cabs

Over to the right, behind the car my co-workers, some other volunteers and I are washing, a crowd gathers. We’ve been cleaning cabs for almost two hours. I wipe the squeegee with the towel while the most recent airport transport starts to drive off.

The cab wash is set up in the stadium parking lot. There are four stalls in two rows, using the parking lines and cones as markers. Cabs wait at the entrance and are directed to the next available stall.

It would be more efficient to put the stalls alongside one another but the hoses won’t reach. Instead, crews have to wait while the crew in front or behind them finishes before another cab can enter. To make things worse, there is no process.

Cab drivers pull in, step out while the cabs are being cleansed, park them to the side after they’re clean and then walk to a tent to get information. They walk past two tables of food and drink for the volunteers.

Despite being composed of men and women over twenty, the washing resembles a middle-school cheerleader fundraiser. I was assigned the squeegee arbitrarily. Someone drying the top of a door smears their towel against the window I just wiped clear, leaving lint and streaks. More often than not, a tire is left dirty or the car isn’t completely rinsed.

Most of the day a man in a yellow shirt has been belting out spontaneous “let’s here it for—” and other loud bouts of encouragement. Intermittently he berates slow crews or uses a PA system. Among our crew he’s almost universally reviled.

Grown men and women having trouble with a pre-rinse, scrub, rinse, dry strategy is embarrassing while someone yells pathetic attempts at encouragement to speed things up. And now the cameras are on us and we need to rush through actual cabs to make room for the three cabs waiting for the press event.

In the other row, two of the staged cabs sit already. They’re waiting patiently as the crews for that row are off under the tent with the media cameras and the just-arrived mayor. The third cab waits to the side.

The crowd disperses, moving to the two staged cabs. The mayor enthusiastically grabs a hose like he’s been under the baking sun for hours. Two television cameras move around the crews as they clean the approved cabs. I wipe a few windows and our crew sends another cab off into the parking lot.

I see another man and the mayor playfully spray one another while rinsing the second cab in the other row. The entire scene becomes surreal.

For two hours I’ve been washing the cabs of men who drove around the city as their livelihood. Some spoke only stuttered English and wore unkempt beards, most were obviously poor. Some appreciated the free wash and others scoffed at being taken off the road during lunch hour by their dispatchers.

Now, in a pre-approved media stunt, the mayor and others are jovially prancing around cabs that were in wait for almost an hour before cameras arrived. The cabs—which already looked clean—are being soaped and rinsed by a dozen smiling faces.

I stand, staring at the scene in the row next to us. Our crew rinses another car. Soap dries on my forearm. I walk over to a co-crew member and hand her my towel and squeegee, muttering that this is where I end my day. I mention my leaving to a woman that came with me originally and she decides to come along with.

We walk past a few cabs parked to the side, their drivers in the tent getting information about a cross-city agreement. The third staged cab, a minivan shuttle, is to our left as we walk back toward the train. I turn toward it as the mayor jumps from the other side and sprays the man washing the rear fender.

I’m only here because it was deemed near-mandatory by the office and there was the promise of free pizza. I keep walking and catch the train back to the office.

I won’t watch the news and don’t know if I’ll appeared there, squeegee in hand. I imagine how the story will be broadcast and printed. The hundreds of cabs that navigate the four represented cities won’t be mentioned. That a month will pass before the reason for the cab wash materialises will be glossed over.

There will be a snapshot and short video of the mayor soaping a car or spraying some bystander with his hose. Likely, one of him crouched, hose between his legs, ready to react, with a childish look of pure glee painted on his face.