Back in 2013, husband-and-wife duo Shannon and Philip Kirkman came out with a novel project that saw the birth of the NYC Taxi Drivers calendar.
Sadly, the 2020 edition will mark the last time the hilarious and sexy calendar will see print but they decided to pull out all the stops in honor of that.
Watch to find out more about this calendar below.
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Video credit: Rumble
This coming year, some of the most ridiculous yet funny photos will be published, featuring old and new faces alike.
Talking to the New York Post, Philip, the creative director, said, “Creatively, we feel like we took it to its limit. The idea of keeping it fresh has always been a top priority. It’s important for us to go out on a high note.”
A portion of the proceeds for the debut edition of the calendar went to University Settlement, one of the oldest settlement houses in America with more than 40,000 people.
“As we learned more and more about the drivers and industry (90% of drivers are immigrants), partnering with University Settlement was a perfect fit as they were the first U.S. immigrant settlement house (1886) and continue to provide services to immigrants and working individuals and families today,” Philip said.
The calendar has already donated nearly $70,000 to the charity and the latest edition will be no different.
For the 2020 edition, the calendar’s theme will show cab drivers performing “sexy” everyday activities, such as measuring a taxi’s tires or having a sponge squeezed over a driver’s head.
“First, we thought of ideas surrounding what drivers could do with their cabs (e.g. washing the cab, talking on an old car phone, getting tangled up in the receipt roll),” Philip told Gothamist. “And then we pulled from cliché and pop culture (e.g. Sadi with the phone book a la strongman contests, Sajjad measuring the size of his rims). And lastly, we’ve always had an element of randomness in there as well — like Dorothy’s composite image.”
In addition, 10 of the 12 drivers featured are immigrants coming from eight different countries.
Women drivers such as Dorothy Leconte and Arminda Cuervo will also be represented.
Philip praised Cuervo, saying she “has such a great spirit and personality… She originally came to the U.S. in 1963 from Colombia as a single mother, worked a few odd jobs for about 10 years to keep her family afloat, and then took up taxi driving in the 1970s.”
Philip added that sometimes, Cuervo, who has been working as a cab driver for nearly 40 years, takes her cab “all the way to Florida to see her family.”
It all ties in with the Kirkmans’ desire to showcase different kinds of people.
“Our goal has always been to make it fun and to portray the drivers in a positive light,” Philip explained. “I think a large reason the calendar resonated with people was due to the juxtaposition between the negative stereotypes that have been thrust on taxi drivers over the years and the calendar’s imagery, which highlights the drivers as they truly are: nice, fun, interesting people.”
But for them, the best part of the project was getting to know the different cab drivers personally.
“We learn their stories and have grown close to some of them,” Philip told the Post.
Replaced!