Cabby nightmare: Driving Miss Crazy
The passenger from hell got into a cab in Chinatown at around 2 a.m. Friday and held the driver virtually hostage for more than 10 hours as she ordered him around town in search of a hotel she liked.
Flaunting a wad of $20 bills and lugging 12 bags, Shira Belfer, 62, simply refused to give up the taxi, the stressed-out cabby said.
“We go to the next [hotel], the next one, the next one . . . She’d say, ‘No, this price is too high — make it cheaper,’ ” the driver, Kulvinder Singh Ahluwalia, told The Post.
Ahluwalia, 41, said his nerveracking night began when police officers forced Belfer into his cab after she got booted from a hotel near Allen and Madison streets.
Belfer’s last known address was on East 14th Street, records show. Her bags bore stickers printed with “NYCH + H Bellevue,” referring to Bellevue Hospital.
“A cop pulled me over, and they said that this lady has been kicked out from a hotel. ‘Can you take her to another hotel?’ ” Ahluwalia said.
The cop asked him to take Belfer to the Redford Hotel on 136 Ludlow St., about three blocks away.
“When we get to Redford Hotel, she says that there’s no rooms available for the categories [she] was looking for,” Ahluwalia said.
The hack said he proceeded to drive Belfer to more than 15 more hotels — and even called several online-booking sites — thinking he would be compensated.
But as the morning wore on, “I’m getting bananas because there’s no check-in until 3 in the afternoon,” Ahluwalia said. “She just wanted to sit in my car for free.
“My wife is calling me: ‘Where are you?’ . . . Then I said, ‘That’s it! I cannot take it anymore! I need to call the cops to get you out of this!’ ’’
Ahluwalia said he and Belfer agreed to turn off his meter after a few hours and try to settle on a price for all his time.
“She cut my meter. The meter was $150,’’ the driver recalled. “She said, ‘No, we’re going to make a deal with a flat rate, $30 an hour.’ ”
He said she ended up giving him $230 total, but $115 of it was eaten up by a parking fine he received while waiting for her at one stop.
“For $115, I’ve been all night working for her — 12 hours,” he seethed. “So many people wanted to go to JFK Airport. That’s an $80 [trip]. I couldn’t pick them up. I had a 7 a.m. pickup. I had to refuse it.”
The driver said he called police at around 2 p.m. after pulling over on Seventh Avenue near 22nd Street, and Belfer finally exited his cab.
She then started to hassle the cops, and they threatened to have her committed.
“You know what? I’ve been in the hospital already!’’ yelled Belfer, who said she is a cantor. “I’m totally well . . . I’m being sabotaged.”
Belfer told The Post that she got kicked out of her hotel room late Thursday after she complained about the conditions.
She claimed Ahluwalia put all her stuff “on the street” without warning after a disagreement over the fare.