taxis, DVDs

The transactions cost of inflation thing I learned about in ECO 101 is playing out in my arguing with taxi drivers over costs. A relatively cheap mode of transportation in Tehran is shared taxis (buses are the cheapest) that drive fixed routes. The drivers slow down for people standing by the side of the road to shout their destination; if the drivers are going that way they stop.* However, all the fixed prices I remember from last year have gone up, but not in any consistent way: eg Valiasr to Haft-e Tir has gone from 250 Tomans (~25 US cents) to 300, but Vanak to a park whose name I forget (south of Tajrish) has gone from 400 to 600. So if I try for exact change I give to little and incur drivers' wrath, so I just end up giving fresh 1000T everywhere and am collecting a wad of dirty torn small bills.

While I'm complaining, I was very disappointed by selection of DVD's in Enghelab Square yesterday. They used to have all the new releases in professional-looking plastic sleeves, but this time around when I asked about foreign DVDs (they generally keep them in a back room--although they have lots of new release foreign VCD's out on display, they're all edited for explicit content) at each shop the young gelled-haired guy would look around suspiciously before taking them out of some hidden location and in one case took me out to stand beside some motorcycles semi-sheltered from view to take a look at the selection. The newest Terminator and Star Trek were the only new releases I saw, the rest were oldish B-movies that had probably gone unsold for a long time, and as usual the soft-core porn was at the bottom of the pile. A couple guys looked me over and then told me they didn't have any. Maybe it's the combination of my foreign accent and the hezbollahi beard I've been cultivating, but that never bothered anyone in the past.

My favorite destination for artsy DVDs doesn't seem to be in business either, though a guy who'd set out his wares on the street had some good selection. He was so delighted with me for choosing Fellini over Ali Larter that he gave me his business card (which has a picture of Marlon Brando and a well-designed imitation of the Godfather movie's puppeteer logo) and told me you could burns any classics for me I wanted on demand.

* My first time in Tehran, once I figured out the basics of hailing shared taxis, I noticed that whenever someone called 'mostaghim' (which I now know means 'straight ahead') the driver would except them. So I thought there must be some big Mostaghim Square that was a central collection point for all taxis, and spent far too long squinting at my tiny-font Persian map looking for it.