One tolerable, humid yet cloudless July morning in the late 60s, the apparent aim was to relocate a buttload of ugly, undistinguished rocks — are stones bigger? to call them “boulders” would be hyperbolic —…
Posts published by “Erik S. McMahon”
We’d flown into a Mexican coastal resort without hotel reservations. On the wretched stretch of road between airport and town, we chatted up our cab driver — gushing over family photos pasted across his dashboard…
Bumpy Ride, late landing at LAX. Stateside pilots talk about “a little rough air.” In Mexico, they’re more honest and refer to una zona de turbulencia. Fog, air traffic, gate delays. Due in San Pedro…
Most travelers can recount airplane “flights from Hell.” But of course, there are also Satanic cab and bus rides. Sometimes, even a pleasant-looking ferry will stray across the River Styx. Taxi terror, for me, will…
Another entry for my bulging file of cab-ride tales. Slipped out early from work and went book shopping, emerging into cold winds on lower Van Ness in San Francisco, with no 47 or 49 bus…
Tracey crept up on you bit by bit. Eventually, you’d sense yourself relenting. The fastidious rational brain no longer bothered calculating how much of his rap was mythological, which anecdotes apocryphal, or what percentage of…
Flying Oakland to Burbank meant saving a couple hundred bucks. So headquarters could spring for a cab, instead of the Muni/BART/shuttle journey. A Georgian — not the Atlanta kind — arrived to haul me across…
“Urban public transit has never made its living off promises of gentility or grace. To the middle class, it’s mostly been: “We’re faster, cheaper, more convenient than your car.” The pitch to the poor has…
‘Tried to give away, turn in, that is, her wallet. Eager to surrender, ready to submit. No use, though. Why’d I ever pick the orphan bastard up? You’d’ve done the same. Pigskin peeking from dense…