(3 of 12)
JAMIE OWENS
British taxi driver
A driver was only slightly exaggerating when he said "Your gorgeous daughter could be coming home from a party drunk and naked, and would get home safely in a black cab." Taxi riders anywhere else in the world know that these London trademarks offer such consistent excellence that you curse them only when you can't find one on a rainy night.
Like the 21,000 other men (and approximately 220 women) who hold the green badge of a London cabbie, Jamie Owens had to slave for it: 21 months on a moped acquiring "The Knowledge" — a detailed mental map of the 25,000 streets within 10 km of Charing Cross, plus major routes farther out. For the last 10 years he has been his own boss. "The beauty of the job is that if you want to take a day off, you don't have to ask anybody, except maybe your bank manager. If you have a lot of bills you've got unlimited overtime." He has never been robbed. He says he has "become a good instant judge of character" and has learned to "let a drunk walk up to the cab while watching in the mirror" to see if he's beyond the pale. Sometimes Owens makes $60 an hour, sometimes $6.
His traditional cab, a 1997 Fairway model (only two manufacturers remain), with chrome bumpers and a walnut dashboard, prompts couples to hire him for weddings. But he also totes an electronic organizer to download e-mail via his mobile phone, by which he monitors bookings arriving on his website www.london-taxi.co.uk. He started it as a hobby but it now gets 200,000 hits a month. A hot topic on its drivers' forum is the city's plan to regulate the 40,000 unlicensed cabs that siphon off an estimated 70 million fares annually.
Would Owens advise his own 10-year-old daughter to follow in his footsteps? "I'd prefer her to do something else — but sure. It's a good life."
—J.F.O. McALLISTER