Movie Taxis

I'm not sure why, but for some reason the big budget movies pay for a string of taxicab impersonators to play their role in New York Movies.

Here they were parked along 17th Street in Chelsea waiting for their make up, i.e. the roof lights weren't added to the cabs yet. as we go through the line up we can see the flaws that separate these Crown Victoria's from the real medallion yellow cabs of New York City.

None of the cabs had the extended wheelbase. Currently all Crown Victoria taxis in New York City have longer rear legroom and a longer rear door. This car in particular had a painted side view mirror as well, which is extremely rare on an actual New York City cab. The chrome around the door handles also is a sign that this cab is a little off and needs to study up a bit on it's role.

One big thing is that all these cabs have matching medallion numbers, which is very strange. Perhaps they did this to maintain continuity between cabs so one cab can replace another cab during shots of a single taxi. But still when they need a shot of all the cabs it will look silly, perhaps this problem is too small to notice. Also the cab on the right has a painted side mirror and body colored trim around the rear light.

And these are way off. Medallion yellow cabs in New York City can only be as much as 5 years old. These cars are from the late 90's. We'll stop there. That concludes this geeky post.