A New Yorker With Flair Offers Praise For Another | DiscountCigarettesBox.com Tobacco News

A New Yorker With Flair Offers Praise For Another

The heyday of the New York taxicab, experts say, was when the Checker roamed the earth. An outsize creature, American-made and Hollywood-approved, the Checker was a taxi as big as the city it served: garish, romantic, entertainingly oversized.

So when the Taxi and Limousine Commission recently revealed its taxicab of the future, the agency promised a car that could recapture some of that old Checker bliss. On a promotional Web site, the city noted that the “writer Fran Lebowitz, who once owned a Checker, has declared it a quintessential New York artifact.”

There were a few problems with this approach. The first was that the new taxi, a squat, suburban-style minivan made by Nissan, possesses few of the Checker’s memorable qualities. The second is that, in fact, Fran Lebowitz still owns a Checker.

Ms. Lebowitz, something of a quintessential New Yorker herself, was driving it the other day in the West Village, dressed in her trademark tailored suit-jacket and jeans and chain-smoking cigarettes a pack of Marlboro Lights.

Driving, she said, makes her nervous. “I just assume that every other car on the road, the person is crazy, and drunk, and has a gun,” she said, easing into traffic on the Bowery. The Checker prompted a few appreciative honks. “It’s not impossible that if you’re in the car with me for 15 minutes, someone is going to offer to buy it,” she said to a reporter, who had tagged along. “A man offered to trade me a new Mercedes for it in my last garage.”

Ms. Lebowitz bought her Checker, a pale gray 1979 Marathon, for $9,000 in 1978 with the better part of a book advance. “This was the first thing I bought, which shows how impractical I am,” she said, tossing a cigarette onto West Houston Street. “Everyone tried to dissuade me from buying it.”

She wanted a Bentley or a Rolls-Royce, which she could not afford. This was the most desirable alternative: “They also made a limousine, which was $1,000 more, and which I had to be talked out of buying, because there’s no car too big, too flashy, for Fran.”

The appeal was purely visual, she said. “It has a kind of, like, ‘car’ look, like a child’s cartoon of a car,” she said, taking a gingerly turn onto Bleecker Street. “I knew Roy Lichtenstein — you know, the painter? — and he loved these cars, because he thought it was like such a cartoon-looking car. Once I pulled up somewhere where he was, and he said, ‘You expect a family of ducks to come out of the back of this car.’ It has a very graphic silhouette.”

“The new one has nothing to do with why people like Checkers,” she added. “The reason people like Checkers is not only because they are very roomy, etc., but because Checkers have flair. O.K.? Flair has nothing to do with technology. It’s a visual thing.”

The reporter asked about the Checker’s roomy backseat. Ms. Lebowitz, at a red light, turned around. “Look at that!” she said, throwing up her hand. “It’s a studio apartment! I’m not kidding. I could sell it probably for $200,000. You could park it wherever you want.”

The car has long served as a whimsical complement to Ms. Lebowitz’s acid wit, an asset she has parlayed into a three-decade career that has included television appearances (a recurring role as a judge on “Law & Order”), speaking engagements and books, including her first, “Metropolitan Life,” published in 1978.

Before then, as a young emigre in the West Village from New Jersey, Ms. Lebowitz occasionally drove a cab, usually a Dodge of some sort, for spending money.

“I was happy every night not to be robbed, murdered,” she said. “Very frequently, people would try to tip me in joints. I mean, very frequently. They would put a joint in my hand, I would give it back. I would say: ‘Let me explain something to you! I cannot walk into a delicatessen and order a roast beef sandwich and give them this.’ ”

The new Nissan taxi has been hailed by the city for its various interior gadgets, like electrical chargers and reading lights. “There’s a microwave oven in the back or whatever?” Ms. Lebowitz asked, unimpressed. “I’m certain I wouldn’t know how to use it, or care.”

One feature is a floor light that will help nighttime passengers find a lost purse. “What kind of moron would put their bag on the floor of a cab? Anyone who does that deserves to lose it,” Ms. Lebowitz said. “What New Yorker would let their bag out of their clutches? I have all the habits of someone who lived here in the ’70s, you know? Which is that, if I have a pencil, I have a death grip on it.”

The reporter wondered if the taxi commission had conferred with her in the design process.

“Nobody ever calls me in for input,” Ms. Lebowitz said. “This is why I’m always complaining.”

She rarely takes cabs today, preferring the subway or a long walk.

“I’m sure it isn’t true, but it does seem like every cabdriver is insane,” she said. “They drive too fast. I’m always, like, bargaining with them to slow down. And sometimes they refuse, as if, for instance — oh, I don’t know — they were the customer. ‘No no, I can’t go slow, I can’t go slow.’ So I feel frequently imperiled.”

Her Marathon, which Ms. Lebowitz has painstakingly restored over the years, can occasionally be a burden: along with paying usurious parking garage fees, she has replaced the gas tank and exterior chrome. “I’m the most original part of the car,” she said.

It does not, however, contain jump seats, one of the most beloved features of the old Checker cabs. They came as an option at $100 each. “I didn’t get them, because I never wanted anyone to be able to say, ‘Fran could take nine!’ ” she said.

There are fewer than 1,000 Checkers still driven in the country, said John Weinhoeft, secretary of the Checker Car Club of America, a club to which Ms. Lebowitz does not belong. Mr. Weinhoeft estimated that about 25 of them are still being driven in New York City.

Ms. Lebowitz rarely drives hers, mostly using it for weekend trips out of town. She is fearful that it will be scratched or vandalized. But the Checker, even without the signature black-and-yellow trim, is a crowd-pleaser. Ms. Lebowitz has gotten more recognition lately because of “Public Speaking,” a Martin Scorsese documentary about her that was recently released on DVD. Driving in the Village, her Checker seemed to prompt a friendly, amused response at every street corner.

“You see, as you drive around with me, how many people love the car,” she said, nodding at a smiling passer-by. “You see that it’s every kind of person. It’s a very universally beloved design. Everybody loves the car.

“If they made the new cab look better, people would like it. Why don’t they just copy it? They copy everything else. Why don’t they make the Checker?”

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