Years before Uber forced everyone to be a model passenger with their rating system, the Maxi Taxi reigned supreme.
Best described as a mobile primate enclosure, it served a generation of pissed up punters trying to have as much fun on their way to get on it. After all, it’s all about the journey, not the destination.
Such was taxi life, you would be told that they will be sending the “next available”. This could be 20 minutes or it could be a fifth of a second after you put the phone down. Opening a fresh drink after ordering a Maxi was always a dangerous game of taxi-roulette.
Accordingly, the traditional way to enter one was with half your drink spilling out of your gob as you necked it after hearing the horn. These sweet drippings would combine with the previous passenger’s party-drippings and make the floors stickier than a prisoner’s sock.
Once in the people mover, a miraculous transformation occurs and the eternal battle between driver and passenger begins.
Perhaps it’s because you were paying a little more for the service. Or perhaps it was the configuration of seats. All that’s known is a bus environment seriously messes with someone’s sensibilities.
Typically, the journey ends when the Maxi Taxi reaches the destination or more commonly when the driver has an existential crisis and pulls over before doing something that will land him in front of a Magistrate.
Exiting the Maxi Taxi was always a chaotic exercise and unsurprisingly, half a box of goon didn’t always prepare you for the complexities of sliding the door gently or taking the step out of the rig. One small step for a sober man, one giant leap for mashed-kind.
While eating the kerb getting out of the van seems like a harsh fate, the much worse fate was for the last person to exit.
They would usually be the one to cop the fare in exchange for fictitious promises of “cover me and I’ll buy you a few drinks”.
Although, it was never complete without the driver hitting the “drunkcunt” button and seeing that meter soar like a mighty eagle. Good luck performing the cooked calculus to work out what the hell happened. The taxi man always won.
If only they knew that many years later, we would all get our revenge by never stepping foot in one again. Karma.
Documenting the Human Zoo is thirsty work, so if you enjoyed what you read how about buying Belle a beer, ay?