During a typical night on 6th Street or during South by Southwest, one might overlook, in their drunken stupor, the group of people hanging out on one of the corners with bikes and cabs. These people are pedicabbers and they are there to provide a ride. But unlike taxis, they ride a bike instead of a car.

Nick De Cesare, a pedicabber, graciously gave UWeekly an inside look into his job one Saturday night. During the year, he usually works on Friday and Saturday nights, but during special events such as ACL and SXSW, he’s on his bike a lot longer.

However, his job hardly interferes with his studies at Austin Community College.

“I do all my school work during the week and I do this on weekends,” said De Cesare.

Below is a timeline of a typical shift for De Cesare on the job.

5:00 p.m. Arrives at Dirtnail Pedicab in East Austin.

De Cesare starts his shift by arriving at Dirtnail, one of the few pedicab company in Austin. Here is where the pedicabs are stored, and De Cesare grabs his bike from the garage and attaches his personally-owned pedicab to the bake.

“This is primarily a trailer-based company and that means we supply our own bike. We lease the trailer out for the night,” said De Cesare. “I own my own cab for various reasons, mostly to save on money.”

6:00 p.m. Arrives at first hotel.

It’s still early for people to head downtown for the night, however, De Cesare takes advantage of the dinner rush from the people who are staying in hotels downtown. “For me on a normal night, I usually wait outside the hotels until sundown when the bats fly out from under the Congress Avenue bridge,” said De Cesare.

He typically parks at the Radisson or Four Seasons at Cesar Chavez, because it’s near the bridge. Because the pedicabbers are regulated by the City of Austin, they have designated areas at the businesses on where they can park and wait for customers.

8 p.m. to 10 p.m. Settles at the Warehouse District

After sundown, De Cesare parks around the Warehouse District (West Avenue to Congress Avenue, 6th Street to Cesar Chavez). As the crowds start heading downtown, all the pedicabbers can do it wait.

“On a normal night, around this time I’ve made about $50,” said De Cesare.

When it comes to payment, there are different ways to earn money. Some places are solely based on tips, while some companies settle on a rate. Dirtnail’s rate is $5 per person per block.

“There was one story during SXSW where I was waiting in front of the Austin Music Hall, and one security guards out there asked me if I wanted to take one of his friends over to Fado (Irish Pub). I said sure, I’ll do that. So he said ‘I’ll give you a 20 for that,’ but he goes, ‘Ok, I don’t have my wallet on me, so if you come back, I’ll get you the money.’ So he had his friend come into my cab and I took her to Fado which is a three block ride. She said, ‘Hey I know my friend was going to pay you, but here’s $10.’ And I said ok, cool. Extra $10. Then I went back to the Music Hall to get my money and he goes, ‘Ok, I’m sorry I didn’t have the money for you dude. Tell you what, here’s $50.’ So I got $60 to take somebody three blocks once,” said De Cesare.

10 p.m. to 11 p.m. Hangs out at 6th Street

Around this time, pedicabbers start heading to 6th Street and park at one of the popular corners: 6th and Brazos, 6th and San Jacinto or West 6th Street around the Rio Grande/Nueces area.

“It’s around this time we typically start chatting with one another/hanging out while we wait,” said De Cesare. “Our friendships with one another are usually pretty good because we all have our job to relate to along with several other of our own idiosyncrasies, but we all have a good time.”

Since it’s pretty quiet around this time for pedicab rides, De Cesare typically takes a food break either at The Onion or at Chi-Lantro Korean BBQ Tacos. When asked what is a typical pedicabber’s diet, he immediately answered with “pizza.”

“Because basically it’s the best option... (The Onion is) the most pedicabber-friendly business here. If you’re a pedicabber, you can get a discount. So it’s $2 a slice then. There are a lot of other discounts too depending on what place you go to. Halcyon gives really cheap coffee,” said De Cesare. “The other thing too, whenever we need water, the bars are very helpful to us.”

12 a.m. The crowd is ready to go.

Now patrons are starting to come out from a night of drinking. Naturally, that’s when some of the craziness happens.

“A lot of customers ask us to race and say things like ‘Extra $20 to the winner!’ We get all kinds of people during this time, and just about any scenario you can imagine to happen does happen,” said De Cesare.

“There’s actually some other good stories. I knew this one guy, he said he was riding around one night, and there was this guy basically sitting there with like a stoned or drunk look on his face just sitting on the corner all night. At the end of the night, he asked him, ‘Hey dude, are you ok?’ He goes ‘Could I have a ride somewhere?’ He goes, ‘Yeah ok, just hop in my cab.’ So he took him to where he needed to go. The guy was totally drunk, right? So, he opened his wallet, took out all the money in his wallet and gave it to him. I tell you, it was about $300 tip. He ended up with about $500 that night,” said De Cesare.

2 a.m. “Power Hour” begins.

De Cesare said that 2 a.m. is dubbed the “power hour,” because that’s when the bars close for the night so that’s when most of the money is made as everyone is out trying to head home.

If it’s a special event like Halloween or New Year’s Eve, the hour runs a little longer.

3 a.m. End of the shift

After the shift is over, De Cesare heads back to Dirtnail to store his bike and cab for his next shift. Here is where some of the pedicabbers from his company wind down and hang out.

“We usually like to hang out out there after work,” said De Cesare. Basically we sit, hang out, drink a few beers, eat pizza.”

4:30 a.m. Home

“I get home and I take a very well-deserved shower,” said De Cesare. “I’m usually in bed by 5 a.m.”