A Fox 5 cameraman happened to be shooting footage near the Ed Sullivan Theater yesterday for a segment on taxi medallions when an angry brawl exploded between a pedicab driver and a cabbie. It starts when the pedicab driver, fed up with the hack honking his horn behind him, tosses a cup of coffee at the cab's passenger-side window. You gonna take that cabbie? Not in New York! Check it out:
Fox 5 reporter Reid Lamberty and a photographer from Entertainment Tonight, who was covering the David Letterman sextortion story outside the theater, eventually pried the two apart. It doesn't look like any blood was spilled, but then the pedicab driver, who comes off as the loser in this bout, goes all WWE, picking up a metal garbage can and [SPOILER!] heaving it at the hack. He misses, and then escapes by pedaling off into the sunset, first against traffic and then on the sidewalk, naturally.
You do hate to see violence, but on the other hand, this is so quintessentially New York that we can't help but smile like Burt Lancaster in Sweet Smell of Success: "I love this dirty town."
