VizThink NYC: Your mission is to find this cabbie :)

(via mikehudack:mattlehrer:leitch:)

My cab driver coming back from LaGuardia this afternoon handed me a clipboard and a pen and said, “Will you draw me a painting?” I am quite obviously not a skilled artist, but I obliged.

His name is Fabio Peralta, and he asks everyone in his taxi to “paint” when they get in. (I am not the first person to write about him.) He has been driving a cab for 41 years, but the picture requests have only been going on for 3 1/2 years. He said he was inspired by then-Presidential candidate Barack Obama, who made him feel like “I could be and do whatever I wanted.” He has collected 35,000 “paintings” — he refers to them exclusively as “paintings” — and he sells a book of his favorites to riders for “whatever you think it’s worth.” I gave him 10 bucks, though it was clearly worth a lot more. I hope you are lucky enough to hail him down someday.