A few weeks ago I had the most interesting taxi cab encounter since I moved to New York. Now, let me preface this. I’m a curious boy, and I have a habit of Googling, a lot. I Google friends, family, myself, people with name tags on their luggage, people with IDs showing on the subway, and of course, cabbies.

Now, I’d say 90% of cabbies don’t get the pleasure of the Kanter-Google, but when I have, say, someone with a particularly interesting backstory, a female driver, or, ironically the most rare, an American, I go to the smartphone almost immediately.

Often times my search yields nothing more than confirmation of their registered medallion or license on some database. However, a few months ago I reconnected a NJ man to his high school alumni site (he was one of those “missing” people), and ever since then I’ve been Googling more and more (often with nothing more than empty LinkedIn profiles [“Current: driver”] or comments on a blog as the results).

But last month, when I sat in the back seat of Eugene Saloman’s taxi, I had a feeling something would be there. An older gentleman in a nice wool jacket isn’t typically who one finds behind the wheel.

It didn’t take long. Result #1 was Confessions of a New York Taxi Driver on GoodReads, with 50 ratings and reviews. Result #2 was the pre-order on Amazon, and #3 was his blog (going on seven years).

“Confessions of Cab Driver, is this you?”

He shrugs.

Oh, I’m wrong and unquestionably creepy.

“Wait, is it?” I ask.

“Guilty,” he says, and motions to a copy of the book upon the dashboard.

It turns out he got connected to a publisher through a tourist who wandered into his taxi a few years back. They enjoyed the blog and he signed on to be part of the Confessions series, a UK-based book collection now on its third entry. The first two were bestsellers, so things are looking pretty good for Gene.

Meanwhile, he was astonished that I not only looked him up, but that I discovered so much about his writings. He had never even heard of GoodReads, much less that he was getting an average 4/5 stars from a bunch of Brits who had already read the thing.

This isn’t the first bit of attention he’s received, though. When I got home, I found a Village Voice article from a couple years back, as well as an oral history feature.

And here’s a post from the Independent when the book was published last year in the UK (I’d actually recommend the Village Voice article and blog over this).

The blog is very enjoyable, and he was so astonished by our encounter that he’s written a post about it. He also gave me an air freshener which doubles as a promo of the book (we pulled over and chatted after our ride).

He’s been driving since 1977 and has business cards. It’s truly one of those NYC experiences. He is truly NYC. Best of luck Gene.