The ##

What is a gypsy cab? Is it a real company (in New York City or anywhere)?

As a hypothesis I will take the standard definition (lowercase ‘g,’ lowercase ‘c’) to be:

-noun
a taxicab that is licensed only to pick up passengers on call by telephone, but that often illegally seeks passengers on the street.
Dictionary.com

Now, let’s look at other places the phrase, lowercase or capitalized, appears in recent pop culture to ‘test our hypothesis’ (#scientific method):

blogs.lexpress.fr

Of the manifestations that I care to discuss today, the first to appear chronologically (both culturally and personally) is Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums (2001). As per Anderson’s distaste for any sort of product placement, he will create fictional brands to feature in his movies. Gypsy Cab Co. is apparently one of them. As you may guess from the name and definition, the company’s cars in the film are almost comically beaten-up - any iconic yellow paint faded and rusted to a metallic beige or silver. Could Royal be taking a legit, or even better-painted cab to and from the mansion he once owned? At least in the beginning of the movie - yes. But there’s something hobo-authentic (a future ## post) here.

The phrase also appears in Jay Z’s “Empire State of Mind” ft. Alicia Keys. The line is:

“Yellow cab, Gypsy Cab, Dollar Cab, holla back”

Hmmm, I thought. Yellow Cab and Dollar Cab (if they are indeed proper nouns) sound like real cab companies (dollar cab also seems to be a synonym to gypsy cab as defined by Dictionary.com, but seeing as the name doesn’t imply illegality as explicitly as the corporate name “Gypsy Cab” apparently would, it’s all cool). But Gypsy Cab? Probs not. And indeed a Google search (which will be explored in a minute) yielded no companies by that name.

Which brings us to our only ‘relevant’ (i.e. less than a blog week old) portion of this long-winded post - ESM Pt. 2. “[G]ypsy [c]ab” is also referred to in a song released yesterday by Alicia Keys called “Empire State of Mind Pt. 2 (Broken Down)” (NOT ft. Jay Z - there’s already speculation that the two will reunite for a finalized version of Pt. 2 to appear on Keys’ forthcoming album, due out 12.13.09).

Hail a gypsy cab, takes me down from Harlem to the Brooklyn Bridge.

Keys’ song, more aptly referred to simply as “Broken Down,” brings out the sadder, darker, hungrier side of the concrete jungle that Z shows us from behind the windows of his Bentley. Obviously the pace of the song has us walking slowly without purpose down rainy city streets with no where to go. Thus, for the narrator of the song, the gypsy cab is the only option here, and she’s lucky for it. From Harlem to Brooklyn.

Other Google results?

• A World of Warcraft guild(?) called Gypsy Cab Co.
• An “urban cuisine” restaurant (the first of its kind, according to their website) in St. Augustine, Fla.
• A rock/pop band from Boston (13136 profile views)
• Understandrap.com’s take on the Jay Z lyric.

Conclusion: gypsy cabs are technically cabs that are not licensed to pick you up off the street but they’re cool to patronize when you have enough money to travel by other modes because they’re cheap and risky - like shooting dice in an alley or faking a terminal illness to win back your family.

(I can’t post about #The Royal Tenenbaums without including this beautiful scene:)