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When we first had a place in San Francisco eleven years ago, getting a cab was such a chore that we mostly gave up. In San Francisco, with its expensive parking fees and fines, with traffic that’s much more painful and congested than in our leafy Palo Alto, Uber is a salvation. Brigitte follows the car’s progress and prepares her mother’s descent.
#Credit genius driver#
Silicon Valley argot says removing friction, a good description. In Paris, my wife Brigitte remotely sets up a ride from a close suburb to our Left Bank place for her 85-year-old mother, and then calls the driver to explain that he may need to wait for a bit at the curb while her mother comes downstairs. In moderation, the phrase applies to the way Uber has made my family’s life different.
#Credit genius movie#
According to the orthodoxy, a movie won’t fly unless the lead goes through a transforming experience, one that indelibly stamps her life. The phrase “transforming experience” was first used, and then abused, in Hollywood when describing the requirements for a script. No trouble with rain, destination, or ethnicity-and my US Uber account also works in Paris, Bordeaux, or Marseilles. A few taps on your smartphone, up pops a picture of the car and the driver, you track the approach, hop in, hop out, no cash, no credit card… done. After three years of Uber use in the Bay Area and in Paris, I still marvel at the simplicity of the experience. And there are other considerations outside of my range: I have no personal knowledge, as counsel would say, of being denied a ride because of my skin color or, more recently, the wrong headgear-but we’ve all heard the stories. Try getting a ride at the wrong time of day, when it’s raining, in the wrong part of town, or for a destination that’s unlikely to provide a return fare. Simply finding a cab can be an unpleasant, complicated experience. Sitting in the back, I squirm each time the cabbie plays with the zone setting on the “grinder,” as Parisians call the meter, a sentiment Woody Allen immortalized in Annie Hall: “You’re so beautiful I can hardly keep my eyes on the meter.” In Paris, artful cabbies need to be reminded that I’m not a visitor who needs a tour of the city.
#Credit genius cracked#
Unfortunately, pleasant rides with charming drivers are rare exceptions in a succession of dirty Silicon Valley cabs with cracked windshields, duct taped seats, and noisy wheel bearings threatening to seize at any minute.
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I offered to ghostwrite his memoirs but he wasn’t interested. Sixty years later, then in his eighties, he wove uncertainly across the lanes of Paris’ Périphérique ring boulevard as he told me about people fighting, dying, giving birth-or taking steps towards one-in the back of his cab. There was the elegantly-named Pantaleon de Roudneff, a white Russian who started driving Paris cabs during World War I. After five decades of riding in taxis, both in my native Paris and my adopted Bay Area, I’ve had my share of interesting and sympathetic cabbies, most of whom are more than willing to share their life stories.