RADIO CAB 16 - rap off and the starlite parade

this saturday was the starlite parade in portland, that's the day that the city fucks all night cab drivers right in the ass, don't worry they get the day drivers the next day and the following sunday. a night parade basically means that all the roads downtown are blocked off, then filled with the most vile retarded and incompetent suburbanites they could find, and these morons are calling cabs. there's no way of getting to these idiots cuz all the roads are blocked, so all the cabs in the city are on the east side of the river trying to avoid the mayhem. if you're unlucky enough to have a fare take you into the madness, you'll be happy to escape with your life. last year at this time i was dropping someone off at his apartment downtown during the parade and he had me cut through a parking lot to get to his building, the sign said do not enter in big fucking letters, but nooooooo why would i have listened to that. i cut through and after he gets out i pull out onto the nearest street, and sure enough i'm in the fucking parade. some high school band in front of me and a damn float the size of a woolly mammoth in back. some cop flags me down about a block away and clears a path for me to make my retreat to safety, but at least for a minute Radio Cab was honored in the starlite parade, and i was their humble representative.

on Friday, the day before the parade nonsense i had my first run in with a battle. at least i think that's what it's called. i was dropping off a woman at her house, she was paying with a card and taking her sweet ass time getting out of the cab when two early-twenty something hip-hoppish-gangster style type dudes walk up to the cab from behind, one on each side. The white kid tries to open the door but i've already locked it. no sense scaring the lady in the back with some hoodlum trying to take her cab when she's still in it. he says he wants a ride and i tell the guy to wait. the black kid had already walked away. when the lady in the back finally gets out this kid jumps in the back and says some bullshit about broadway cab (the other cab company in town), he says he wants a flat rate to a club down the street. i tell him it's a busy night and i'm not doing flat rates, but i'll run the meter if he wants to go. he agrees but he's not happy about it. he makes me wait for almost 5 minutes for his friend to jump into the front seat, apparently the guy went into a house or something. as soon as we take off the kid starts rapping in the back seat. and not very well. but he is defiantly trying to put me down with his rhymes (that don't rhyme at all). he tells me that he only has seven bucks so i pull into a parking lot when the meter gets up to the seven dollar limit and ask for the fare. he proceeds to rap at me from the back seat. for the life of me i couldn't think of the word battle. so i telling him, "i'm not going to have some kind of fucking rap-off with you for this cab fare, just give me seven bucks and get out." he keeps rapping. his friend in the front seat is looking kind of worried, he starts yelling at the guy in the back. eventually the poorly rapping white guy in the back hands me a sweaty wad of money, looks to be only four dollars. i tried to argue with the dude but he wouldn't stop rapping, and his terrible rhymes were giving me a headache, so i unlocked the doors and let him loose on the world, the black kid in front shook my hand and said he was really sorry. i should have just rapped him for it, it would have been funnier.