If you weren’t at Desert Generator , you missed out.
, you missed out. By the time I pulled my rented Indian Roadmaster up to Pappy and Harriet’s out in Pioneertown, a couple hundred vans had already shown up — so many that a significant percentage of the Pioneertown parking ended up being used as an overflow area. The vanners came from as far away as Calgary to show off their meticulously restored and upgraded rides. There were murals, carpeted interiors, lava lamps, and outrageous candy-color paint schemes as far as the eye could see.
There were also a remarkable number of very fine-looking women, contrary to some predictions on the part of the B&B. Don’t believe me? You can see for yourself. Bonus points to anybody who can find me in there, as well. It was a good time, made even better for me by my decision to duck out of some of the louder parts of the concert to grab a filet at the Ruth’s Chris in Palm Desert.
Since this is The Truth About Cars, I won’t bore you with a panegyric to the mighty force of motorcycling nature known as the Indian Roadmaster. Instead, I’ll talk about the three Uber trips I took this weekend. Together, they paint an interesting picture of the “gig economy” and the future of mobility.
Trip #1: Uber Select From LAX To Redondo Beach.
Starting in January, Uber can now pick up fares from LAX. But there’s a catch: they have to pick you up from “Departures” on the second level. As you’d expect, there are all sorts of Uber drivers, in all the various categories, milling around right outside the airport waiting for a call. For my trip to my hotel in Redondo Beach, I chose Uber Select. Two reasons for that: I didn’t feel like squeezing into a Prius C, and I’d never tried the “Select” variant of Uber.
When the app told me to look for a Lexus ES, I was briefly annoyed. “What’s the point of paying double the fare,” I griped to my date, “if I have to ride in some fucked-up old ES300?” But I was wrong. Comitas, the driver, had a brand-new hybrid ES. The ride was pleasant and reasonably quick; I don’t think Comitas is ever going to win the Wayne Gerdes Award for doing 47 miles per hour on the freeway while school buses full of children swerve around you and burst into flames. The “energy meter” on the dashboard wasn’t in “Charging” very often. I find it fascinating that the hybrid ES, by default, offers much less information to the driver about what the Synergy Drive is doing than the Prius does.
Total cost of the ride was about what I’d have paid for a taxi.
Pluses: The ES was quiet and smooth and brand-new. Comitas was rapid but sane behind the wheel.
Minuses: Far more expensive than UberX.
Trip #2: UberX from Redondo Beach to Eaglerider La Cienega
It’s always a bad sign when the little headshot of your Uber driver looks like it was taken in a Juarez prison at the conclusion of a prison riot. But it’s worse when the Uber app is too stupid to understand where you truly are. It placed my pickup point about half a mile from the hotel lobby where I was sitting. Luckily, after some stilted conversation on the phone, Carlos realized where I was and made his way over to me. It took nearly 35 minutes from the time I called for a ride to the moment when his battered 12-year-old Tahoe arrived in the circular drive outside the hotel.
The photo didn’t lie: Carlos was a frightening-looking dude. His Tahoe was an utter and complete piece of shit. He also had a singular disregard for lane discipline, signaling before turning, or any other of the finer points of road usage. But he was a nice guy and he was very kind to my female companion, who was suffering from a little jet lag and a general headache. I gave Carlos five stars, even though it definitely wasn’t a five-star ride, because I felt bad for him. There’s no way that driving a Tahoe for UberX works out financially. I assume he’s doing it short-term because he really needs the money. The five-star rating was a way of trying to give him a hand up.
Pluses: cheaper than the same ride down in a Lexus.
Minuses : took forever, feared for my life.
Trip #3: UberX from Eaglerider to LAX
My rental Indian Roadmaster and I put 437 miles under our wheels in just 23 hours, which included an overnight in an Airstream and a brief stop at the Luftgekuhltevent in downtown LA the following morning. I was really sorry to see it go. Have I mentioned how much I enjoyed the Roadmaster? It will do 90 mph in light rain like it ain’t no thing. And you can even ride it on dirt roads. Kinda. Be prepared to hold the 900-pound bike up with one leg or another with very short notice when the front end slides out.
My total satisfaction with Eaglerider has just one little exception: even though the La Cienega location is the “airport Eaglerider,” there’s no airport shuttle. Enter Uber driver #3. This was a fellow after my own heart: a 32-year-old Asian car enthusiast driving — wait for it — a stick-shift Jetta GLI.
We talked about all sorts of stuff during the short drive: his experiences owning an S2000 and a couple of tuned-up Civic Si coupes, his favorite sports cars, his opinion of Motor Trend’ s YouTube channel. He was a really nice guy and I think he’s just driving Uber for kicks on the weekend. He said he’s going to keep his 2012 GLI until it dies. He’s already replaced the turbo once, but as a VW fanatic he’s not overly bothered by this fact.
Pluses: fast, cheap, very pleasant.
Minuses: none.
Overall, I was pleased with my Los Angeles Uber experience. Compared to a taxi, two of the three rides were manifestly cleaner and more pleasant. All three trips together cost about half as much as I’d have paid to rent even the cheapest car and park it at the hotel overnight. With that said, of course my experience was pleasant: I was the customer . We live in the “gig economy” now. The corporation is king, the customer is pampered, and the employee is expected to simultaneously display tireless loyalty to his employer and expect nothing in return but the abject terror of knowing that he is disposable, replaceable, and valueless. Uber makes the predatory medallion-holders of New York City’s taxi kakistocracy look like benevolent philosopher kings. After all, taxi drivers don’t have to maintain their own cars. And you can tip them easily. And they can’t be fired on a whim if they get two four-out-of-five-star ratings in a single day.
Uber is a new kind of predatory capitalism in which the capitalists don’t even own the capital, but they still manage to get all of the profit. I feel genuinely bad for using the service. I have to believe that there’s a way to open-source the Uber concept, to create the equivalent of Craigslist for Uber rides and have the vast majority of the funds to go the drivers themselves. I’ll have to work on that as soon as I do all the other things on my very long to-do list. In the meantime, if you’re interested in getting a unique and intelligent perspective on the life of an Uber driver, I’d suggest you check out Up In The Valley.
I’d also suggest you check out the Indian Roadmaster. Have I mentioned it yet?
[Image: Top, Jason Tester Guerrilla Futures/Flickr]