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Editor's note: Back in the mid-aughts, Willamette Week ran a column called Night Cabbie. In keeping with the times, we now present Night Uber.
I was going to say I get more female than male customers, but that may not be true. Maybe I just pay more attention to the women. Maybe they have better stories. Two of my three repeat customers have been women. Getting repeat customers makes me wonder how many of us Uber drivers are out here.
The biggest group I've had was five guys on their way to buy a hammock. Five guys is against the law, I told them. If I got stopped, it would mean my job. Eh, what the fuck. "If we drive by a cop, one of you has to duck," I told them.
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These two ladies were from Nebraska. Never been to Portland. Never been to the Pacific Northwest. I got the feeling maybe they had never been out of Nebraska.
They were coming from Hawthorne Boulevard to the airport to chase down lost luggage. I told them I'd wait at the gate while they traced their luggage. They thought I was being wonderfully attentive—I was just happy to have a fare back into town.
Heading out the Banfield, we could see the inbound lanes at a virtual standstill. The clock read 10:39 am, too late for rush hour. Time to chat.
"What brings you ladies to Portland?"
"Have you ever heard of Portlandia?" one asked.
"No, tell me about it."
One of the lady's daughters is working as an assistant director on the show and urged her mom to visit Portland. The daughter is renting a place off Hawthorne. "We only saw it while coming in last night, but it looks like an interesting street to walk down," the mother said.
Coming back into town, traffic was still backed up, so I took the Glisan exit. We slipped down Stark where it twists around Mount Tabor, with tantalizing glimpses of the Southeast cityscape through the branches. The ladies talked about the trees. "My goodness, but there are a lot of trees out here," one said. "There are trees just everywhere! We don't have so many trees in Nebraska, you know."
As they gushed about the lushness, and I almost told them a story of the Arabs in France—I wasn't sure how they would like being compared to Arabs. The story goes that at some time in the distant past, a delegation of Arabs visited France and were taken to see a waterfall. They were duly impressed. In fact, they were so impressed they just hung around. All day and into the night. Eventually, someone asked how long they planned to stay.
"Until someone turns it off."
WWeek 2015