Lyft been doing this since last year too. In Chicago our group of 5 was told to have our two men seated in the back row because the driver wasn’t comfortable with men. We were confused but the driver knew the ride was requested by a woman in our group and therefore assumed the whole group for the Lyft XL would be women I guess?

All of these vehicles can be reported for illegal parking on NYC311. It’s a bit of a pain to do but from what I’ve heard they’re acting on reports much faster than they used to lately.

Depending on how you use your phone this concern may not be as big as you think, flip phones spend the vast majority of time with the screen closed and protected. My partner got a 2024 Razr and has been using it daily for 1.5yr without any scratches or other screen related issues (there’s some expected slowness from the clunky MTK processor of course). I was skeptical of the durability at the time but for $450 with an 18mo warranty including accidental damage figured it was worth the risk. The technology is much more mature than I realized.