PRAISE FOR WHERE TO?
“Funny, touching, observant, philosophical, sad, world-weary, artful and wonderful are the stories that pepper this book. There has never been a cab driver like Dmitry Samarov and, since he’s given up for keeps late-night for-hire driving, there never will be.”
—Rick Kogan, hall-of-fame reporter for the Chicago Tribune
“With his gorgeous pen and ink drawings and funny, tragic, and all too true stories, Samarov’s chronicle of his adventures as a Chicago taxi driver is by far the best ride you’ll ever take in a cab.”
—Wendy MacNaughton, author and illustrator of Meanwhile in San Francisco
PRAISE FOR HACK
“Samarov captures the most shocking and, sometimes, quietly poignant tales. . . . When chatty barflies, clandestine drug buyers, inebriated sports fans, and prostitutes mentally preparing for johns pour out to their cab driver on a nightly basis, the truth is stranger than fiction.”
—TimeOut Chicago
“[Samarov’s] book, organized by the days of the week, is thin and enveloping, full of the kind of insights only a veteran cab driver would have . . . The book is also so attuned to the nuances of cab life, a thought repeatedly springs to mind as you read it: Your cab driver is aware of you. More than you realize.”
—Chicago Tribune
“Samarov drives late afternoon and into the night, the best time to cull material to create his vibrant, detailed stories that would make Nelson Algren proud. He has that very Chicago knack for succinctly capturing the city’s neighborhoods and the characters that inhabit them.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
CURBSIDE SPLENDOR PUBLISHING
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of short passages quoted in reviews.
Published by Curbside Splendor Publishing, Inc., Chicago, Illinois in 2014.
First Edition
Copyright © 2014 by Dmitry Samarov
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014945091
ISBN 978-1-940430-22-5
Edited by Naomi Huffman
Cover and interior art by Dmitry Samarov
Designed by Alban Fischer
Manufactured in the United States of America.
ABOUT ALL THIS ART
My first book, Hack: Stories from a Chicago Cab, took a look at a driver’s typical work week. This one, which begins with my first fare as a 23-year-old cab driver in Boston and ends with my last fare as a 41-year-old cab driver in Chicago, is more of a summing up of all my time behind the wheel. Between the first and last rides, the episodes are arranged thematically rather than chronologically in an attempt to give a sense of the breadth of experiences in my twelve years on the job. There are still many small moments—watching and listening to people is at the root of everything I do—but unlike the first book there’s a beginning and an end and thus an opportunity to look back.
I never intended to write a thing.
When I decided to write about driving a cab, I needed a way in. That way in was through drawing. I don’t ever remember not drawing—it’s how I talk to the world—so, although it’s probably not how most people would ease their way into writing a book, I didn’t know of any other way.
The pictures I’ve included are culled from posts from the last two years of my blog, Chicago Hack, as well as the Hack zine from 2000, and sketches I did in the cab over the years while waiting at airports and cabstands. Drawing and painting are still my surest way into writing. While I’m finishing a picture, the phrases I’ll use crystallize in my mind. And as I’m writing, I’ll look back at the artwork to remind myself of the scene I’m trying to render in words.
The artwork in these pages runs the gamut from on-site, observed sketches to atmospheric, remembered city scapes to flat-out caricatures. Almost every piece of writing I’ve ever done has started with a drawn or painted image of some kind. The kind of picture it is depends on what I’m trying to write. Sometimes it complements the text, other times it serves as a counterpoint, but in every instance one can’t exist without the other.
Because of the prohibitive costs of color printing, I restricted the illustrations for these cab stories to black-and-white. Some were done with ballpoint pen or charcoal, but most of the art in this book was done with Sumi ink. At this point, I’ve been working with it for about 17 years. It has the richest tonal range of any ink I’ve tried.
The painting on the cover of this book is O’Hare Taxi Staging Area #1. It’s the first of a series of gouache paintings I did at Chicago’s airports while waiting to be dispatched to the terminals to pick up fares. The challenge was to finish the painting before my subject matter left. The taxi staging area is a big parking lot where cabs line up in rows. Once the starter radios for cabs, the rows move out. At the outside, I had about three or four hours to get down in brushstrokes as much of what I saw as I could. Out of the 40 or so of these that I attempted, about ten or fifteen came out okay.
O’Hare #23 (pg. 7) is one of the dozens of ballpoint pen sketches I did over the years at the airport. These sketches were never meant to be preparatory studies for more finished work. They were always an end in themselves. I’ve chosen to use several of them throughout this book to give a sense of what cab drivers spend much of their day looking at: other cabs.
Dispatch Squawk (pg. 11) was one of my first attempts to illustrate what it was like to be a cab driver. It was painted for Hack #1 in 2000. The words and numbers shooting out of the two-way radio were meant to convey the nonstop cacophony throughout the long shifts.
Empty Lot (pg. 19) was one of the first times I used Google Streetview as a visual reference for an illustration. I needed to see one of the places I was trying to write about that was no longer there and sure enough, Google had a recent record of it. This particular lot was on California Avenue, just past the Kennedy Expressway, the former home of the worst cab garage from which I had the misfortune of renting a vehicle.
Cabbies #3 (pg. 32) was done while sitting through one of the interminable refresher courses the
