing a map of 101 Reykjavík in our
paper. And as the good lord knows, even
though 101 can be pretty nice, you will
want to venture elsewhere. This is where
the good people of Já.is [formerly: “The
telephone directory”] come in handy.
See, they’ve apparently been hard at
work programming a nifty tool to help
us find our way around, thereby step-
ping far above and beyond their original
role (you can still look up phone num-
bers, don’t worry). While mapping our
tiny island doesn’t seem like such a
feat, GoogleMaps and other web-based
mapping services have shied away from
the task (as we’ve reported), leaving us
with mere paper maps for guidance.
And those need to be folded and carried
around and stuff. Enter Já.is. It’s pretty
impressive. You can look up people,
places, goods and/or services and they
in turn show you their location on a map
and can even give you pretty reliable di-
rections, too.
Add the fact that the service is now
fully integrated to work for you English-
speakers, and you’ve got yourself a pret-
ty sweet deal right there. It’s also free,
and blessedly unconnected to Google’s
information hegemony. And did we
mention that they have an interactive
distance calculator? ‘Cause they do!
-HSM
The Ongoing Adventures Of Taxi Driver | Anon. cabbie tells all
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 7 — 2009
14
Taxi Driver Drives On
Grapevine’s Cabbie Pal Explores The Hidden Side Of Rvk Nightlife
Feeling All Lost And Stuff?
Já Might Be Your Answer...