The front seat is a sea of belongings, including the daily newspapers and a clipboard where he constantly jots down personal notes and the day’s to-do list. He leans his right elbow on several grapefruit-size balls he has made from rubber bands people have given him during his daily circuit of social pit stops in Manhattan. He keeps hard candy in his pockets and a box of dog biscuits in the trunk, for dispensing.
Mr. Locascio sits on a stack of four mats and cushions, and on Monday he wore faded brown slacks and a ripped flannel shirt, as if dressed for a 1970s New York movie.
He dropped a British businesswoman at Bryant Park and slipped the tip she handed him into a wad of bills in his shirt pocket.
Mr. Locascio said that after high school, he worked in construction for his father, a Sicilian immigrant, and then did a stint as a buildings inspector in the city. He lost the job and began driving a yellow cab in the early 1960s.
“I could see I was stuck in the racket,” he said, so in 1968 he bought a medallion for $25,500.
Mr. Locascio said a broker recently told him that medallions now sell for around $1 million and implored him to sell.
“I told him, ‘Listen, I’ll retire when you retire,’ ” Mr. Locascio said.
“So I’m not lying when I say I wouldn’t trade the job for a million bucks.”
