WALL STREET TOM 1964-2006

Wall street Tom was a typical macho good looking Italian dude who grew up in Brooklyn. He moved to the DC area from New York during the late eighties after his firm assigned him to work as a salesman/broker to one of their branch offices in town. He did very well until he got greedy and tried to get involved with some Nigerian con men. When he kept the communication open with the Nigerians even after his boss alerted him not to, the firm canned him. Not only that he got fired he also lost his privilege to trade for other people in the U.S and to this day we don't know what exactly those motherfucken Nigerians did but we get the idea.

After few different and frustrating gigs in sales he found himself behind a steering wheel of a taxi cab. Like most cab drivers he started hacking temporally until something comes up, but 99% of the time that "something" doesn't materialize and like the rest of us he ended up falling in love with his cab. You see, cab driving is like prostitution it's hard to get away from it, the freedom and cash money every day is addictive like drug and that's why you see a lot of over qualified people for the job description turn in to career cab drivers. Besides all this Tom was too ashamed and proud to go back home to New York and start working with his father in the family business. His father didn't know that his son was a cabbie in DC until about six years ago when he came here to visit Tom in the hospital after an emergency surgery, his father was angry at him not because he was a cab driver but due to the fact that he was lying for all those years, but the good thing was his relationship with his dad improved after that visit.

I owe Tom a lot, besides being a great friend he is one of those people who changed my life for the better. During the hay days of the tech stock boom he gave me a sound advice in some strong financial moves which made my life smoother and stress free, he always helped us turn the pennies we make driving cabs in to a few dollars by spreading his "always up to date" knowledge about the financial markets. The sad thing is like Pastor Joe have said, the last five years was absolutely positive for Tom finance wise, especially the last year or so he wasn't much of a cab driver because he was doing so well trading for himself he really didn't have to bust his ass hacking and a few month ago he bought a newly built house in Ashburn VA and he was telling us something funny that his neighbours weren't too excited to see his cab in his drive way every day destroying their image, it's like "what the fuck is this cab driver doing in our lovely neighbourhood!"

Let me leave you with this funny story about Tom. Tom was a sweet talking ladies man and couple of years ago he was fucking around with a woman who is married to a guy who is a lawyer for the Department of Justice. They met about a couple of times a month during her lunch break at Tom's old condo on Massachusetts avenue for about a year and finaly she got pregnant(not by Tom) and they stopped seeing each other. During the affair we made a friend of a friend make a crank phone call pretending to be the woman's angry husband who found out about the affair and coming to kill him. Tom was shaking in his boots while he was talking to the guy and he said in one of his classiest and funniest nervous tone "...Sir I swear to you on my life! We are just friends! I am a homosexual man and all we do is eat and talk about stocks!"

Tom, I am not going to judge you on what you have done to yourself because I am fucking confused right now but I know it's going to be depressing looking at that empty chair during poker nights. This coming Saturday Mr Hook and the whole crew are going to your favorite bar in DuPont and will get shit faced and exchange old "Wall street Tom" stories, even Ali Two Fingers is coming out of his drinking retirement for this occasion and please give us a sign to let us know that you are looking down and enjoying the party! a flying Vodka bottle will be nice.

Rest in peace and like you always say CIAO.

Don't forget the homeless.

Mad Cabbie.