Friday Cab Roundup

Yeehaw.  Today’s edition is brought you by Kat Miner photography, who is quite the fan of cab name speculation.

Camey Cab.  I’m wholly unfamiliar with the term or name “Camey,” other than that it is of celtic origin. So far as i can tell on the Internet Camey is an elementary school in Texas, a model in the Virgin Islands, an article of clothing, a record label, and the name of the aptly named entertainer Cab Calloway’s first grandson. Now, that’s all fine and well, but just in case you thought Camey Cab had nothing to do with east Africa, this creepy picture came up too when I searched for Camey, as did a map of Balli Camey, which appears to be a town in Mudug region of Somalia. I’m pretty sure the cab driver isn’t Irish, as all the Irish in San Diego work in bars.  Since a large proportion of the cab drivers are from East Africa, I’m hazarding a guess that Camey Cab’s driver hails from Balli Camey, Somalia. No word on whether Cartman, Ike, Butters, et al. visited Balli Camey during the Fatbeard episode.

Deluxe-1 is a decent sales pitch. If nothing else it differentiates this cab from the cabs with interesting names. Looking for a comfy ride? Deluxe-1 cab 600 is the cab for you. Have no fear, step right up, all comers welcome. With a name like Deluxe-1, surely this cab has a plush, clean interior, a miniature dust devil vacuum cleaner in the trunk, and miniature bottles of water for his customers. It’d be quite the letdown to get in Deluxe-1 Cab and find it’s no different than any other cab. Don’t let me down, Deluxe-1 Cab.

Flow Cab. Who doesn’t want to ride in the Flow Cab? How awesome a name is Flow Cab? If you’ve got to get somewhere, you might as well flow, amirite? You know you’re luck is improving when you hail a cab and it’s Flow Cab. You have to smile the whole time while riding in Flow Cab, even while stuck in traffic. Flow Cab is so cool it doesn’t need a flowmaster to let everyone know it’s arrived, like F-words do. Fortunately, Kat’s high resolution camera was able to capture the Flow Cab in motion, which is the only way to get a photo of it because Flow Cab is too cool to be photographed at a standstill. Oh, you didn’t know? When Flow Cab is parked, or stopped at a red light, Flow disappears – that’s why you’ve never seen Flow Cab before. No, it’s not a hologram. Flow Cab is that cool.

Donbas is the name of a town and industrial region in eastern Ukraine. Donbas’ history and modern identity is complex, as it is located within the Donets basin, which spans three provinces in the Ukraine as well as extending into Russia. Via Wiki:

Donbas may sometimes be referred to a larger supranational region also consisting a part of neighbouring Rostov Oblast in Russia. This is explained by the fact that Donets’ coal basin geographically extends to that area (also specializing in coal mining), which sometimes called a “Russian Donbass”. But lesser economical and, most of all, sociopolitical significance of that Russian area (compared with the Ukrainian part) leads to gradual abandonment of such generic usage of the Donbas term.

In 1676, the first town of the Donbass emerged: Solanoye (now Slavyansk) which was built for the high-profit business of extracting newly-discovered rock-salt reserves. In 1721, vast and rich coal fields were found, which started the “industrial boom” which led to the flourish of the region in 18th–first half of 20th century.

Ukrainian scholar and current Deputy Prime Minister Hrygoriy Nemyria said:

The fact that you came from the Donbas was more important than that you were Russian or Ukrainian; so of course the break-up of the Soviet Union also meant a raising of this regional identity and loyalty… In any case, most people here honestly couldn’t say what they are ethnically, because most families, like mine, are mixed.^[1]

Presumably, Donbas Cab’s driver identifies as much with the “supranational” region of Donbas as (or more) strongly than he identifies with either the Ukraine or Russia. While I don’t know much about Ukranian history, aside from some of the nastier things that occurred there during WWII, such as the 1.5 million Jews the Nazis brutally murdered there, so it’s nice that via Donbas Cab I’ve learned a little bit more. It’s sobering to learn, however, that Stalin’s murderous hand was particularly brutal in Donbas, as Freedom and Terror in the Donbas: A Ukrainian-Russian Borderland, 1870s-1990s by Hiroaki Kuromiya relates:

A little-known former Cossack land, the Donbas remained a haven for fugitives, providing freedom to whoever needed it. As a result, Stalin’s Terror was extraordinarily harsh in the Donbas. Drawing on much new information from formerly closed archives in Ukraine and Russia, the book paints a detailed yet panoramic picture of the tumultuous history of the Donbas and analyzes critical events in modern Ukrainian and Russian history from a regional perspective.

^{I wonder, too, if Donbas Cab’s name originates at least in part from Jacques Sandulesco’s novel Donbas: A True Story of an Escape Across Russia, a true story of the author’s escape from Soviet hell. Read excerpts from chapters 1, 2, and 3, here, and  the diary of Sandulesco’s return to Donbas in 1999. Here’s a customer review from Amazon:}

a Topkapi-esque adventure, about a man’s return to his homeland behind the Iron Curtain after being kidnapped by Russian soldiers as a youth and shipped off to a Soviet slave labor camp, escaping after a mine cave-in crushed his legs, escaping to freedom, working his way West from black marketeer in the Middle East and Europe, to prize fighter in the midwest to nightclub owner in New York. It deals with his friend’s plans to embarass the Russian Government by the very high profile heist of priceless religious icons right from under their noses.

The lead character, Jack, was one of those impossible men, like Indiana Jones, Dirk Pitt, Jack Ryan or James Bond. Who knew that he was for real?

Donbas is his story, the true tale of a 16 year old boy’s decent into the hell of the mines in the Donbas region of the USSR. His torture, his survival, his escape and his life since then is the stuff great movies are made of. So why is Hollywood sitting on their hands on this one?

Read the adventure, then rent movies like “Moscow On The Hudson”, “The Owl And The Pussycat” and “Trading Places”. Watch for a big, burly man with a thick Russian accent and say hello to Jacques.

Domas Cab is a deep name, and I want to meet the driver. I’ll be on the lookout for him.

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