Taxi

OCEAN CITY -- To Ocean City's tourist trade, Classic Taxi co-owner Christy L. Freeman presented herself as a flirtatious NASCAR mom who could keep her customer's secrets. "We have hauled everyone from famous singers to the general lay worker," she wrote on the five-year-old company's Web site, which features an image of Freeman as a suggestive sorceress. "Everybody has a story and we hear it all ... but you didn't hear that from me." But the story police told about the 37-year-old woman yesterday - that she had stowed the remains of a stillborn baby and at least three more small bodies in and around her house - was so disturbing, so discordant with even her detractors' perceptions of her, that it has scandalized a devil-may-care beach town.

Jodie Foster, who earned an Oscar nomination 32 years ago for playing a child prostitute in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, plays a more cultured character in The Brave One, an illegitimate heir to that incendiary mid-1970s masterpiece. Here she's a radio personality who reports poetically on the changing face of New York until her own face is beaten to a pulp. Then the whole thing turns into trash with flash. The Brave One (Warner Bros.) Starring Jodie Foster, Terrence Howard. Directed by Neil Jordan.

It's natural to wonder, "What the heck is going on here?" After all, Andy Kaufman is involved and any time the oddball comedian/performer/provocateur is involved you have to wonder.The latest stunt is a kind of resurrection. It's just the sort of prank you'd figure Kaufman would pull when all seemed lost, buried and largely forgotten.Kaufman -- of "Saturday Night Live" and "Taxi" fame -- soared into the American entertainment heavens, flamed out rather quickly and died young, leaving behind a core of devotees that included some big names in comedy.

Take the kids on a time tripNext time you're in Paris, you can tour the City of Light by taxi-bike. Bilingual students operate these three-wheeled, black-and-yellow bicycles -- made of fiberglass and equipped with 21 gears and passenger carriers -- and follow a 3-mile path starting and ending at the Place de la Concorde. Sites along the way, where tour guides can stop for photos, include the Jardin des Tuileries, Place de l'Opera, Place de la Madeleine, Place Vendome, the Louvre and the Musee d'Orsay.

The Westminster Common Council considered last night a bill that would provide tax breaks to people who renovate properties in the city's historic district.If the measure is approved, property owners would not see any tax increases for up to 10 years.For example, if a rundown property was assessed at $50,000 and improvements raised its value to $75,000, the owner would not have to pay taxes on the increased valuation for 10 years.The measure was introduced by Westminster Town Center Corp.

In the dead of winter last year, Gary Ricktor walked the streets of Fells Point for 45 minutes, pushing through crowds of fellow bar-goers and lost tourists in search of a taxicab.After calling one taxi when the bars closed at 2 a.m., Ricktor, 44, of Baltimore gave up waiting and walked seven blocks until he found one. It's an experience all too familiar for Ricktor and others who frequent the bar scene in Fells Point."It's really hard to get a taxi around here," Ricktor said. "My friends from New York City hate it when they visit.

A cab driver died last night after his taxi struck a tree on a Northeast Baltimore street, city police said.The driver, who worked for Sun Cab Co., lost control of his cab about 6 p.m. and hit a tree in the 1800 block of 33rd St. at Hillen Road, police said. The car driver, whose name was not available, was taken to Union Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, police said.Pub Date: 10/31/98

Without license, a for-hire driver is only a 'hacker'We deplore the senseless violence on our streets today and have the greatest sympathy for any victim of that violence.However, characterizing the victim as an "unlicensed cabbie" was not correct ("Youth arrested in shooting of unlicensed cabbie," Jan. 26).If an individual transporting passengers for hire does not have a license issued by government authority, then that individual is not a cabbie.The label "cabbie" is not correct. It misleads the public and damages the legitimate taxi industry.

LAST Saturday night in Baltimore I slept with a couple I'd never met before. Well, it's a long story that came about because of the shortage of hotel rooms in the area.I had arrived in the city early in the evening to enjoy dinner with friends. Before we knew it time had flown. It was 3 a.m. -- too late for me to drive back to Rockville alone. So I began calling local hotels, searching for a room for the night.It quickly became clear to me that I would not find a room -- even the Hunt Valley Inn, 18 miles from downtown, didn't have a room.

BALTIMORE area taxi fares recently increased 15 percent, but cab service won't improve. You'll still have trouble finding a cab after an Orioles game. And you'll still have to wait a half-hour or so -- in good weather -- for your taxi to arrive. And there'll still be those occasions when the cab never arrives.Why? There's a shortage of taxi drivers here because the overhead costs are prohibitive. That's a key reason for the proliferation of the unlicensed "gypsy" taxis in the poorer sections of town and limousine and sedan services in the area.

Yellow Cab of Baltimore celebrated its 100th anniversary Thursday with a downtown parade of taxis, including vintage cabs and even the most modern addition, hybrid vehicles. W.W. Cloud purchased the Brown and Blue Cab companies in 1909 and renamed them Yellow, making it the oldest registered Yellow Cab in the country, according to company officials. The cars, however, were black. Yellow grew and expanded until 2001, when Yellow Transportation of Baltimore was acquired by a global transportation company now known as Veolia Transportation.

Using a new grant of federal stimulus money announced Tuesday, Baltimore plans to build a network of water taxis to carry workers year-round among the burgeoning neighborhoods of Canton, Fells Point and Locust Point. The grant will allow the city to make pier improvements and buy two additional boats, significantly expanding a free, commuter-oriented service that began on a small scale in May. The runs between Fells Point and Tide Point have attracted a regular daily ridership of about 90 in less than three months, said Jamie Kendrick, deputy director of the Baltimore Department of Transportation.

Injunction halts lower taxi mileage rates A Baltimore Circuit Court judge has granted a group of Baltimore taxi drivers a temporary injunction to stop the state Public Service Commission from making lower mileage rates effective Sunday, a representative of the group said yesterday. Rates were set to decrease from $2.20 per mile to $1.65 March 1, an automatic adjustment based on a twice-annual review of gas prices in January and July. A flat rate from downtown hotels to BWI Marshall Airport would also decrease from $30 to $22. Two cab companies have petitioned the PSC, which regulates taxi rates in Baltimore, Baltimore County and Cumberland, to keep mileage rates the same.

Gangsta Granny's getting no love. No signal 10s, no flags, no regulars. In plain English: No customers and no money. Now the sleepy scene outside the Doubletree Hotel in North Baltimore seems to promise more of the same. "Nothing's moving," she says with a weary sigh, edging onto University Parkway. It's just after 10 in the morning, but Lucy Davis, aka Gangsta Granny, has been on the job six hours already. So far it is shaping up as a so-so day, maybe worse. For cabbies like her, that's life nowadays.

The 65th Venice International Film Festival got under way last week with a star-studded lineup, including Brad Pitt and George Clooney. But you don't have to be a film fan to visit this gem of an Italian city. In fact, if Hollywood made a movie about Venice, it could easily be called Where the Tourists Are. The city receives up to 20 million visitors a year. 1 Ride a gondola on the Grand Canal: The city's main thoroughfare, the Grand Canal, is nearly two miles long and is lined with churches, palaces and other historic buildings.

Motorists arrested for drunken driving after Labor Day festivities in Baltimore saloons won't have the excuse that they didn't have another way home. AAA Mid-Atlantic is teaming up with Yellow Cab and the State Highway Administration to offer free cab rides for alcohol-indulging drivers as part of its Tipsy? Taxi! program. Free rides will be available by calling 877-963-TAXI between 4 p.m. tomorrow and 4 a.m. Tuesday. Riders must be age 21 or older and have been drinking at a bar or restaurant in Baltimore.

It's not 'just the facts, Ma'am,' " says Alex Gibney, channeling TV's Dragne t's Jack Webb. The writer-director-producer, who won the best documentary Oscar this year for Taxi to the Darkside and is currently promoting Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson, abhors the notion that a filmmaker can capture reality simply by pointing his camera at it. That's why this disciplined and prolific artist (he also executive-produced Charles Ferguson's Oscar-nominated...

Hailing a cab in Baltimore could get more difficult this summer. With the average gas price threatening to top $4 a gallon, several Baltimore cabdrivers said yesterday that the steep jump in fuel costs is taking money out of their pockets and forcing them to wait more at taxi stands, where riders come to them, rather than driving around the city and burning fuel while trying to pick up fares. "You can't drive around all day," said Otisi Okiyi, 50, a Diamond Cab driver, while parked at a taxi stand at the Inner Harbor yesterday.

Since assuming the city's highest office, Mayor Sheila Dixon is usually driven around town in a bulky Ford Expedition, a bodyguard at the wheel. And yet there she was yesterday in the back of a taxi. A cost-cutting measure? Not quite. The cab was unusual, the first of its kind. It was a green-and-yellow Toyota Prius taxi, an environmentally friendly, fuel-efficient, gas-and-electric compact vehicle that is to be one of many such cabs on Baltimore's streets. "Nice ride," Dixon said as she stepped out of the Prius at a trail entrance in Druid Hill Park, where she announced a series of events tied to Baltimore's Green Week, which kicks off Friday.

Alex Gibney's Oscar-nominated Taxi to the Dark Side sheds welcome, if not comforting, light on the half-truths that have surrounded the United States' treatment of Afghan and Iraqi prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other military installations throughout the world. It is, at once, among the most riveting and hard-to-watch documentaries of recent years. Gibney's 2005 Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room laid bare the festering wound that is corporate greed and hubris in 21st-century America.