Raise your hand.

If you hate waiting,
raise your hand.

It rained in Mumbai last week. My Uber circled the block twice, then cancelled. So I did something I hadn't done in years: I put my hand up. A black-and-yellow taxi stopped in about ten seconds, which honestly felt like a magic trick.

Everyone keeps telling me these cabs are dying. The one I was sitting in seemed fine. Smug, even. So I went and counted them, city by city, because this is apparently my personality now.

the kaali-peeli that got me home. mumbai, in the rain.

Taxis are older than I thought. Much older. The first ones waited outside a Paris pub in the 1640s, under the sign of a saint called Fiacre, who somehow became the patron saint of cab drivers. London started licensing them in 1654 and capped the whole city at 300. Governments have been arguing about taxis for 370 years, and about apps for roughly fifteen minutes.

And they never went away, which is the part nobody mentions. New York had 13,595 yellow cabs in 1937. Today it has 13,587. Ninety years, eight fewer taxis. Paris added a thousand in the last three. Tokyo has 39,390, which is roughly three New York fleets stacked on top of each other.

new york. 13,587 of these. almost exactly the 1937 number.

My favourite thing I found, and I have since told everyone I have met: in these ten cities an Uber legally cannot stop for your raised hand. Not won't. Can't. The cab is the only car still allowed to pull over for an arm. And an arm, unlike an app, never surges.

ten cities, ten cabs, every number real.

I make one of these every week. If you want to see how they come together, and the stories that never make the newsletter, that's what the Hidden Tab is for. A few quid a month.

Where do you still stick your hand out? Hit reply, I read every one.

Akash

raise your hand · a sheets.works data drop