St Patrick's Day Cabs

DC cabs have lights on their roofs, but they're totally meaningless. "On or off, it don't make no difference." Actually, occupied or not, it don't make no difference. DC cabs can pick up an extra fare and get paid twice, as long as it doesn't take the original occupant more than five blocks out of their way. You don't pay on a meter, you pay by the zone. It happened to me on my first day in DC, I jumped in the front at the lights, only to find a (very attractive) woman in the back seat. It didn't really work out between us, but other residents swear it's better odds than J-Date. Unfortunately, it's all going to change, no more brief encounters in the back of cabs, or wildly erratic cab fares.

The consequences on Sunday morning were less romantic. St Patrick's Day is a three day event here and DC has been full of (more-or-less) hyphenated Americans in matching joke shop green all weekend. It certainly leant the Six Nations - showing in a sole Irish pub on the corner of 7th & H - a suitably Celtic atmosphere on Saturday. But by 3am on Sunday it was pissing with rain, and by the time I finally found a cab that wasn't trying to charge me double fare on the grounds that I was wet and he was dry, the streets of Adams Morgan were full of drunken, drenched, bright green 20-somethings looking for transport amongst the puddles and streaming neon.

It was raining so hard that no-one could tell which cabs were occupied, let alone whether they were occupied with anyone they'd want to squeeze in beside. So we crawled down U-street with people weaving into our path, banging on the hood, palms pressed against the windows, imploring, threatening, begging for a ride.

It felt like the fall of Saigon. Which is a bit much after five hours of whiskey tasting in honor of St Paddy. So I sunk into the rear seats, steeling myself with the occasional slug of Laphroaig and wondered if I should get a helicopter from the roof of the nearest embassy.