The Wingmen Driving Service, introduced to the world by redbankgreen back in June, is the subject of a ‘Talk of the Town’ piece in this week’s New Yorker magazine.
The business, started by four college-aged Rumson men not old enough to buy beer, is a kind of tag-team taxi service that gets revelers who’ve had one too many pops home in their own cars.
Writer Ben McGrath follows the Wingmen through one night of operation, beginning with a 10:25p pickup of a tipsy commuter coming off the SeaStreak ferry in Atlantic Highlands.
This being the New Yorker, with its anthropological bent, the piece includes this sentence:
You can learn a lot about the social dynamics of a community from driving its drunks home in their own automobiles.
And juicy detail:
While [Wingman Vince] Falcetano endured a lecture from his customer about American hegemony (“The dollar fucking runs the world”), his friends recalled memorable clientele, such as the group of young mothers who requested a 3 A.M. pit stop at a greasy spoon and boasted of their various liaisons over cheese fries. [Colin] Keany had recently driven a semi-comatose woman who asked, “Can I get out of the car?” (They were moving at the time.) His only directions had been to “make a left at the giant wooden tooth,” which baffled him until he saw a dentist’s office nearby. Her fiancé met them at the curb and slung her over his shoulder.
The giant wooden tooth! Who can be the first reader to identify the location? If you know the woman who had to be slung over the shoulder, though, please keep it to yourself.
