thephoenix.com/bikebible | the boston phoenix | may 11, 2012 35
The Pedi cure Save a Car, ride a PediCab _b y e ug en i a w i l l i am Son
Before this assignment, I had never even considered riding in pedicab, even though I work in the pedicab mecca of Kenmore Square. I always thought there was something extremely icky about making someone sweat while I sit there like a pasha. I revealed this trepidation to the driver of my first-ever pedicab ride. He asked that we not use his real name; let’s call him Hugo. There’s something about Hugo that makes me want to open up to him. He’s a charmer, this Hugo. The guilt starts in almost as soon as we pull away from the curb. Hugo tells me pedicabs weigh about 160 pounds. They’re attached to 21-speed cruiser bikes with the same hydraulic disc brakes found on motorcycles. Pedaling one is a lot of work. I ask Hugo if we should stop and get coffee or something, and he declines. “What do they say about marathon runners and training?” he asks, pumping his shapely calves. “They should be able to carry on a normal conversation when they’re going slowly.” An EMT by day and a self-described history buff, Hugo peppers his fares with historical factoids as he pedals them down the Freedom Trail. To be a good pedicab driver, you have to be part athlete, part huckster. Hugo has a shtick. When he sees someone walking down the street smoking a cigarette, he calls out, “I’m the only smoking cab in town!” Another favorite: “We’ve got wheels for the heels!” Worse still: “Where are you going? I’m going that way, too!” Hugo and his cohort — there are 35 pedicabs in Boston — don’t make an hourly wage. He rents his cab from his company — one of two pedicab outfits in town — for a flat daily fee that’s higher on the weekends. He makes all his income on tips. Because of that, he has, over the course of three years in the business, worked on some lines to get cheapskates to pony up. His favored method: shame. “So a guy hands me a couple bucks for a long ride. I hand it back to him and say, ‘Look here, buddy, you obviously need this more than me. Why don’t you use it to take your girlfriend to McDonald’s?” More often than not, this works. Some of the pedicab mantras Hugo has developed over the years seem ripped from a sales manual circa 1952. “It’s all about the attitude”; “Work smarter, not harder”; “You’ve got to have thick skin.” Sometimes Hugo’s decisions seem counterintuitive. Picking up drunk people, for instance Although drunk guys often tip the best, he gets a lot of pukers. One time a guy dumped his catatonically drunk friend in the back of Hugo’s cab, handed him a few bills and a piece of paper with the drunk guy’s address, and ran off. But even worse than the pukers are the pigs.
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“We’ve got Wheels for the heels!” To be a good pedicab driver, you have to be part athlete, part huckster.
hugo’s mosT hearTfelT advice for Pedicab drivers is simPle and inTuiTive: “don’T hoTdog iT.”
“I hate these misogynistic assholes,” he says, referring to extremely drunk men who board his cab and spend the ride catcalling women on the sidewalk. “I’ve lost my shit on them. I just hate them,” he says. “But I try to keep my mouth shut and just get through it, because those guys are some of the best tippers.” Once, a drunk guy gave Hugo twenty bucks to do a drive-by mooning of a bar in Alston. “He really going for it, slapping his ass and everything,” Hugo said. In fact, the most money he ever made was off a drunk guy. One night, Hugo was cruising around the North End. It was pretty late. A guy and his girlfriend flagged him down. The guy asked if Hugo could take him to Andrew Square. Hugo declined. “Then he got out a roll of twenties, and I was like, Okay, man.” Halfway through the journey, the guy told Hugo to stop at a 7-11 so he could go to the ATM to get Hugo more money. Hugo stopped. The girlfriend stayed in the cab. “He was taking forever, and his girlfriend was like, you better go in there and grab him. He gets distracted. So I went in, and he was buying things for everybody at the 7-11.” Hugo’s being coy about his pedicab profits, but he does assure me that, on a good night, he makes what he used to in a week as a bike messenger. “Saturdays are madness,” he says, overtaking a Segway. On other nights, “it’s a roll of the dice,” he says. Like regular cabbies, Hugo has to deal with the cost of fuel. During a typical shift,
he burns an average of 6000 calories. On a night that’s especially arduous or hot, he can burn as many as 10,000. So Hugo ends up spending tons of money every shift on street food. He tries to be healthy, and often brings a bag of vegetables with him, but that’s not enough food to keep up his strength. One word of advice to novices: plan your meals. But Hugo’s most heartfelt advice for pedicab drivers is simple and intuitive: “Don’t hot dog it.” One night a couple of months ago, he on a bridge with a brigade of cabs cycling two by two. It was dark. This kid, a college kid with a $2000 racing bike, was weaving between cars. “No helmet! No lights!” Hugo only noticed the kid when he zipped in between him and his neighbor. The traffic light turned yellow; the kid sped up even more. Before Hugo could call out and tell him to be careful, the kid hit a bump, went flying over the hood of a car, and landed, head to concrete. Traffic stopped. A crowd gathered. Hugo asked himself, “Did I just see that?” He ran over to the kid — out cold on the ground bleeding from a massive head wound — who was getting poked by gawkers trying to wake him up. “Don’t touch him!” Hugo said, pushing the people away. “I’m an EMT. You can’t move him.” He stayed with the kid until the ambulance arrived. “I’ll never forget that,” he said. ^
eugenia Williamson can be reached at ewilliamson@phx.com.