Read any Russian novel written about the beginning of the nineteenth century – the time when Russian culture was one of the most dazzling jewels set in the aristocratic necklace of European society – and you’ll read that the well-to-do got around in horse-drawn carriages, also called traps.
Every time some rich, young, femme Russe was off to drink champagne and flaunt her bon mots at a ball among the counts and princes, this is how she got around – Et les hommes Russe aussi – transported high above the cobblestones in an upholstered and curtained efficiency apartment set on wagon wheels, a liveried coachman snapping the reigns.
Searching for an analogue 200 years later here in the city of Kingston, Muscovite Olya Voronovna – more recently of New York City – is exasperated by the taxi services available to a young, Russian woman in Kingston.
“I stopped using them,” says Voronovna. “The dispatchers are cranky and they put multiple people in cars to kind of, like, route them. I guess it’s efficient for them, but not when you’re trying to go somewhere in a hurry. I’ve had them pick up other people and drop them off before they drop me off, which is annoying because I was trying to get to the bus.”
And the waiting.
“Typically 40 minutes,” says Voronovna.
Now Voronova uses Lyft or calls Kool.
A random polling of customer satisfaction conducted from inside the Salt Box bar in Uptown Kingston tells a similar story. And while it’s fun to mock the tribulations of tipsy sophisticates from the city, without dependable solutions, nighttime tipplers have been known to make unwise decisions after a good soaking, becoming everyone’s problem on the road after too much to drink.
“Someone had ordered me a Lyft and I was waiting outside the Salt Box, pretty well sauced up,” said Jack James, project manager by day, screenwriter by night, out of Tivoli.
“Guy showed up, quiet, young guy, not from America. I got in his car with my cell phone recording. I told him it was recording, showed him the phone, I said I wanted to ask him about the life of a cab driver. I was thinking about Travis Bickle for the violence and Buster Poindexter for the comedy.”
This is the kind of thing James says he does frequently. Looks into the lives of others for entertainment and inspiration.
“If you want to think like an airline pilot, you’ve got to hang around the cockpit,” said James, pausing. “This driver definitely did not like my plan.”
But for James, this was the mission and the excuse to come drinking across the river: The ride back with a stranger to talk shop. Otherwise, he had options closer to home. Maybe the driver didn’t understand. So he tried again.
“I’m not trying to get you in trouble. I’m writing about cab drivers. You know? What the life of a cab driver is like. He wouldn’t budge, so I told him, ‘if you don’t want to do it you don’t want to do it’. But then I’m going to call another cab. Sorry to waste your time.”
James got out of the cab. He had a number to a car service he wanted to get a ride with anyway. A driver James already knew named Kool who had picked him up late one New Year’s Eve after the owner of the bar passed him his number. Everybody knew Kool.
“In fact I was telling someone at the curb about Kool, when the driver of the cab sticks his hand out, gives me the number one and calls me the name you call somebody who has had inappropriate relations with his own mother. And then he roars off into the night. I have a pretty good ear for accents but I don’t want to guess where he was from and get it wrong if you’re going to write this. So then I find Kool’s number and dial him up. Sure enough he picks up and he’s game to head over. Before he can get here though the first cab driver comes back. He pulls up to the curb further down the street and gets out of the cab and immediately starts shouting at me. He’s banging on the roof of his own sedan. His meaning was jumbled but his hostility was clear. So I walk over to him to calm him down, my arms outstretched and my palms up. The international symbol of peace and brotherhood, wondering if this is going to escalate.”
He said: “You think you can do what you want because you can go ahead and record! My car is my private property!”
“Certainly. Yes. I understand,” said James. “I spoke just like that, like he’s making perfect sense. He kept shouting that his car is his private property. The concept seemed to be very important to him.”
Kool pulled up at that moment, and James was able to extricate himself. The bad feeling remained but James shrugs. “If your competitor is willing to go the extra mile, you don’t get the dollar.”
Lyft drivers, Uber drivers, they feel the pressures of the free enterprise system most keenly. The companies deny the drivers are employees.
Kool makes it very clear from the get go that his vehicle is not a taxi and he is not a cab driver. He works for himself.
“For one, I don’t think you’re gonna find a taxi this clean,” says Kool, gesturing to the fresh-smelling interior to the leather seats. “The taxi companies, they don’t really thrive on cleaning. You might get in a car where they just finished smoking a cigarette. But this is my business, this is what I do. Number one, I like to ride in cleanliness.”
For Kool then, a Hoffman car wash on Ulster Avenue is next to godliness.
Friendly and matter-of-fact, originally from Jamaica, Queens, Kool’s got that neatly trimmed, fastidious attention to grooming which is a hallmark of the City. Now a Kingston resident, Kool and his partner, George, together comprise KPLS Rides, which is Kingston Private Luxury Service. Woodstock Car Service is George’s, but they operate together.
Fourteen years ago, Kool started out driving taxis for Sonia Cabs, known at the time as New Cabs, before he moved on to driving for A2B medical transportation.
“Taking people to and from doctor’s appointments,” Kool says, “drug rehabilitation programs, things like that. My son wasn’t born when I started. He’s 11 now. He’s little Kool.”
Kool drove for Uber later on but he soured on that company because of the percentage of the fare the company extracted from its drivers.
“They’re robbing people. When I see these guys out here driving, I’m like, I don’t know how,” Kool says, shaking his head. “More power to them though. Because they’re working…When I started with them, it was 80-20. Then it went to 70-30 drivers, the percentage rate of what you get paid.”
Several different factors determine Uber’s payouts to drivers, which means revenue splits can vary widely. Rising costs of fuel, maintenance, insurance – all the driver’s responsibility for paying – do nothing to make the financial arrangement more amenable.
Kool also explained that Uber altered the customer readout information provided on the driver’s app to hide the amount the customer was paying for the ride, the idea being, Kool alleges, to keep the driver from easily understanding how screwed they are getting. Reporting on this rideshare company practice is legion.
“I had a call from here to Rhinecliff train station. I picked them up at Hertz on Ulster Ave. Went on over. Complete the trip. Hey, y’all have a good day. Thank you. Appreciate it. End the trip, $12.46. If they didn’t give me a $4 tip, that’s all I would have had. $12.46. You still need gas. You still need maintenance. It’s your time. I still pay for the toll coming across the bridge. That was the last time I ever drove for Uber.”
Host for Sound Forms: Classical Music and Beyond, a weekly radio show at Kingston Radio, Peter Wetzler dabbled for a time in the car services as a driver for both Uber and Lyft.
“I was making a living writing music for film and TV and there wasn’t much money at that point, so really as more of a social experiment and to make some extra cash as well, I decided, oh, what the heck, I had a brand new Prius, so I thought, well, let me try it out. So I did it for a while, I loved it, I had a lot of fun. Met the seamy underbelly of Kingston.”
Having moved up from the East Village 35 years ago, Wetzler was surprised to find places he didn’t even know existed.
Fares had Wetzler driving out to the Ruby Rod and Gun club for an NRA sponsored celebration, to a summer camp for Hasids, to a Sun Myung Moon village where the Mountain Lake Manor used to be.
“A village of Moonies,” Wetzler said, astounded. “I had no idea how many cults are out here.”
While Wetzler worked for both Uber and Lyft, the profit, or lack thereof, again became the issue.
“I enjoyed it until the point where I realized that I wasn’t making any money, I was putting wear and tear on the car and I’d kind of figured out that I learned what I thought I was going to learn. There wasn’t much more to get out of that.”
Wetzler, who never wanted to make a living doing it anyway, also learned that he felt bad for people who were doing it.
“I don’t think you can make a living that way. I owned my car,” Wetzler says, “I was already paying insurance on it, but if you had to buy a car to support yourself doing that, there’s no way. Once again, it’s like any corporate America thing. Someone at the top and some shareholders are going to make some money and the drivers are getting screwed.”
Orak Rabinek, owner of Vast Expanse in the East Village and one of the guests surveyed at the Salt Box, had a suggestion for anyone riding in an Uber or a Lyft.
“Before you get in the car, tell the driver how much you’re getting charged,” says Rabinek. “Wait for their look of shock and dismay. Then offer that if they’ll cancel the ride, you’ll pay the same amount in cash and the app company doesn’t need to know about the arrangement. They’ll probably eventually catch on, if you cancel too many rides, but here and there you can make a difference.”
Both Wetzler and Kool identified drunk college kids as the least desirable clientele to pick up and neither said they felt unsafe with strangers sitting behind them telling them where to drive.
Wetzler entertained the question briefly, but at the time he felt his size was a deterrent. He’s 6’1” and 240 pounds, and anyway, he felt you’re not making enough money in a city the size of Kingston for the cost-benefit analysis for a would-be robber.
Kool was likewise unruffled.
“If you need change for $100, we can go to the store and get change, but if you’re going to rob me, you’re going to rob me for no more than $50. That’s just my terms of being safe,” says Kool. “But for the most part, what I have is good people. I deal with most of these bars around here. You go in there, they’ll give you my card. What I try to do is let you ride by yourself. That’s why it’s called Kingston Private Luxury Service.”
While Wetzler has moved on from the app-driven driver experience, his eyes light up with a bittersweet memory.
“I had an amazing ride with a dominatrix,” he laughs. “I took her to Poughkeepsie and she somehow convinced me to let her stop and buy some booze on the way. Normally I would start a new ride or something like that but somehow she dominatrixed me and then didn’t give me much of a tip and I was like, ah, I’m stuck in Poughkeepsie.”
His joy in the world had increased by an entertaining experience, his wealth had decreased by a poor tip and a fareless drive back to Kingston. That’s the yin and yang of the business, and with a corporate ridesharing service looking over your shoulder, underwater – no business at all.
For Kool, driving for himself was the right decision. He stays busy.
“I’ve been to Newark Airport today. I’ve been to Hudson. I’ve been to Woodstock. I have a pickup at 9 o’clock in the morning going to Albany Airport. I don’t choose my hours,” he says. “You guys choose my hours. Seven days a week…”
Kool corrects himself.
“Seven days a week unless I take off with my kids and I’m going to a water park.”
Join the family! 
