My Best Halloween Story

The first year I worked Halloween in Huntington Beach, California as a taxi driver, I really wasn't expecting much.  My first call of the night came from an apartment in the city/state streets, a few blocks from downtown.  My customers came walking out, laughing, already a couple drinks into the night's festivities.  The two 20-something women were both really attractive, and dressed as sexy Catholic school girls.  Their boyfriends followed them out, both in what looked like black choir robes.  "What are you guys?" I asked.  One of the guys answered, "They're naughty Catholic schoolgirls, and we're priests."  Both guys held up small wooden paddle ball paddles they had on lanyards around their necks."  The women bent over, allowing the guys to give them a couple taps on the butt with the paddles.  They were a fun group to talk to, and as I dropped them off, I realized that driving a taxi on Halloween might be a really cool thing.  It was.  Everyone was in costume, joking around and laughing, with a lot less drama than most nights. Halloween became one of my favorite nights of the year to be a taxi driver.

The next year, I was living in my taxi, working 7 days a week, and thinking about dressing up.  The best idea I could think of would be to dress up as a crash test dummy.  I thought that would be pretty funny in the cab all night.  But I worked way to many hours a day, and couldn't get it together.  So I decided to dress up as Travis Bickle, the crazy role Robert Deniro played in the 1976 movie Taxi Driver.  That's him in the drawing above, I drew that to commemorate by time as a taxi driver.  I went to a hair salon, and an Asian lady had a hell of a good time shaving my head into a Mohawk.  She'd never been asked to do that before, and couldn't believe I really wanted it, even for Halloween.  To be honest, she cut it a bit long, and I looked a little more like Howard Jones than Deniro.  I bought a camo T-shirt, because I was too fat for the Army field jacket that Deniro wore.  Then I got a cheap pair of "Unabomber" mirror sunglasses, to finish it off.  I drove around downtown HB, waiting for my first call.  A lot of people noticed my costume and got a laugh out of it as I drove around.

But, apparently not everyone was laughing.  My first call was at a real nice house in the suburbland near Springdale and Talbert.  A solidly built guy, not in costume, walked out.  As I drive him downtown, he immediately asked about my look.  I told him I was dressing as Robert Deniro in Taxi Driver, the most iconic taxi character of all time.  The man told me he was an off-duty HB police officer.  "You're not going to wear that costume around Huntington Beach."  I thought it was a question, so I responded, "Sure I am, that's where the business is."  In a much more forceful voice, he repeated, "Your ARE NOT going to wear that costume driving a cab in Huntington Beach."  I realized he was being serious.  If you lived in HB in the 80's or 90's, you know what I mean.  "C'mon, man, I said, "it's Halloween!"  I dropped him off downtown, and he obviously wasn't happy I was there.  But most of my passengers loved the costume.

Later that night, about midnight or so, I picked up a guy dressed as a pimp.  He was a 20-something white guy, in a crazy purple suit, with a huge, large brimmed hat with fur around the edge.  He'd drank his fill, and was heading home to Costa Mesa early. 

I headed up Adams street, and had a green light to cross Brookhurst when a raised, Toyota pick-up came screaming out of the parking lot on the left, about 100 yards in front of us.  The truck peeled out to the right, hit a median strip he apparently didn't see, then shot across three lanes in front of my cab.  The truck hit swerved back to the left, side swiped the curb, and rolled over onto its side, then its top on the sidewalk.  I hit the brakes as we approached, and the truck rolled back onto its right side. 

The pimp and I both screamed, "Oh Shit!"  I looked back at him.  "Sorry man, this is serious, I gotta stop."  He nodded, and I pulled over near the truck and turned on my flashers.  Nobody thinks of it, but when you're driving around constantly as a taxi driver, you wind up being the first responder to accidents on a regular basis.  I was afraid I'd walk up and find an arm or something hanging out of the truck.  The roof was partially smashed in, but not completely.  Before I could even get my phone up, a skinny kid, about 18, slid out the right passenger window, upside down, head first, which was right by the ground.  Much to my surprise, he jumped up to his feet, and yelled at me, "Help me get my truck rolled back over before the cops come, I got an empty 12 pack in the cab."

I looked back at the pimp, ten feet behind me on the sidewalk.  He, too was shaking his head, wondering how this kid had even survived.  I looked across the street, a woman was already on her cell phone calling 911.  I looked at the kid, "Dude, there's no way your getting out of this one... seriously, are you OK?" 


The pimp really wanted to get home, but we stayed, taxi meter turned off, until the police showed up a few minutes later.  As I drove off, the pimp said, "I'm glad we weren't 100 yards farther up the road, that crazy fool would've T-boned us."  "Me too," I replied.  The rest of that Halloween night in the cab was fun, but my Halloween story trumped all those of my passengers that night.