Pedicab driving is a job for
shisters. That much became clear to Rocks Off after just a 10-minute conversation with a driver. And during our two-hour ride along with Houston bike cabs working the Taylor Swift concert and downtown's hotspots, a certain phrase kept playing in our head: Rick Ross'
"Every Day I'm Hustlin'".
The story idea came to us last week at the
Jimmy Buffett concert when we ran into two separate pedicab companies taking drunken Parrotheads back to their cars after the show. One driver, David, told us he often works the Gay Pride Parade in the Montrose. Another driver, David, said he rents his cab for $90 and can take home all the tips he makes. He expected to make about $250 on the night of the Buffett show.
We thought it might be fun to look at a night in the life of a pedicab driver in such a pedestrian-averse, bike-unfriendly, car-loving city like the Petro Metro. Little did we know what we were getting into.
David, the driver at the Buffett show, made such a good impression on us with his politeness that we decided to call the company he works for,
Space City Bike Cab. Within moments of explaining to company owner Travis Stowers our idea for the story, we were assailed with complaints about the bike-cab business in Houston.
"I own 44 pedicabs," he said. "We
invented pedicabs in Houston." Indeed, Space City Bike Cab's Web site says they own the largest fleet of state-of-the-art 21-speed bike cabs in Houston.
But Stowers didn't want to talk for long. Instead, he directed me to Nate Lubke, his business partner, who continued the complaints about other bike cab businesses operating downtown.
Among Lubke's chief complaints: Drivers who operate unsafe vehicles, drivers who are thugs, those who take advantage of intoxicated passengers to increase their nightly wages, and unsafe drivers, including one dropped and dragged a lady by her face and still had the nerve to charge her fare.
Lubke's complaints are scary, but they aren't as bad as other pedicab horror stories from across the country. Last summer in Brooklyn,
four people were hurt in a bike cab crash, and in Seattle in 2008
a 60-year-old pedicab passenger died when the bike collided with a van. In 2007, a pedicab driver in California was
charged with felony drunken driving after an accident that injured another pedicab driver and four passengers.
Nothing that dramatic has happened in Houston. Not yet, Lubke says, but it will.
SEXUAL GODS ON WHEELS
Rocks Off was to meet with Lubke and some other drivers outside House of Blues Tuesday night at 6 p.m. When we arrived, we flagged down a driver on a bike cab with House of Blues ads on the back -- Space City Bike Cab has an exclusive advertising contract with the restaurant and music venue.
We asked for Nate, and the driver, who had a tattoo sleeve down his right arm, offered to give Rocks Off a ride to find him. Only after we were in the cab did we realize the cyclist was an amputee. His left leg, working as deftly on the pedals as the right, was a steel prosthesis, the top half of which was covered in designs not unlike his arm tattoos.
As we rounded the corner we met up with Lubke, and Rocks Off switched cabs. Lubke is 40 years old and cocky, with buzzed, greying hair, a football player's build and a mouth that never stops. He offered to give us a sunset tour of downtown while explaining the history of pedicabs in Houston.
"We started the business here in Houston, my roommate and I," he said. Lubke moved to Texas in 2003 from San Diego, where he had worked as a bike cab driver for six years.
"I was a waiter," he said, "and I took a pedicab, and the driver had a flip-flop tan. I said 'You must be doing pretty good if you've got a flip-flop tan.'" The driver told Lubke he made more than enough money in tips to live on, and after that Lubke was sold. "In San Diego, we were like gods. You had all these mid- to late-20s guys running around town on bikes, picking up chicks from bars. My first night, I took home two chicks."
His boss in California landed an advertisement deal with Bud Light for the 2004 Super Bowl, and sent a delegation of pedicab drivers to Houston to serve Reliant Stadium. But the glory of the job didn't carry over into Texas.
"We called it Survivor Houston. We had nine guys that came here from San Diego. Every week one guy would say 'Fuck this, I'm going home.' It was just a whole different animal."
