A medallion garage in Long Island City at the five o'clock shift change: roll up doors open to the low sun, a fan of numbered dispatch bays, a cab on the lift, the dispatcher in a glass booth under the radio mast, the works hung one to a bay and along the medallion wall.
Electric cabs first ran on New York streets in 1894, followed in 1907 by 600 French built gasoline cabs painted red and green. In 1937 Mayor LaGuardia introduced the medallion system and hack licenses, in 1967 a state law made every cab yellow, and in 1971 the Taxi and Limousine Commission replaced the NYPD Hack Bureau. Rising Manhattan rents in the 1970s and 80s pushed the fleet garages to Long Island City, near Midtown, both airports and the expressways. Drivers there work 12 hour shifts that change near five o'clock.
Source · Brownstoner ↗
The corrugated roll up doors, the fan of yellow bay lines on an oil stained floor, hanging bay numbers, yellow cabs with their roof lights blinking, the hydraulic lift, tire stacks, the dispatch booth and its antenna, the Manhattan skyline at the end of the street across the river. Mood: five o'clock shift change. Everything is procedural geometry with painted surfaces; nothing is a scan or a photograph. The room is an interpretation, and it hangs the New Yorkers the census recorded at this place first.