a new york moment

while visiting becky in new york this weekend - which, by the way, was awesome - the following situation occurred and i pretty much could not believe it was happening.

the characters: 
me
becky (my sister, who has lived in new york city for five years)
talia (one of my friends from working in oxford this summer who also lives in new york)
the cab driver
random dude who is a jerk

the scene: 
it is saturday night.  becky and i have had dinner with some friends of mine from the summer program i work for, and then we've had a couple drinks at a bar down the street from the restaurant.  it's close to midnight and we're ready to leave.  talia lives just a couple blocks from becky, so we share a cab.

the events:
we find a cab, climb in, and drive several blocks.  there's a lot of traffic, so we're moving slowly in the far right lane.  the man who will soon be known as "random dude who is a jerk" is standing on the side of the road with two female friends and as we creep slowly by he hits the top of the cab two or three times.  my first thought is that the cab driver hadn't turn on his sign that says he's got a passenger (or however they alert people of this - this has always been a mystery to me), and random dude is trying to get the cabbie's attention so that he and his friends can get in.
cab driver freaks out.  he stops the car, unbuckles his seat belt, gets out, and says a lot of cuss words while asking random dude why he ran into his cab.  random dude yells back while the three of us in the backseat are like "ummmm..." and then cab driver gets back in the car while random dude is still yelling at him.  as we are about to pull away, random dude says "your mother attacked the world trade center!" and (middle eastern looking) cab driver yells back "your mother!  your mother!" in the only real life yo mama joke i have ever experienced.  except at the time it is just absurd, not funny.  i say "ignore him! whatever!  let's go!"  cab driver does not ignore him, but reverses the cab really fast and drives backward to the random dude, who is walking away.  becky says, "no!  drive the cab!  drive the cab!  no!  we are getting out and not paying!"  but cab driver man does not care and continues backing, then gets out to yell at the random dude even more.  the three of us in the backseat scurry out and run away and get in another cab.

o.m.g.  discuss.

(note: at no point was this scary...just extremely confrontational, which i hate, and so bizarre - i couldn't believe it was happening.  in no way should random dude have said what he said, but the cab driver also had an extremely short fuse.  but who knows?  maybe he deals with random jerks all the time and has had enough.)