I Heart Electricty Hey there folks- 9:12pm Causing people to cheer and holler out their windows, power just returned to my current location (25th Street and 8th Avenue) about ten minutes ago. Amid both the general community friendliness that marks New York and the price gouging done by markets and restaraunts as food supplies dwindled (I managed to snag some chicken from Chez Brigitte downtown, but most restaraunts are just serving drinks and chips) everyone seemed to survive the blackout fairly well. Personally, I think Bloomberg should turn off the power to the city one day every week as a cost cutting measure to save the budget. We can call it "Frontier Fridays" and we'll all learn a useful colonial skill. Me- I'll be dipping candles in my quaker boots. As you can tell, I'm a little punchy. I was in Flatbush, Brooklyn when the power went out and managed to snag a bus to Burrough Hall, which for those outside NYC, is downtown Brooklyn. From there, I walked with a classmate of mine across the Brooklyn Bridge, fighting the overwhelming tide of people coming out of Manhattan. They flooded not only the pedestrian walkways, but the roads as well, forcing automobiles to park fifty feet above the East River. Other exciting things to note about the blackout: - For probably the only time ever, you could see the stars (the literal kind, that is) above Manhattan. - Deli owners are the unsung heroes of our time. While most stores closed up and refused to open, the deli owners kept us all alive on potato chips and increasingly warm water and juice. Bringing us a taste of their homelands, New Yorkers wandered through the candle-lit delis and stood in lines that looked more like something you'd see in Communist China than in the 212. - I really wanted to go looting, but nobody would join me. Losers. - For the first twelve hours, having no power is a beautiful transcendentalist experience, where you can really ruminate on the state of Nature, both within yourself and in the world. After that, you start to want to hit people. So- while we still have no subway, no perishable food, and the smell of uncollected garbage piling up is wafting through the streets, I'm happily staring at this most remarkable new novelty of the modern age: the lightbulb. P.S.- If anyone needs anything to do, reads this soon and is in the Chelsea area- give me a call. We're gonna make it a Julianne Moore movie night and screen Safe and Vanya on 42nd Street on the kinetiscope!

posted by Japhy at 8/15/2003 06:33:00 PM || #