BLACKOUT REPORT
Long-time readers will remember Tama Starr's 9/11 reports. Here's her report on the blackout:
On Thursday afternoon when the computers popped off and the lights dimmed -- brownout! -- I said: No prob, I'll walk home. Then I said: Wait a minute, what'll I do when I get there? I live on the 68th floor. Think I'll stay at the office.
In minutes the place emptied out as everyone ran for their cars, arranged rides, hit the trail. A century ago thousands of people walked to and from work over the East River bridges, but they don't now. Only Bob Jackowitz, who lives way out on Long Island via the LIRR, and I were left.
The emergency lights blinked on, and I stopped cursing the architect for forcing us to install so many. Our office is a renovated townhouse, so we'd have sleeping quarters, breakfast food, even hot water. Our humble altitude, only four stories, runs the plumbing on city water pressure: no pumps.
We stingily kept the doors and windows shut to preserve the conditioned air. At dark we went out. Restaurants were closed but the Chippery, a sandwich bar around the corner, was open, twinkling with candlelight like a Byzantine chapel. Everyone was ordering salad "with everything" to make Salad Man's life easier. The woman behind me on line noticed the candles were guttering down and told the owner, working behind the counter, that she'd run home and fetch more. "That's neighborly," I remarked. "Yeah, they cost $65 apiece," she said. Kidding.
Bob and I took our salads to Madison Square Park where we could watch the crowds hustling by on Broadway. Nine at night and not many cars, but hundreds of pedestrians. We couldn't figure out why they were all walking so purposefully. Where did they have to go?
The intersection of Broadway, Fifth Avenue, and 23rd Street held a hint of techno-rave. Lots of people carried glo-sticks: not very illuminative, but festive. Faces were lit blue by cell phones. Red emergency flares writhed on the ground, replenished by the ubiquitous police cadets, dipping into the trunk of a cruiser.
We walked down to Union Square. On the corner of 22nd Street and Broadway, Mr. Softee in his garishly-lit truck provided an oasis of icy brightness. Dozens of people perched nearby on the planters and stoops, enjoying their creamy treats, until the last of even the peanut-butter mocha ripple crunch was gone, at around ten.
Small groups of people sat in battered chairs in office-building doorways, iluminated by glowing cigarette-ends like fireflies, each cluster a cluster of sound: laughter, conversation, the tinny rattle of AM news. People shared warmish six-packs, baggies of grapes, DVD movies on laptops. This party went on for miles.
The missing electricity provided a glimpse into a previous century, especially in this old part of town. Windows glowed brownish with candlelight, voices preceded their owners out of the gloom. Cornices and parapets were silhouetted against the sky--and beyond them, to everyone's amazement, stars!
But it wasn't truly dark. This is still a city. Headlights add up, and emergency lights. Some lobbies and windowed stairwells remained lit, and a few focal points like the observatory deck of the Empire State Building. So the sky still reflected light; you could have seen us from space. Also spoiling the old-world illusion was the noise: buses, helicopters, sirens, generators apparently hooked up to nothing. And voices: the blended, helium-filled sound of mass celebration, blocks away.
We weren't really bereft of electricity. We can't be, ever again. We swim in that excited juice. Within the sea of electromagnetic radiation made perceptible by our radios and TVs, we carry our flashlights and cell phones; the cars creeping along the darkened streets like wary whales are globular masses of shimmying electrons.
Back at our office but reluctant to go inside, we lounged on the stoop like people did in pre-air-conditioning days. A group of girls joined us, laughing at the self-important antics of the neighborhood dogs, who were all, unnecessarily, on high alert.
As were the TV people. Unbelievably snarky. On someone's little portable we watched the blow-dried talking heads turning themselves upside down trying to capture some negative waves. "There's no looting -- yet," they announced lugubriously. "But with the night growing ever darker...." They found one woman worrying about her mother in surgery, another willing to complain about the heat, the inconvenience, the lack of authorities "taking charge." But everybody was taking charge. Tiny acts of heroism, like people looking out for the elderlies and disabled, people handing out water, restaurateurs offering free snacks with half-price drinks.
Continuing the theme of pre-a/c times, we decided to sleep on the roof, where there was a whiff of breeze. Bob set up the deck chairs and we settled down facing the Met Life Tower, where the clock was stuck at 4:20. "If it says anything other than 4:20 when we wake up, we'll know the power is back on," Bob said. But it wasn't.
Friday no one showed up at the office, but Jimmy opened the factory. The sign hangers with their truck-mounted equipment installed billboards; the glass room made neon, since the gas lines were working; service electricians went to Times Square to shut off the timeclocks. Even the tourists might not appreciate all the signs' turning on at once if the demand surge re-blew the fuses.
But despite their good example, it was hard to get much done. It was too disorienting. The missing appliances are like phantom limbs. Just below the conscious level, one keeps reaching for the switches. "It's hot...the a/c's not working...why don't I just turn on the fan?" "Coffeemaker's not working...maybe some tea...how about that electric kettle?" "Can't use the computer...I'll just turn on the light and read."
Our auto-pilots aren't sure what's not working either. Does my money still work? (Yes, but not the plastic.) Does anybody on the next block speak English? Is my husband, wherever he is, still the one I married? (I bet with all that revelry last night and the downed commuter lines, plenty of people got confused on that one.)
The power came back on at 7:15 P.M., accompanied by hootin and hollerin out in the street. Sweet cool juice! The energizer. Instantly everyone dropped their 19th-century languor. The computers popped back on. Coffee began perking. By 8 P.M. most of the restaurants on the block were open, and the ice cubes were tinkling. It's Friday night and we're back in business!
Tama's company builds the lighted signs in Times Square. It's an old family company, three generations, built on electricity.