Posted by 
August 31st shall live in my memory as The Great Taxi Line Nightmare Of 2018.
It all started innocently enough, m’lady and I flew to Denver the night before and booked into The Renaissance (highly recommended for it’s party-balconies and it’s distinct A Clockwork Orange-esque brutalist architecture) for five nights. We met up with friends at the nearby fire station-now-brew-pub and followed up with nightcaps on the afore-mentioned balconies. Show-day loomed, we had a time-and-a-half at a friend’s pre-party and uber/shuttled our drunken way to the Phish concert.
This was the first of a three-night stand so caution met wind. M’lady and I had discussed it the night before; we always go so hard on night one that we end up seriously dragging our butts on night two, then night three is pretty much normal. “I don’t want to do it that way this time,” she pleaded.
“It’s not like we have much of a choice,” I responded, ever the realist.
That said, we made it to the show in pretty good shape…okay, who am I trying to kid…
The first set was great, the band shocked us all by pulling out Harry Hood really early (second song no less) and I shocked my next-morning self when I recalled that during the song I had leaned drunkenly into the stranger beside me and gave him a full-on Chris Hood spiel, the first time I’ve ever done such a thing (I’ve given you guys the Chris Hood spiel, right? With apologies, it probably comes out better when I’ve been drinking, and right now I haven’t).
We spent the setbreak buying all the food that was available, including hot dogs, nachos, pizza, and so much more, and finding different seats for the second set. I was remarkably together enough to notice that the second set only had five songs in it, and as soon as the encore started we planned our escape back to the hotel.
Or didn’t, really.
As soon as the last note sounded I grabbed m’lady’s hand and pulled her out of the venue. We had been seated in the last row next to the exit, so we had a huge jump on the taxi-hungry crowd. We cruised through the gate and I dragged her toward the main road, where our shuttle had dropped us off before the concert. After what seemed like forever but was actually longer than that m’lady said to me, “Don’t you think we should have gone to the taxi-stand?” I instantly deflated (“What taxi-stand?” thought I), but with the main road looming just ahead I doubled down on our (my) directional decision and didn’t even break my stride.
As we got to the main road it was obvious that there were no cabs afoot whatsoever, and the cop directing traffic looked at us like we were nuts and told us to go back to the entire other side of the stadium to the taxi-stand.
“You idiot,” he didn’t add, but should have.
Now clearly way behind the crowd instead of way ahead of it, we fought our way against the dense foot traffic back along the sidewalk and finally came upon the now-prodigious taxi-stand line. I mean the queue was epic. And there was not a cab in sight either. Of course every taxi in town had been lined up to accept the first wave of revellers (a group I had sooooo intended to be a part of) and now they were all dispersed far and away battling through stupid concert traffic trying to return to pick up subsequent waves of revellers, of which I was sadly a member.
The cabs came so infrequently that the mere sight of a pair of headlights rounding the corner felt like a rousing victory. The line was thick, quiet, and was clearly growing more and more forlorn (and less revelling) by the minute. The obvious dearth of arriving cabs started to sink in and several parties in front of us bailed on the line, affording m’lady and I a slightly better footing in the queue and offering us a faint glimmer of hope that we might one day find ourselves near the front of what was truly shaping up to be a no-taxi line.
That said, cabs kept coming and the line kept moving – if only at a glacial pace – and after I can’t tell you how long we got close enough to be within earshot of the front-of-line dude who was facilitating the whole operation. Dude was obviously doing a good job, doubling up fares and speeding up the line by yelling out the destination of every taxi that wasn’t already packed tight, trying to ensure that no cabs pulled away with an empty seat.
And whattya know, with a good seventy or eighty people still in front of us, dude yelled out “Renaissance Hotel!?!”
“Hey!” we both yelled, waving our arms in the air. “We’re going to the Renaissance!” Amazingly, he started waving us forward. The crowd parted and we ran to the front of the line where Dude waved us into the waiting taxi-van. I ducked my head in and saw two girls sitting in the back two seats. Just as I was sidling in one of the girls looked at me and said, “Sorry, we’d rather take the taxi alone.”
Huh? Wha?
“Yeah, we’d like to ride by ourselves,” she reiterated. “Sorry.”
I was flummoxed, gobsmacked, confounded, discombobulated, and completely thrown off of life and any standard existence I have ever known. I turned towards the Dude and saw that he was already on the case, leaning in and explaining to the girls that he was trying to speed things up and that we’d split the fare so she’d save money and…But they were having none of it.
“Alright,” he said, shutting the door and shrugging an apology at us as the taxi pulled away with a pair of empty seats.
And this is where the Great Taxi Line became a Taxi Nightmare.
Y’see, I absolutely abhor line-butting, and I ever-so try not to do it under any circumstances. Now, in this particular situation our line-butting had been officially sanctioned if not downright mandated by the taxi Dude – everyone knew that – but line-butting it still was, and as I stood there at the front of a line that I had very recently been forty feet deep into I could feel the ire and the soft hippie-hatred of the crowd searing into my soul. I stood with my back to the line and tried my best not to visually squirm.
And do you know it was a full five minutes before the next taxi came around the corner? Five torturous minutes of internal, twisting horror, each moment slowly and painfully giving away to the next in a slow-motion pulse of head-pounding, line-butting shame.
Oh, it took so, so very long for that next cab to arrive. And all the while the sombre crowd behind me seemed to silently turn from sullen and passive to seething and barely-restrained but what do I know; I couldn’t dare to turn and look at them. And then finally, finally! headlights careened around the corner. Salvation! And can you believe it, Dude ushered the next people in line into that cab, leaving us still standing there, steeped in shame. Thankfully a couple then called out behind us, “Hey, we’re going to the Doubletree near the Renaissance, can we share with you?”
“Yes,” we cried, relieved for any reprieve. They pushed through the crowd and stood next to us, and their new arrival at the front of the line seemed to absorb a good portion of the shame in the air. The four of us waited silently for another forever or two, and when the next pair of headlights rounded the corner we whisper/asked the Dude if we could please, please take this one.
We piled in and buckled up*, and when the cab pulled away I kept my eyes straight ahead, unwilling (afraid?) to face the crowd that we had been forced to shun, even from the safety of a moving vehicle.
Astoundingly, the Denver police diverted all of the taxis down a road where they all had to U-turn back from whence they came. This nonsensical enforced doubleback happened twice, which at least put us back in the right direction. By the time we actually pulled away from the stadium the fare was already at $12, but no matter. After a silent twenty-minute ride (we were all shell-shocked, obviously) our Stalin-esque hotel loomed and our chariot ejected us at the front door.
And just like that we were free at last from The Great Taxi Line Nightmare Of 2018. We celebrated on balconies.
*Always buckle up in a taxi. What, you think these guys never get in accidents? Have you noticed how young they all are? Cabbies don’t get old for a reason.
Todd Man Out 