On College Street, a cabbie, already double-parked, uses the imminent approach of a streetcar as an excuse to pull a u-turn, thus momentarily leaving him parked across the tracks.

The streetcar is forced to a halt. The cabbie, who had a wary but victorious gleam in his eye, then completed his u-turn and sped eastward.

"Wow, you were pretty calm," I told the operator when I got off at my stop. "Most operators curse when cabbies pull stuff like that."

He laughed and said: "I was cursing in my mind!"