The Tipping Point

A lot like the mystical 'almost made it' nights in college, this story begins and ends in a taxi. Only difference is that I'm comfortable putting this on the internet. Well, that and a lot of other stuff.

Nonetheless, I slide into a cab outside a Sheraton in downtown Oklahoma City around 9. The concierge gives me daps and tells me to have a good trip. I'm not sure if he'd have offered the same friendly wishes if he hadn't been stuffing five of my dollars in his vest. Either way, I'm glad to be purchasing friendliness. I know the alternative, and this goes back a ways.

Despite having worked in the restaurant industry, albeit while still an idiot in high school, I've always been a careless tipper. I used to over-tip, then I under-tipped, then I only tipped certain people, then I didn't tip anybody, then I tipped everybody ... and really only some of that is true, I just thought it flowed nicely. To cut to the chase, I tip people erratically, with no real reason why, and never realized until the weekend before I hit the road this time, when my tipping tipped. (And that is absolutely the appropriate analogy, ask any Malcolm Gladwell reader. Just so happens it makes a nice pun. I would never go out of my way to make a play on words, despite my background in newspapers ...

OK, I would. A few of The Pitt News headlines I wrote that were both great and horrible:

'Orange game has appeal for Pitt' ... and my all-time favorite ... 'UConn't be serious' ... I just bowed to my own standing ovation.)

All right, back to the story. A friend invites me out and we hit up a Lower, Lower East Side dump, to quote SNL's Stefon. I order the first round, which ended up being something like 15 dollars, and thanks to my arbitrary system for tipping, I left the guy a buck. The bartender then ignored us for 15 minutes, finally came back and my buddy ordered the second round, myself happily aloof. The bartender stares at him and says, 'What, so you can leave me another big dollar? The better the tip, the better the service.' Then he walked away, and delivered us our beers in what was assuredly the most awkward/tense exchange of alcohol ever involving no one underage. Add in that the bartender strongly resembled the Kodiak's Skipper Bill on Deadliest Catch, and this made one heck of a tipping point. (Pun City. Population: This guy.)

Days after, I thought about this while I waited for my flight to Dallas to board. If the round was 15 dollars, and I only tipped the guy a buck, that's a 7 percent tip ... rounding up (yeah, I used a calculator. You figure out in your head.) I would consider that an insulting tip to give to a waiter or a waitress, without question. But for some reason, I never tipped bartenders by the same scale. For me, one round of drinks has always equaled a one-buck tip (as opposed to a one-tip buck, which equals a unicorn). Why? It's actually pretty simple, now that I've thought about it. When I first started buying drinks at the bar -- which, by the way, began not one second before 12:00.00 a.m. on June 15, 2008 -- my tips corresponded to the prices of the drinks I was buying at the time. Therefore, I tipped according to the prices set by the shrewd businessmen at Boomerang's and Peter's Pub, the Fortune 500 companies at which I imbibed whilst a senior in college. And when you sell entire pitchers of beer for 5 measly dollars, tipping a buck for a bottle of Yuengling Light makes you freakin' Donny Warbucks. Just so happens Boom's is now a Dunkin' Donuts, and I have yet to make it rain.

The problem, then, was this: Over the years, I failed to adjust my tips according to inflation, and, unknowingly, I became locked in to the one-dollar bartender tip. So no matter where I've been or which light beer I've ordered, the bartender who got it for me received a tip at 2008 Boomerang's prices. And that's how we got here. I can't imagine how many birds have been flipped to my back at this point, but all I needed was a nice insult to the face to wake me up. And who better than a salty crab fisherman to oblige.

Back to Oklahoma. The cab leaves the hotel and cuts into the wind toward the airport, and the driver strikes up a conversation. I tell him I'm flying back to New York, where I live, and he starts asking New York questions I can't answer. First, he asks how much a cab ride in Manhattan costs, both to get into the car and per mile. (It's $2.50 to hop in, and there are an astonishing six metrics to determine the rate charge. Surprisingly, one of them is not 'If you're drunk enough, all cab rides are free.') I just looked that up now, so I had to tell the driver I didn't know. Then he asks how tall the new World Trade Center is going to be, saying he heard one number, 1776 feet, then heard that they changed it. I looked out the window, scratched my head and told him I didn't know. 'But that sounds right,' I said. (It is. 1776 feet.)

He kept on talking. I learned that he grew up in Denver. I told him I lived in Colorado Springs. I learned that his family once planned a trip to Garden of the Gods, but, instead, went to the dog races. I learned that in one calendar year of driving a cab in Oklahoma, this man would not turn a profit. I learned all of those things, and because of our conversation, I learned that there are six different charge rates in a New York City taxi (and that cab rides are NOT free after 2 a.m.) and that the new 1 World Trade Center building going up at Ground Zero, not three miles from where I'm typing this, will rise the same amount of feet as the years it took for our country to form.

As it turns out, there's also a new skyscraper going up in downtown OKC. It's not close to being finished, but it already dominates the cityscape that I'm getting an extra-long look at from the back seat of the cab. We're stopped in front of the Delta gate, waiting for my credit card charge to go through. I would have paid cash, but I spent it all a few nights earlier with a bunch of strangers I now consider my Oklahoma friends. Well, sort of.

I know what you're thinking. It's been too long since I pointed out one of countless parallels between me and George Clooney. So, I'd like to nab one of Clooney's lines from 'Up in the Air' to describe my Friday night in Bricktown: Life is better with company. Just so happened, one of the guys I worked with all year is an Oklahoma guy, lives in Tulsa and was in OKC the same time I was. I asked him to show me around the city's chic, growing entertainment district -- Bricktown (Which, coincidentally, shares its name with the area surrounding the basketball hoop in Ryan Haddad's driveway). So, naturally, he took me to his college buddies' apartment, where I guzzled a beer and pretended to laugh at their inside jokes.

Soon enough, though, the conversation loosened up, and I explained why I was in town, that I'm from Pittsburgh but live in New York, and that they're apartment would cost at least triple in Manhattan what it does in OKC. When we started to head back to Bricktown, one of the guys interrupted one exchange to say, "I feel bad for the guy who lives in Manhattan and is about to head out with us right now." He was only half right.

Just like it is in New York, the nightlife anywhere isn't a passive experience. It sounds dumb saying this, but having a good time, regardless of where, takes effort. In New York, there are so many options and so many people out that you have to try a ton of different spots to find the ones that 1. Let you in; and 2. Bring the best out of you. I've been here eight months, and I'm still at it. It's a noble fight. Conversely, when there aren't as many options, it takes work to keep things fresh, to find new ways to have fun at places where you've already done that bunch of times. I'm familiar with both sides of this battle, and I don't know that I prefer one over the other.

I communicated that as the six of us did the 'We've been walking like we were headed somewhere but weren't really headed anywhere now we've passed pretty much everything and need to stop and make a decision before we end up on the freeway' stop. I know that stop well, very well, in fact, and as the other guys began to get testy, I couldn't help but smile. It was only fitting that we settled on the dueling-pianos bar, which is the exact type of place my crew spent our Last Supper-like night of college. Sure enough, the six of us cracked some jokes, told some stories and had what qualifies as a good time. When I left, I told my buddy that you can enjoy living anywhere as long as you're around good people.

My plane touches down at LaGuardia just after 5, and I never break stride as I pull my bag from the claim belt. I hop in a cab home and roll down the window as the driver pulls onto the highway. I left New York in dense fog. I've returned to pure sunshine and a sky that's a perfect swirl of light orange and blue. The driver and I start BS'ing about the good weather, about traveling and about which route to lower east Manhattan is the best. I say to take whichever he wants.

He blew past some traffic and made the pull up the the Williamsburg Bridge, which connects Manhattan to the neighborhood in Brooklyn, not Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, although it wouldn't surprise me to see some similarities in the dress of those inhabiting both Williamsburgs. Out the window on the right, I see this. And I just stare until the closer buildings block the midtown skyline and eventually yield to streets lined with green trees and teaming with people.

The cabbie and I joke back and forth some more until he pulls up in front of my place and unloads my bag. I tip him 8 dollars.

'Thank you, man, thank you!' he says. 'Enjoy ... summer. Enjoy ... everything!'

I know what you're thinking. What was the point of this story?

If you enjoyed it, then there you go.

If you didn't, don't ask me to write anything ever again. What, so you can leave me another big dollar? Ass.