Since Alan and Mitchell have not blogged about this (Alan quickly mentioned it), I have to write about it.  This was by far one of the funniest and weirdest things that has happened to me in the last few years (since I don’t get out like I used to, this is not saying much - but it was still crazy).

Anyway, a bunch of us blogger people went for Thai food after the blogger gathering at RSA.  After a good time and some good food (and after looking around the restaurant and realizing we were the last group left), we decided to take off.  Alan, Mitchell, Rothman and some others decided to go out for some more fun, but I was just interested in getting some sleep.  So Mitchell, Alan, and I piled into one cab (I was in the front seat - we are all fairly big guys) and told the cab to take Alan and Mitchell to the bar and me to my hotel.

So we were all just BS’ing and talking about how fun the gathering had been.  We came to a stop light, and all of a sudden, the cabbie pulled out a huge wad of credit cards.  Seriously, there must have been at least 50 different credit cards in this stack.  This is suspicious to say the least, and Alan immediately pipes up and asks the cabbie if he had a little identity theft going on.  The cabbie immediately got upset and started hollering at Alan and accusing Alan of asking the question because the cabbie was a black man.

All of us were somewhat stunned, but Alan quickly started verbally defending himself.  The cabbie would hear none of it and became even more upset, telling Alan to think about his comment when he “laid his head on his pillow tonight” (which I think was around 3am for Alan - they partied a little bit that night).  Mitchell also joined in on the defense.  Since I was in the front seat and immediately in the range of the cabbie should he decide to get physical, I just kind of kept my peripheral eye on him and kept quiet for a bit.  But the cabbie kept getting louder and more upset, which just pushed Alan to be even louder (some of his comments made me choke with laughter, but I won’t post them here - they were not racist, BTW).

At this point, I wasn’t sure what was going to happen, and this guy basically had our life in his hands if he decided to go postal.  I tried to get the guy to calm down by telling him that we were information security professionals, and we would have asked the question if the guy was green, but he still would not leave it alone.  He told us that he had a $300 belt and basically explained that he had a lot of money.  I think he was trying to tell us that he didn’t have a need to steal, but I think it really just served to make me more suspicious.

Unfortunately, the bar that Alan and Mitchell were going to was closer than my hotel.  Alan and Mitchell piled out, and I got out so I could get in the back of the cab (I didn’t want to be up front with this guy - don’t ask me why I didn’t find another cab or just walk to the hotel).  As I said my goodbyes to Alan and Mitchell, I thanked Alan for leaving me with a pissed off cabbie.

I guess most of his ire was directed at Alan, because he was OK after he dropped them off.  He continued on his tirade, but it was just more like griping at this point.  I just listened and nodded my head for the rest of the trip (just a couple of minutes), paid the guy when we stopped (yes, I tipped him), and extricated myself from the cab quickly.  I said a prayer of thanks, then went up to my hotel room and went to bed.

So, having posted the story, here are some thoughts I have about it.  First, I really should have thought about getting the guy’s information from his cab license and calling the cops after he dropped us off, but it really never crossed my mind.  I was thinking more about just getting back to my hotel alive.  Second, I believe this guy was either totally legit and those cards were his,  or he was totally stupid.  Honestly, I believe the former is true because he just didn’t strike me as stupid.  Even though he was vociferous in his argument and wouldn’t calm down, he was still speaking intelligently.  However, it WAS stupid to pull out a bunch of credit cards in front of some guys he didn’t know.  So, I will pull out my psychologist hat and give you my take on this act.  I think that the cabbie was VERY proud of the wealth he had accumulated and liked to show it off to his passengers.  And because of that pride, he was very susceptible to defensiveness and perceived Alan’s comment as an insult.  Basically, he was so proud of his wealth and that he had accumulated it honestly that he would take any slightly negative comment as an insult to his character.

But whatever the reasoning behind his defensiveness, I have to say that it made for some fun and crazy memories and some good blogging material.  I can’t wait to get together with the bloggers next year.  But I will think twice about getting into a cab with Alan next time.

http://infosecplace.com/blog/2007/02/14/the-shimel-san-francisco-cabbie-incident/