Last night I took a Lyft from Obo to my house, and the Lyft (yes I stopped using Uber) driver said, wait for it, "you are my first ride". Last time I took an Uber from my house to Obo (I don't like the food at all, but others I dine with do, and South had a line last night that looked to be about a half hour, although I wish we had just waited in it), the Uber driver said I was his first ride and proceeded to take a series of jawdropping moves, culminating in an illegal U-turn right in front, and when I got out of the car a woman outside said, "what was that damned fool up to?" Last night the guy was whiteknuckling it, literally sweating, and pulling moves like stopping at green lights on a turn. I was trying to reassure him that it's just a grid system. He was from Arden area, so I'm not sure why he was so stressed! Anyway, being an Uber or Lyft driver obviously sucks because people seem to try it out for a couple of days and then quit.
I'm hopefully going to Art Street Friday? I don't really know what it is. I thought it was actually a street. Is it a fake street? Not a street at all?
Aww man, Hawker Fare in Oakland is closing??? That is one of my favorite places. Scott got sick after we ate there, but since there were four in our party and we all ate the same thing it must not have been from there. I figured he would have a bad association and not want to go back. I'm gonna have to find a way to eat there one more time. I loved how they always had Faction pale on, which is great with their spicy salty fare.
I've never Uber'd, but I used Lyft once to get a ride to the Nissan dealer to pick up my car from the shop. The driver was a state employee by day and Lyft driver by night. She had put 60,000 miles on a brand-new car in nine months. During the day, her sister was a full-time Lyft driver, too. AND an Uber driver also. So the car was basically a double-time-and-a-half jitney service.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, she was nice and a very careful and conscientious driver, but even with all of her experience, she didn't understand that using Hwy 160 to get to Arden-Arcade would be more sensible at 5:30pm than using Business 80 even though I got picked up on the corner of J and 18th. She seemed reluctant to trust my recommendation.
I had read enough by then to realize that Lyft was basically Target to Uber's Wal-Mart, so I deleted Lyft a couple days later.
It's ridiculous that both companies talk about how they formed with the goal of solving traffic problems in mind, but all they've done in terms of traffic is put more cars on the street.
Cars that slow down traffic because they don't know where they are going! The big change for me with using ride share services in Sac is that I am now lazy about riding my bike. When I'm out of town, ride share services allow me to drink at dinner (or lunch) and not have to figure out who is going to be the DD, and also eliminates the stress of driving and parking in unfamiliar situations. I use them a lot.
ReplyDeleteI have had some terrible Uber drivers. Ones that didn't know how to follow GPS directions (turning way too early), ones that ran stop signs, ones that made super dangerous freeway lane changes and one driver had never been to the airport before. How in the world? I have heard that Uber has a really appealing sign up bonus and so I think that lures a lot of people in that just want the money but don't care about being good at basic driving.
ReplyDeleteI just read Carla Meyer's review of Chando's Cantina. I had issue with her opinion of the "chicarrones." First, I don't think she had real pork chicharrones, I think she had duros (duritos/wagon wheels). I have never heard of duros being called chicharrones before, so maybe it's a regional thing. But she described them as bland. Everyone who gets duros knows that they are just a vehicle for hot sauce, salt and lime. And just the fact that she ate them and maybe thought they were bland pork chicharrones? She has some home work to do on mexican foods, which isn't hard to do here.
NL
Thats, true! I thought that same thing, because CR and I got duros (I didn't know that's what they were called) comped when we were there waiting forrrevvar for our food. Carla Meyer needs to do a deep dive into South Sac, Arden area, etc. for sure. Her tastes run upscale, which is fine but then the Bee should have someone else on the "$25 and under" beat, like the NYT has (or had).
ReplyDeleteScott and I had an uber driver try to take us to SMF arrivals because we were "arriving at the airport". It was kind of charming, but she also was a terrible driver and had never been to the airport before.
I will always crack up at that arrival comment. Saddest UBER driver I've ever had.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Chando's Cantina was not a great experience for me either time I've been. They call those things Chicarrones, but they were definitely wagon wheels. They brought us a bottle of hot sauce, but no lime (even though it says on the menu...I guess we should've asked.) Also both times I went they brought us silverware and napkins AFTER the meals, and the first time the dude gave us shit because "it's a cantina - you're supposed to eat with your hands!" Both times we went was within a week of them opening, so I guess I gotta give them some slack. I'm mostly just bummed because it's right by my office and just popping in and ordering a burrito to go isn't an option.
ReplyDelete