My Fare Lady
Boston has only a few female taxi drivers, as a new report says, which makes riding with Louise Samson all the more special.
Hop into Louise Samson's cab, and you'll get called names. Nice ones. The fares she likes she calls "cutie," "dear," "hon," "honey," "my boy," and/or "sweetheart." She's like a mom on wheels, which is what she is: Samson is putting her three children through college by driving a cab. Her key ring reads "mom's taxi." She distributes Blow Pops to her passengers. And on the March day I rode along with her, she even wore a snazzy pair of socks with Blow Pop logos printed on them.
Samson, a big redhead with dainty glasses who lives in East Boston and began driving a taxi 15 years ago, isn't always what you'd call sweet. She can be salty. On the road, a driver honks at her. Samson reacts like, well, any Boston driver might: "Bite me twice!"
But as one of the city's few female taxi drivers, she's anything but typical. Only 11 percent of the city's taxi and limo drivers are women, according to Schaller Consulting, a Brooklyn-based firm that analyzed 2000 Census data for a report it will release this spring. Mark Cohen, director of the licensing division of the Boston Police Department, cites an even lower figure: "The number of licensed [female] hackney drivers is more like 1 percent," he says. "About 50-plus out of 5,000-plus."
Samson didn't set out to be a taxi driver. A college graduate who'd rather not give her age, Samson spent years as a legal markets analyst in New Hampshire. But when her children got older, things changed: "I wanted to be home during the week, so I came out here to drive a cab weekends and stay with them during the week." Now that her children are in college, she's applying to law school.
On this day, Arshak Navruzyan, a California-based consultant who tells Samson to call him Art, takes a seat in the back of her cab after she picks him up at the Summerfield Suites in Burlington. He has a few hours before a flight and asks Samson to show him around Boston. So we roll through the Back Bay and Beacon Hill, and Samson teaches us that the Boston Public Library is the oldest library in the United States, that Boston Common hosted our nation's first football game, and that Cindy Crawford's husband owns Whiskey Park on Arlington.
The lady knows her way around Boston, and around an anecdote. One day a woman gets into Samson's cab and says, "I'm going to Perry Street. Do you know where Perry Street in Brookline is?" "Yes, that's where what's-his-name lives," says Sam-son. "Well, I'm what's-his-name's wife!" "Oh, Mrs. Dukakis, I'm so sorry." When they arrive at Perry Street, Kitty Dukakis introduces Samson to her husband. Says Samson: "It was so great, you know: 'Mike, Mike, come down and meet the cab driver! Mike, c'mere!'"
Customers, Samson says, prefer female drivers. "The men are gonna hate me for saying it, but it's true!" It's easy to see her appeal: chatty, flirty, less gruff than your typical male hack. Fares often tell Samson that she's their first female taxi driver. "Sure," she says, "you're my first, too, OK? Whatever." She also gets hit on more than she'd like. The trick, she says, is to let them down easy. "I'm really flattered, but . . ."
As for whether she feels safe driving a cab in Boston, Samson says she stays prepared -- and then shows me how. "I hate when people ask that question. I'm afraid I'm gonna jinx it, but I feel very safe in the city of Boston. I have the phone, I have the radio. We do have security measures that I can't discuss, for safety. And I have the old bottle of hair spray. Spray some hair spray in someone's eyes; trust me, you have time to run."
No mace?
"I didn't get a permit for the mace. Hair spray was cheaper. You know, the trial size, 99 cents." Then, in an exaggerated radio voice: "Try it, it works!" 