New York Taxi Receipt

Should it be done in the sounds of New York tradition - do you make the Noo Yawk Act - the violent vote that belongs to the mythical picture of the cigar-wielding, quarrelsome cabinet? At the time the vote was launched on 1 June, the taxi and limousine commission gave the production and installation of the recording messages to the large taxi meter stores serving the cabins.

It was the committee that determined what should be said -- "Please keep in mind to take all your things when you leave this taxi and please get a receipt from the driver" -- but not how it should be said. Having been ripped and rebuked, the taxi and limousine committee agreed to record a new record with a singular vote.

They will soon be choosing from a small number of accent-free voice-over pros who have voluntarily signed up. However, the ruling has not dampened a discussion - with boulevard columns, Ivy League lingoists and, of course, taxi drivers all throwing in their two cent - that is at the core of New York's corporate identities.

A major taximeter and other electronics company, Pulsar Technology Systems in Queens, commissioned its Victoria Drakoulis clerk to do the voice-over. In " All in the Family ", her singing makes the figures seem as if they had been studying Henry Higgins Diktion. Currently, Mrs. Drakoulis's most frequently voiced message is the loudest one, coming from loudspeakers and roaring into about 2,000 cabs when the taxi drivers turn off the instrument.

" A 28-year-old movie assistent and Upper West Sider, Doug Hall, whose own vocal style reveals his deep ties to the South, reacts differently: "That' New York, not Disneyland, so why not try to make it as New York as possible? I' d want a Bostonian accent in my cab.

A linguist who chairs Columbia University's Division of Intercultural and Trans-cultural studies, Clifford Hill said he favored a less prominent emphasis for reasons of practice and philosophy. For non-English speakers, the default language is much more understandable, and the New York Accent is not the same. "There' so many different touches that are at home in New York.

So why should a working class emphasis be the one that represents New York City in an formal statement? A different firm, Metrometer Shop in Queens, had their cabs made in Israel, and when the voice output of a locally recorded audio was found to be bad, they asked the producer to find an American there to make them new.

Proprietor of the forth Queens-based American Taximeters and Communications firm, American Taximeters and Communications, conducted a series of tests on his client's vote before engaging the cute, but not regionalized, 26-year-old Julie Teets, a hostess in Winchester, Va, in a vote. Anthony Martinez, one of the American taximeters, had a boyfriend at the Virginia Corporation and recalled the receptionist's name.

" A few travelers ask why New York cabs need the memory at all. Mitchell L. Moss, executive of the Taub Urban Research Center at New York University, said the taxi and limousine committee should focus its energy on more serious issues. " Believe it or not, we didn't install the sound recall to tease people," said Brice Peyre, a spokesperson for the comission.

In a recent poll of 12,000 travellers, 65 per cent agreed with the plan. Retiring committee chair Christopher R. Lynn, who backs the notion of a professional-sounding vote, said the brochure about vox diverted New York from the larger game. While Michael Higgins, who edits Taxi Talk, a specialist paper, named the memoir the verbal counterpart to "Chinese aquatic torture," suggested the use of David Letterman, Jackie Mason and others to have "10 to 15 rotary votes.

" Returning to Queens, Miss Drakoulis has shaken off the turmoil over her 15-minute taxitawk glory. "All I' m wondering is where that new vote came from," she said. "Cause if it ain' not from New York, it ain't gonna work."