Ever Taken A Ride With Her?

New book coming out on August 28 (and Jewess will be happy, I presume). It's called
Hack: How I Stopped Worrying About What to Do with My Life and Started Driving a Yellow Cab and the authoress is Melissa Plaut.

Here's the cover:-



Yes, a Jewish Jewess hack driver.

Plaut decided to become a New York City cabbie after getting laid off from a job as an advertising copywriter, then began posting about her interactions with patrons on a blog that forms the backbone of this memoir.

Here she is behind the wheel:-



Here's a recent excerpt (okay, from June, but I was looking for Jewish content) from her blog:-

Business was pretty steady all night, but I had a long lull when I made a few back-to-back trips to Brooklyn. The first was to Midwood, a suburban-ish neighborhood largely occupied by Orthodox Jews. It was a decent job but it took forever to get there for some reason, so I hustled back to Manhattan as fast as I could. When I finally got over the Brooklyn Bridge, I turned south down Broadway and was immediately hailed by a Hasidic man.

When he got in, he said, "I'm going to Brooklyn, take the tunnel." He was, of course, going to Borough Park, just a few neighborhoods west of Midwood.

Later on, when I talked to my fellow cabbie Allen about this turn of events, he said, "What? You picked up a Hasid?" Allen himself is an Orthodox Jew. "And he went to Borough Park?" When I said yes, he laughed and said, "Well, what did you expect?!"

Again, it took me forever to get back. The BQE was backed up so I decided to take the surface streets instead. Nearly 60 blocks later, in Park Slope, I picked up a passenger. I felt lucky for a second, thinking he was going to the city, but as it turned out, he was only going a short distance, out toward the Brooklyn Museum, a six dollar ride.

More info on her here.

Here she is on her big break at ABC TV news