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| "Hey you, Rickshaw Boy! One More Time Around Central Park." |
If you want to take that romantic horse-drawn open carriage ride in Central Park, you had better do it now. That is unless you do not mind being pulled around by a foulmouthed rickshaw driver.
“Using beasts of burden to do what a man can easily do himself is inhuman,” said a New Yorker who supports the new mayor’s plan to rid the city of horse-drawn carriages.
“I think much of the resistance to replacing the horse-drawn carriage with the rickshaw is due to the misperceived political incorrectness associated with of the word rickshaw,” said a spokesman for the mayor. “After all, it congers up images of Asian stereotypes. That’s why the mayor is going with the word pedicab instead.”
The mayor’s office claims the word pedicab has none of the negative connotations that are associated the word rickshaw.
“And unlike the word rickshaw,” added the mayor’s office. “Because the word pedicab contains the word cab in it, pedicab carries with it only the positive connotations associated with the great taxicab ride experience that every New Yorker is all too familiar with.”
Many New Yorkers expressed their concern that replacing the horse-drawn carriages with rickshaws will change the character of their beloved big city as well.
However, the new mayor does not agree.
“No problem,” said the mayor’s office. “If the people of New York believe using rickshaws instead of horses to drive them around Central Park will change the character of the city, the mayor will simply order the pedicab drivers to wear horse costumes as a part of their job.”
“They won’t be required to wear a full horse costume, of course,” clarified the mayor’s office. “After all we don’t want to confuse people into thinking we’re still using real horses. That would defeat the purpose of the mayor’s ‘Be Humane to Animals’ message he’s trying to send. That's why the pedicab drivers will only be required to wear just the horse’s head portion of the horse costume as their official uniform."
“But don’t worry,” reassured the mayor’s spokesman. “The rear end of the horse costumes will not go to waste. The mayor will find a use for them somewhere at city hall.”
Critics of the mayor say, hold your horses.
“The human-powered hand-pulled carts will have to be specially made,” said a critic. “Most rickshaws are made out of wicker and therefore are currently certified by the department of transportation to carry only one adult or two small children safely.”
“Again, no problem,” said the spokesman for the mayor. “He’ll just order two or more pedicabs to be tied together, making a team. Allowing them to pull more than one passenger at a time.”
Many New Yorkers are accusing the mayor of stealing the idea of using rickshaws from the popular TV sitcom ‘Seinfeld’ from the 1990's.
In an episode of that show, Kramer and Newman contrive to use rickshaws as an alternative form of transportation, hiring the homeless to pull the rickshaws in the city of New York.
“Oh boy,” said the mayor’s spokesman. “Now we got a problem.”
Copyright © 2008-2014 by Robert W. Armijo. All rights reserved.
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