Hacking Out a Living as a Cabdriver in Los Angeles : Working: There are bandit taxis, holdup men, rowdies--even killers. It's a tough way to make a buck.

By MARK A. STEIN

July 28, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Taking a break from hauling business travelers in and out of big hotels a few blocks away, cabdriver Khosrow Parsi maneuvered his well-aged Mercury Marquis station wagon along a deserted downtown street like a fighter pilot on the prowl.

“There’s one!” he howled, as much in excitement as anguish, when he saw an illegal, unlicensed bandit cab pull up to a pair of disco patrons on upper Broadway. “There’s another one! And another one! . . .”

He bit his lip as the bandits drove by in bunches--yellow sedans with lights on the roofs, meters inside and “Yellow Cab Co.” (or “Super Yellow Cab,” “Independent Yellow Cab” or “Courtesy Yellow Cab”) on their doors. They have everything a legitimate taxi has except the seal needed to legally pick up riders.

“These bandit cabs,” Parsi said, “they are killing us.”

But outlaw cabs, and the bandit limousines that are crowded around hotels, aren’t Parsi’s only worries these days.

Since May 1, three taxi drivers have been killed and at least three others wounded by gunfire in Los Angeles County, a violent outburst that Parsi sadly said barely reflects the number of nonfatal robberies that occur, usually unreported to police, nearly every day.

The shootings have settled in as further proof--as if any were needed--of how tough it is to make a living driving a hack in a city that is practically designed to be unfriendly to cabs. Competition is tough and regulation is strict. Most people who can afford a taxi usually drive their own cars.

Whenever there is a flare-up in cabdriver slayings, the bad news breeds prejudice and fear. Parsi concedes that despite rules of law and logic, he is among the many drivers who are reluctant to pick up black men, people who are uncertain of their destinations or anyone who the driver simply decides is “suspicious.”

“Everybody I know in this business, they won’t pick up black guys,” he said. “They just won’t.”

Indeed, cabbie lore is full of examples--real, exaggerated, assumed or imagined--of violence purportedly perpetrated by black men. Parsi said the casual discrimination extends beyond a reluctance to take scruffy passengers into or out of high-crime areas: it can even include black businessmen wearing suits.

Parsi, who was born in Iran and has driven a taxicab for a little more than two years, told a story about a black man in a suit who, “three or four years ago,” is said to have hailed a cab in front of one large downtown hotel, then robbed and killed the driver.

That story, apparently apocryphal, is typical of the bloody tales drivers tell to justify prejudice--even though, as Parsi concedes, the many stories about white men who have shot cabbies generally does not discourage drivers from picking up other white men.

“I have picked up many black guys who were very nice, very good; they treat me very well, very generously,” he was quick to add. “But that’s when you pick them up at their homes--a small percentage: 3%, 4%, 5% at the most.”

William Upton, vice president of the NAACP in Los Angeles, said examples of discrimination by cabbies is anecdotal at best, and is less of a problem at airports and hotels. But he said he believes that some cab companies and certain drivers will not pick up most “people of color--and that includes Puerto Ricans and Hispanics as well as African-Americans.”

“I can’t come right out and say that they’re being discriminatory because I don’t have the evidence and I haven’t taken a poll,” he said. “But I can say that if you call for a cab in certain parts of Los Angeles . . . even if you tell them you’re white . . . they say they will be there as soon as possible. That’s the operative phrase, ‘as soon as possible.’ “You can wait there an hour or an hour and a half, and if they never come, you’re going to call another cab or take a bus or something. Well, they’ve won. . . . They can wait you out.”

Cabdrivers play the percentages when it comes to safety, he said, and stereotypes say that white riders are better.

Playing the percentages for Parsi goes beyond race alone. He won’t work past dusk unless he is at the airport, and he won’t work Hollywood at all--day or night.

“The people there are terrible, and they’re 80% white,” he said. “They’re messy, filthy, terrible. They drink and they fight with the driver. They spit and throw up in the back. It is not worth it.”

Even at the airport, he said, drivers must be careful. Several times he has had men, alone and without luggage, ask him to simply drive east on Century Boulevard--toward Inglewood, South-Central Los Angeles and Watts--without a specific destination.

Parsi always asks such passengers if he can see their luggage, their used airline ticket or a form of identification. If they refuse to cooperate, Parsi refuses to move, even at the risk of a $300 fine.

Before he developed his cabbie’s savvy, Parsi was robbed by a man he had picked up on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood at 5 a.m.

“After awhile he says to me, ‘I have a $50 bill; can you change it?’ That’s the clue they want to rob you. They ask you to cash a $50 or $100 bill, to see how much money you have,” he said.

Parsi said the robber asked him to drive to 36th and San Pedro streets, east of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Parsi said he pulled to the curb and waited to die.

The passenger produced a gun and demanded money. Parsi complied.

“When he left, he said, ‘I’m a gentleman. I didn’t kill you,’ ” Parsi recalled. “I said, ‘Absolutely, yes, you are a gentleman.’ He got out and I took off. I didn’t know where I was driving. I still don’t know where I went.”

Parsi said he never reported the robbery to police.

“In the city of Los Angeles, the police won’t come and help you unless you are dead,” he said. “Then they will come out and wrap your dead body.”

Parsi said he had no idea how tough a cabbie’s life could be in Los Angeles until he spent $31,000 to buy a share of the L.A. Checker Cab cooperative early in 1989. Like most cabdrivers, Parsi is really something else--in his case, a bank manager.

But he resigned from his bank job two years ago after being passed over for a promotion, he said, and middle-management jobs are hard to find in a severely slumping banking industry. “I am stuck,” he said. He hangs on to his share, which he figures is worth $25,000 or so, and drives while waiting for something better.

Typically, a shift begins at a taxi stand, either near Los Angeles International Airport or a big hotel. Parsi said that because about 75% of all cab trips start at one of these locations, it makes little sense to cruise the streets looking for casual fares.

This strategy has led to taxi gluts at the airport and hotels, even though Los Angeles has far fewer cabs than other big cities: 37.4 per 100,000 residents, compared to 161 per 100,000 New Yorkers.

LAX manages the glut by limiting the number of days that each of the city’s 1,303 licensed cabs can enter the airport. Hotels prefer to limit the number of companies they allow to drive up to their front doors.

For example, only taxis from L.A. Taxi--with 315 vehicles, the largest fleet in the city--are welcome at the Biltmore, the Hyatt Regency and the Sheraton Grande. The Figueroa Hotel and the New Otani are the turf of the Independent Taxi Owners Assn.

Joe Zarrahy, resident manager of the Sheraton Grande, said he favors one company because it makes it easier to keep track of which cab picked up which guest--and that, in turn, makes it easier to register complaints if the passenger is unhappy.

“L.A. Taxi is the only one that came forward and said they would have clean cabs and clean drivers--that is, well-groomed drivers,” Zarrahy said.

The Hilton and the Bonaventure are, for now, open to all taxi companies, which is good news for Parsi and his colleagues at L.A. Checker Cab; their only exclusive is the smallish Holiday Inn on Figueroa near the Convention Center.

It is small comfort. Even big hotels are anything but a sure thing, Parsi said.

“If we are lucky, after half an hour, we get a $10 trip,” he said. “On a slow day, you can wait an hour and a half for maybe $3.”

Profitable airport trips have become rare, he said. Legal, low-priced door-to-door shuttle vans have grabbed about 60% to 70% of that market, he said, and illegal gypsy limousines bribe hotel doormen for much of the rest.

Even though some doormen head passengers toward the gypsy drivers, Parsi added, it is still important for cabdrivers to give all doormen big “tips” and smiles. “If two or three guests look for a cab at once,” he said, “you want to make sure the doorman gives you the round-trip to Disneyland (a $120 fare) instead of the one-way ride to the Convention Center (about $3).”

He starts his downtown days early, at 5:30 or 6 a.m., hoping to snare the harried business traveler who slept through her wake-up call or misread his itinerary the night before.

“That’s when we can pick up the airport trips--two or three if we’re lucky and can hurry--and you know it’s not going to be just for $2 or $3 or $10,” he said.

“Since the DOT (the city Department of Transportation) started regulating us,” he said, “they have been forcing us out of business.” It is the taxi driver’s lament, as much a part of their makeup as the gift of gab.

Parsi complained that during a recent surprise inspection at Union Station, he was cited by city inspectors for having a bald tire; they suspended him for three days.

“These punishments are too much,” he said, his eyes fixed on the rear-view mirror to make sure his passenger, his audience, fully appreciated his sad fate. “Three days out of service for a cabdriver is a disaster!”

He expanded on the folly of civil servants who spend their time measuring tire tread depths on licensed cabs instead of arresting bandit cabdrivers or closing down gypsy limo operators.

What he would not say is what the suspension cost him in lost income. Nor would he say what kind of living a cabdriver in Los Angeles could make. “It depends,” is all he would say.

Whatever Parsi makes, it at least covers his $400-a-week operating expenses--$250 for co-op fees, $75 for gas and $75 for maintenance and repairs--with enough left to support a wife and daughter.

Parsi conceded that when some drivers are fined or suspended, they supplement their income by bilking tourists. Just recently, he said, another driver told him that what began as a $13 trip from the Sunset Hyatt Hotel to Century City became an extended tour of Los Angeles.

“I don’t know how he took him, but the fare was $75,” Parsi said. “I told him, ‘Don’t rip off customers. It gives us a bad reputation. It will hurt business in the long run.’ He said, ‘Tell them (regulators) to get off my back. How am I supposed to make a living?’

“He has a point,” Parsi said. “I don’t agree with him, but he has a point.”

Still, many immigrants find cab driving an acceptable entree to a job market that is tough to crack. Some are illiterate; others have come to California for college degrees. Some were trained as doctors, architects or other professionals in their native countries but cannot get U.S. officials to accept their qualifications.

“What else are they going to do?” Parsi said. “There’s no pity in this city. No mercy.”

Danger on the Meter

Since May 1, at least six taxicab drivers have been wounded or shot to death in Los Angeles County, a spate of violence that has added to the woes of cabbies in a town almost designed to be unfriendly to taxis.

1. May 1: Titus Imaku, 35

Shot to death

2. May 21: Beltazar Munguia, 56

Seriously wounded

3. May 23: Christopher Nwankpele, 34

Shot twice in abdomen

4. June 23: Donald Shanks, 49

Shot and wounded

5. July 6: Ume Onyeanusi, 54

Shot to death

6. July 18: Jeno Zoltan Koncz

Shot to death