I was almost assault­ed by a Philly cab dri­ver on my way home this after­noon. He was rolling through a cross­walk I was try­ing to use to get to the train sta­tion (he had a sol­id red light, I had a sol­id green one). Once safe­ly across, I polite­ly point­ed out the cross­walk and he took it as some sort of chal­lenge to his man­hood, get­ting out of his cab, com­ing right up to my face, threat­en­ing to beat me up, run me down, etc. He also called me a choice name (one whose use polite com­pa­ny lim­its to female canines). Ah, life in the big city. I spent my train ride com­pos­ing the com­plaint let­ter going to the cab com­pa­ny and the PUC.
Use­ful sites for locals: Penn­syl­va­nia Pub­lic Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion (they have an online form for Taxi com­plaints). Philly­Walks, a group that edu­cates about pedes­tri­an issues.

I cross that inter­sec­tion twice a day and it’s right by one of the city’s main cab stops. If this is the last blog entry you’ll know he did­n’t like my letter.