Perhaps you’ve heard about some controversy on double decker buses lately? Let me tell you the real scandal. Munich-based dance group Vertical Catwalk was in town today for a double decker tour. There was about 35 of them on my bus. They basically took over, holding us up as their group was first on the bus, then off the bus, then waiting for someone — then asking to make an announcement over the microphone in German, then asking me to go off the route to check out “cool clubs, not so much old buildings” and so on. And they wouldn’t shut up about how they were going to be on TV the next day doing their performance at Rockefeller Center. “We are world famous!!” they said. And they wouldn’t sit down. I have only one rule on the bus: sit down. I sometimes stand, but I know where all the low hanging traffic lights and overpasses are. If you are standing up, taking photographs, it is very dangerous, and if you get killed on the bus I have to fill out paperwork. So I make it very clear to sit while the bus is moving. I even said it in German (I knew how to say “Sitzen Machen” from Billy Wilder’s “One, Two, Three.”) They still wouldn’t sit. When we drove past Rockefeller Center, they had to tell the whole bus how they were going to be dangling from the building and dancing. “But where is the stage?” a woman asked. “The sky is the stage!” they yelled back. Assholes. Cirque de Soliel assholes. Anyway, the upshot of the story, as I’m sure you could guess, is that all 35 of them left the bus without putting a freaking dime in the tip box. I normally don’t complain too bad if someone neglects to tip — but when you take over the entire bus, you are precluding other potential tippers from getting on. And they rode the WHOLE two-and-a-half hour tour. And they spoke English well enough to understand what “the driver and I rely on tips as part of our salary” means. That plus the big box with the word TIPS on it on the dashboard (and the one or two non-skyscraper danglers who were putting money in as *they* left) ought to have clued them in. But, no. Of course not. So — a hearty fuck you then to the Vertical Catwalk group! May all your cables snap tomorrow and may you go splat on West 50th St!!!!
wishing for their cables to snap ? isn’t that a little too much. besides they probably don’t have pockets in those tight spandax outfits.