Best. Cab Ride. Ever.

On our last night in San Francisco, we went to 12 Galaxies, a club in the Mission District and heard Campo Bravo, Kally Price, and Phosphorescent. We were already disoriented by margaritas from Puerto Allegre, and the fact that Phosphorescent was actually just one guy who looked Amish but used homebrew tech to sing his own harmonies in realtime, and that Kally Price-- anything but realtime-- sang from some Bessie Smith-era dive in the distant past. We weren't prepared for the Best. Cab Ride. Ever-- but, in truth, are you ever?


By the time I had perused the musicians' selection of CDs, Montana had already walked out onto Mission street and hailed a cab. So the rest of the experience was her fault.

The Japanese cabbie immediately introduced himself as a dot-com refugee; his job had been outsourced to India and that was why he was driving this cab. I tried some sympathy, saying that I thought I'd talked on the phone to the guy his job had been outsourced to, but I was really thinking that this was going to be one of those cab rides where the cabbie whines about his miserable freakin' life the whole miserable freakin' time.

And then, as they say, the tone changed. Completely.

"But this is a Happy Cab," our driver told us, the capitalization audible as he reached into a plastic sack in the front seat. "Here, have some snacks." He tossed some Japanese Twinkie-type confections at us. While I looked at mine, trying to decide if I should open it and what the etiquette was in such a situation, he rummaged around some more in his bag, all the while careening up and down the hills of San Francisco.

Then, like some Asian Santa Claus at a West Texas barbecue, he pulled two silver cans from his bag. We recognized those cans immediately. "Here," he said grinning broadly, "have a beer."

"And some peanuts." He tossed us some spicy peanuts in plastic bags lettered in Japanese. By then our shyness had dissipated and, may I say, those peanuts went quite well with the ole Silver Bullet.

"In San Francisco," our driver said, "the bars close at two a.m. But my bar is open as long as the meter's running!"

But by then we had reached the Red Vic bed and breakfast. We tossed him the big tip he had well earned, and I stood in the middle of Haight Street and shouted "I love San Francisco!" to the panhandlers and the drug dealers.