WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE!

Rarely does my old life driving a taxi - and my new life as a blogger opining on the escort business converge. But they did yesterday when I hopped on my bike to ride over the 59th Street Bridge (excuse me, the Ed Koch Bridge) to visit my accountant/lawyer and some other taxi honchos, all of whom have offices out in LIC and Sunnyside. 

Naturally, they brought me up to date on all the taxi issues I used to write about in the industry and "real" papers, relating that the Mayor's proposed outer boro medallions are stuck in court and other stuff that doesn't hold a lot of relevance for me at this point. But then, one of the boys handed me a sheet whose title proclaimed in bold lettering..."TLC ANNOUNCES NEW SEX TRAFFICKING TRAINING LICENSEE REQUIREMENT." I'd been looking for the training video since writing about this bizarre piece of taxi news a few weeks ago, and there right at the bottom was a link to view the video on the web! And of course, I had to check it out.

First, the quality of the presentation sucks! If the budget was a hundred bucks I'd be surprised. For the major part of the 9 minute instructional, only words appeared in the video...and they weren't even close to the words that the narrator was reading. I didn't know whether to read, listen, do both, or neither for that matter.

Regardless, I paid attention - and this is the message I received: If you're a cabby, you are by law required to pick up any scum belle street hooker who hails you. The first thing I thought went like this: "If you're gonna make me watch this crap for my license renewal, you could at least throw me a bone and exempt me from having to pick up those douchebags. As I've said before, only a pervert wants one of those skanks in his cab!

But the real gist of the tape was to admonish - and put the fear of God - into any TLC licensee who profits over and above the metered fare when transporting a girl (or guy) who sells sex for money. Specifically, they mention that if a driver accepts some sort of finder's fee in the transaction...or actually is hired by her employer to drive the girl (or guy again) around and pick up the money from the buyer whereupon he spilt the profits with the employer, he'd better be ready to pay the consequences - and big time!

I get all this except for one assumption...that the employer and driver get all the money and the girl gets nothing. From where I sit, I've never seen that. FYI...with outer boro escort agencies who provide companionship and generally service their own boros, my understanding is that on a $150 call, the agency gets $55...the girl $60...and the driver $35. 

Regardless, I maintain that legalizing the entire business would in fact not only generate much needed revenue for the government (at whichever level), but effectively eliminate all this trafficking stuff that seems to rub law enforcement the wrong way. As I see it, legalization would corral 90% of the business into the arena of compliance...leaving just 10% in the scofflaw realm...a much easier number to handle for a police force in no way equipped to bust every girl who advertises with whichever medium.

Whatever...here's a link to the video every licensed TLC driver is required to view. Click right here! Enjoy!