There Is An Airbnb Listing For People That Want To Sleep In An Old New York Taxi Cab
NY Times- It may have a great view of Manhattan, but this vacation rental sits in parking spaces in Long Island City, Queens, and has no bathroom. And it has a bit of that old car smell. Still, Jonathan Powley’s listing on Airbnb does have its perks. The views really are fantastic, and at $39 a night ($49 on Fridays and Saturdays), visitors to New York City would be hard pressed to find a cheaper accommodation. The rental, though, is actually a decommissioned yellow cab with a bed in the back. “People spend anniversaries in there,” Mr. Powley, who lives in Long Island City, said. “It’s very romantic.”
Mr. Powley said the taxi and the motor homes he had previously listed on the vacation rental website were in demand. The taxi was booked for most nights that he made it available, he said, and it had attracted visitors from as far as Singapore and as near as Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn. The price is the primary appeal of the taxi, some guests said, because even low-end hotels in the city can cost hundreds of dollars a night. Mr. Powley’s offering represents a cheap refuge, however unusual, for the cash-conscious traveler. “It’s fun to be able to say that you slept in a cab,” Tabitha Akins, 29, a former guest, said. “On purpose anyway.”
The back seats of the former taxi, a 2002 Honda Odyssey minivan, were replaced with a full-size mattress covered with black and yellow sheets. For each reservation, a yellow tray is outfitted with yellow mugs, yellow roses and bananas — “because they’re yellow,” Mr. Powley said.
I don’t care how poor you are or how long your commute is, sleeping in an old NYC taxi cab is for fucking lunatics. Sleeping in regular Airbnbs and hotels are gross enough. At least there you know you are likely just sleeping on some dried up splooge. But in an old taxi, you are probably sleeping on dried up splooge AS WELL AS in a place where thousands of people puked, farted, and did a ton of other weird shit since yellow cabs are the wild West of transporation. I will take the soul crushing 2.5 hour commute home over sleeping in one of those death traps that reek of goat every single time. Sure the views are great, but there’s no bathroom. Actually let me preface that. I guarantee during its driving days, somebody used the car as a bathroom. But now, pissing inside is probably severely frowned upon.
And how about people that had their anniversary night in the car? Nothing says “I cherish your companionship” like a sleeping in an old Honda Odyssey yellow cab. Just kidding. Nothing says “I am an asshole hipster that likes to be different” or “I want to murder you with no witnesses around because being married to you has driven me insane” like sleeping together in an old Honda Odyssey yellow cab.