Hack dissed me for white gal
NO FARE FOR a black man.
Comedy writer Travon Free was holding his latest Emmy and a garment bag on the Upper West Side early Friday when a racist hack refused to pick him up in favor of a white woman standing 10 feet behind him, he told the Daily News.
The former “Daily Show” staffer said the driver clearly saw him on the corner of W. 89th St. and West End Ave. around 7:30 a.m. as Free was rushing to Kennedy Airport for a flight to Los Angeles.
“He had to go around me to get to her. It was extremely blatant,” Free told The News.
“If a black man can’t get a cab holding a brand new Emmy, nice luggage and a tuxedo, then I might as well invest in some new walking shoes,” Free said. “It’s quite embarrassing.”
Free, 32, said he took down the driver’s medallion number and reported it to the Taxi & Limousine Commission.
He also called the cabbie out on Twitter.
“Standing in the street holding this and a cab driver looked at me, drove past and picked up a white lady 10 ft behind me,” he wrote. “Amazing.”
Mayor de Blasio quickly retweeted the post and confirmed a probe was underway.
“Refusing service is illegal. This incident is under investigation. Call @NYC311 if this happens to you,” de Blasio wrote.
“I’m glad they’re (investigating), and I think we should all be better at reporting this behavior,” Free said. “I would like to see this guy prosecuted and have to face the same level of embarrassment I felt standing in front of a group of kids watching me get very blatantly passed up by a cab.”
Free now writes for “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee” and received his latest Emmy for his work on Bee’s “Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner” special.
It was the second Emmy win for the bi-coastal scribe, and he brought his latest trophy to New York in recent days thinking he wanted to keep one Emmy at his Upper West Side apartment and the other back home in Compton, Calif.
He later learned he needed to pose with both trophies back in Los Angeles for a story about his career, hence the statue’s return trip.
Free said the sad truth is that he’s ignored by cabs on a near weekly basis.
He said last year, a white couple refused to get in one of the offending cabs and gave him the medallion number to file a report. The driver wound up pleading guilty, he said.
“You missed out because I’m a great tipper,” Free said of the driver he encountered Friday, who appeared to be Asian. “Also stop being racist. I can see your medallion number, idiot. No one wants to be on the record as having done something racist, except guys with tiki torches.”