Hasta La Ideas

photo by Nicole Nadeau

photo by longest august

Mid-lower-Manhattan-blackout, I need to relocate my two dogs and I to somewhere with electricity and internet, so I can continue to earn a living. I didn’t know who would and wouldn’t have power and did not pre-plan a fallback location. But now I remember I’ve got a buddy staying at his boss’ townhouse in the east 60s, within the powered zone. It’s a longshot that they’ll allow dogs, but he’s the closest place I can walk to while towing two dogs, carrying my computer and lugging my own food & water.

But I won’t walk up there unannounced; because I failed to work out contingencies in advance, I’d better ask before showing up. I can’t call him, obviously, so I put rain gear on and head outside to make the 2.5-hour roundtrip.

What I see outside makes me change my mind about walking. The amount of damaged trees, huge branches in the street, collapsed awnings, and generally heavy things sitting in places they oughtn’t, makes me think a long walk would be dumb. There are a lot of once-securely-mounted things on the average city block that can fall on you, and I don’t want to be killed proving the law of gravity.

A second, more surprising thing I see that also makes me change my mind: there are tons of people outside—and taxis. It’s not easy getting one, but ten minutes later I’m in a yellow Crown Vic headed uptown.

As we reach the 30s I see people on the sidewalk talking on cell phones, so I pull mine out and switch it on. Service! I call my buddy, and during our brief, choppy call, he apologetically tells me we can’t be accommodated. Ah well. I have the cab turn around.

The most amazing thing I saw on that cab ride was this: No traffic lights were working below the 30s. And traffic, both pedestrian and vehicular, moved through those latter parts of the city flawlessly. Admittedly it wasn’t a rush-hour level of traffic, but even still I’d have expected lots of near-misses, stymied pedestrians who couldn’t cross, honking horns and curses. But there was none of that. My driver slowed at each intersection to look around, as did every other driver. Pedestrians watched cars going in the same direction as them, and crossed intersections when those cars crossed. We never sat still for more than a few seconds and it never seemed even remotely dangerous.

At just two major intersections we went through (23rd & 3rd and Delancey & Bowery) were there foot police directing traffic. Every other block worked flawlessly with no signals, just quick negotiating glances between drivers and pedestrians. I have more to say about this at the bottom of this entry.

Another thing that struck me was the amount of people, mostly tourist-looking, standing outside of closed subway stations and looking confused. They’d peer past the tape blocking the entrance, as if hoping to see something informative at the bottom of the stairs. I guess those without access to news would have no way of knowing the entire subway system had been shut off; I only knew because it had been mentioned in the radio broadcast.

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