![]() He swallowed his frustration and put his book dreams on hold until last year, when a real estate developer named Perry Casalino came into the picture. And the university presses I approached about a book also gave me a ‘No.’” “But when I later asked him for a favorable quote I could use, he turned me down. “Avedon said he loved the idea,” says Koss. Koss showed him some cab photos and told of his plans for a book of them. Koss attended a conference decades ago at the Art Institute where he encountered the famous photographer Richard Avedon. He shot chillingly intimate photos of drug addicts, and civil rights gatherings, and parades … He shot pictures in San Francisco, where he lived for a while. He was shooting photos at various protests and marches over the years. He took his camera to the chaos surrounding the 1968 Democratic Convention and the more sedate 1996 edition. “It’s intuitive, I suppose, but I love it.” ![]() “I did take one photo class but I am basically self-taught,” he says. By then he had been taking photos for some time. Sitting next to him on the front seat of his cab was a Nikon camera of the point-and-shoot variety, which had been a gift from his father. I tended bar for a while at a place near the Checker garage.” I had a bunch of different kinds of jobs. “I spent a lot of years in college,” he says. Koss graduated from Kelly High School and then entered Northeastern Illinois University majoring in history with the intention of becoming a teacher. He grew up with a sister on the Southwest Side of the city and his father was a manager for Sears. It was a real job and you could make a good living. “There was a freedom to it and the people. We never met then but I share his feelings. I know that because I drove a cab too, out of that same garage, starting a few years before Koss and into his time there. And why not? If memory serves, drivers received 42% of whatever clicked on the meter, kept all tips, and the company took care of gas and maintenance. He drove nights and, for him, it was a good job. ![]() ![]() It was a wild and busy and noisy place, a human beehive.Īllan Lee Koss was in and out of there hundreds, likely thousands, of times. We asked him to share some of the rider habits that he and his fellow cabbies experience almost daily- faux pas that range from the annoying to the mean and dangerous.The Checker taxi garage was a massive place, just to the north of North Avenue and stretching from Wells Street west to North Park Avenue. But most of them are trying to do right by their customers and their families, says Emir Ayed, a 12-year veteran driver in Greater Boston. As in any industry, there are bound to be a few shady characters who overcharge customers, keep a messy car, or just behave rudely. This isn’t to say cab drivers are perfect. The taxi universe is the service industry on steroids, with drivers encountering the spectrum of humanity, sometimes behaving its worst. And then, on top of all that, there are the people: us. The pay can be awful if a driver doesn’t make enough in a night to cover the lease of the taxi medallion and gas, he or she might go home with $0-or, worse, owe the taxi company money. The hours are long, most of them spent sitting or schlepping 50-pound suitcases to the trunk. Driving a taxi in one of America’s urban jungles is back-breaking work with little reward.
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