Dmitry Samarov doesn’t present a very enticing image of the garage where he leases his Yellow Cab and gets it repaired—or of most of the people who pass through it.
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Samarov has been blogging, tweeting, writing, drawing, and painting for years about his experiences ferrying passengers around the city. But his reputation as a keen observer of humanity’s more peculiar specimens is sure to grow with the October publication of Hack: Stories From a Chicago Cab (University of Chicago Press).
“It’s a strange interaction,” Samarov says. “You’re sort of not a real person to a lot of them. You’re like furniture, you know? So they let themselves go and they do whatever they’re doing as if nobody’s watching or listening.”
But freezing moments is just what he does in Hack. “I’m trying to be as straight as possible about it,” he says. “It’s all part of the human comedy. I don’t think I’m any better than most of them.”
Book release featuring guest readers: Sat 10/1, 4-8 PM, Rainbo Club, 1150 N. Damen, 773-489-5999, dmitrysamarov.com. Free.
