The city’s overworked, under-rested cabbies finally have a dedicated place to chill out, with the grand opening of a brand new “Taxi Clubhouse” specifically for drivers to relax.
The clubhouse, located at 22nd Street and Seventh Avenue in Chelsea, provides much-needed amenities often lacking for drivers working long shifts all over the city, such as bathrooms, food, beverages, and wifi, but also cool amenities like TVs, video games, a gym, and space to pray.
With the MTA moving forward with plans to implement congestion pricing, which would be tolls for drivers coming into Manhattan below 60th Street, more and more cab and ride-hailing drivers are worried about how it will impact their income.
“Congestion pricing, it’s going to be more money from our pocket,” said taxi driver Jose Valderrama. “I really believe that they shouldn’t do it. For yellow cabs or even Uber. We are coming to work, not coming to ride.”
From the outside, Manny Anzalota’s yellow cab looks just like all the others cruising around New York City, but for Anzalota, the experience has been anything but ordinary. Each ride is a surprise adventure. Since he began driving a taxi in 2007, his customers have run the gamut from mediterranean royalty to billionaires and Hollywood celebrities.
Anzalota’s numerous encounters with the rich and famous and his signature black fedora have earned him a reputation as the unofficial cabbie to the stars. Known as “Mr. Ferrarii,” a nickname given to him by actor Tom Hanks—whom he drove in 2013 and is still in touch with—Anzalota has turned himself into a bit of a social media personality, posting selfies and videos with the likes of Anderson Cooper, Drew Barrymore, Frances Turner and even Prince Pavlos of Greece and his wife, Princess Marie-Chantal. Entrepreneur and investor Michael Loeb, whom Anzalota has coincidentally driven twice, invited him to his famous Halloween extravaganza at his Upper East Side residence and also gave him a private tour of his home. His trip with British hedge fund billionaire Michael Platt recently went viral.
A decade ago the federal government stepped in to bail out the nation’s biggest banks. Now it may be time to for New York City to bail out its cabbies.
A New York City Council commission released a report Friday recommending a publicly managed fund to bail out thousands of taxi drivers struggling to pay back six-figure and even seven-figure loans they took out to buy the official city taxi medallions that allow them to legally operate a cab in the five boroughs of New York.
Federal prosecutors have opened an investigation into possible lending fraud in New York City’s troubled yellow taxi industry.
The New York Times reports the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan is investigating the lending practices that led thousands of cab drivers to take out high-risk loans that left them buried in debt.
Drivers who took out large loans to buy the medallions that allow a person to operate a yellow taxi were crushed by debt when the value of a medallion plunged from more than $1 million in 2014 to less than $200,000 today.