We Gotta Move These Color TVs
Since 2007, New York City has had televisions in the backseats of its famous yellow taxi cabs. By my genius calculation that means approximately seven years of Taxi TV have elapsed. And I still just hate it.
Yes, like the youthful, radiant skin I once knew and the countless hours spent on bad dates that I’ll never get back, Taxi TV is an unfortunate fact of life, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. In fact, I don’t even have to pretend to like it. I do, however, have to sit there, in the back of the cab, and be taken captive by the repetitive advertising loop that plays at an earth shattering volume for the longest thirty seconds known to man before I can be prompted to turn the thing off.
That is if it even goes off. Having the option to shut the Taxi TV off was assured by its implementers when Taxi TV first made the scene, hoping to allay the fears of those who objected to television screens being forced on them in yet another arena of life, but all too often the shut-off function is not entirely, um, functional. Having been designed in the early, oh-my-god-we-are-living-the-awesome-futuristic-Buck-Rodgers-dream-we-always-knew-would-come-true boom of touch screen, heat sensing technology (In 2007, The New York Times hailed NYC was “at the forefront of cab technology.”), the power button often forces riders to be at the whim of what the screen can and cannot sense. It goes off, it goes back on, the ad loop starts over, you chastise yourself for leaving your finger lingering one second too long in front of the button, you wonder if you can stab it with a pen. It’s a vicious cycle.
And God help you if you have gloves on.
Volume is perhaps the single biggest complaint cab riders have about Taxi TV. Four out of five people surveyed (by me in a bodega on 23rd street while waiting for a man at the front of the line to count out thirty-seven cents in change) admitted they would be more positive on Taxi TVs in general if they were not so unnecessarily loud. Several years ago, after a wave of passenger complaints, Taxi TV relented, lowering the overall volume of the television sets in most cabs and adding a feature to make adjusting the volume a possibility. Why then, is it still so ridiculously challenging to turn the volume down? Five out of five people surveyed (in the same storied focus group) agreed that in the time it takes them to figure out how to turn the volume down, they could take up a new language, phone a long lost loved one or re-read War and Peace.
These were hard-hitting survey questions.
Between the volume, the aptitude needed to turn the TV off, and the generally perplexing mystery of why we ever needed televisions in the back of taxis to begin with, what has really been lost is silence. That solitary ten minutes of quiet time, sitting in the backseat, watching the city move around you, being forced to sit still for a few seconds, slow down for a few minutes; that’s all gone out the window. Literally. Thanks to Taxi TV that solitude has been replaced by “breaking news” of Justin Bieber’s arrests, the life changing banter of Talk Stoop, and “first looks” at luxury apartments in Manhattan. Because the only thing the average taxi rider needs less than Taxi TV is a $50 million dollar Midtown condo.
Last night, after a long, exhausting day, and with my negativity towards Taxi TV firmly in place, I stepped to the curb and hailed a cab. Slumped down in the backseat, I opened the window. Riding along, the cool air felt good as it met my tired face. I was so calm I could have taken a little cab nap or written a taxi haiku. Approaching my destination, I looked up and suddenly noticed that the Taxi TV had been on the entire time. Had I been so out of it that I didn’t register its presence? Or have I just become used to it? Have I finally been broken down by the Taxi TV to the point where I let it exist, let it win the war, let it zone me out and allow my brain get sucked further into the vortex?
Or was I just a person, finally sitting down for a minute, with the thoughts and sights of real life in my head overruling the news and pictures of Taxi TV? Yes. I was. Even when met with constant noise and action, the mind has an uncanny ability to take over and allow you to find a little bit of peace if you let it.
Maybe Taxi TV isn’t all bad. Some people like it, some people don’t. But, it is here to stay and so am I. And so I found my peace, maybe even made my peace with Taxi TV.
Now there’s some breaking news.
