New York City Shines During the Blackout
The smell of smoke, as if something is burning, is the first odd thing I notice on the afternoon of Thursday, Aug. 14.
I am sitting with a friend, enjoying a late, lazy lunch at a popular gay and lesbian café in New York City's Greenwich Village, when the acrid smell starts wafting through the room. My lunch date and I are so engrossed in our conversation that it takes us a good half an hour or so before we feel just how warm the restaurant has become.
I hasten the waitress to bring us our check. She's the one who delivers the news. She tells us the electricity is out 'everywhere. We don't know yet that 'everywhere' includes parts of Canada and eight Northeastern states.
It isn't until we step onto the street that I get a sense of just how big a deal the electricity outage might be. The normally languid streets of the Village are throbbing with pedestrians. People are everywhere.
The two of us walk to Christopher Street, where shopkeepers stand in the open doorways of darkened stores. People have already started forming long lines at convenience stores, to snatch up what is left of cold beverages and fast food.
In front of one shop, a small huddle of people gathers around a transistor radio, listening to the news. We paused to join them, and immediately a young gay man with bleach blond hair and a necklace of rainbow beads blurts out what is in the back of everyone's minds. 'It isn't a terrorist attack!'
The announcer echoes the guarantee, but warns that the subways and trains are all shut down. He cajoles listeners not to flock to Penn Station or Grand Central and further clog the already inoperable transportation systems. His advice: start walking home.
It is just after 5 p.m., and the sun is still strong and hot. The lack of electricity hasn't yet translated into a lack of light, and I don't feel the need to hurry. On the contrary, I want to linger, to take the temperature of the city during this crisis.
Despite the assurances that the situation is not terrorist-related, this is a city whose wounds are still fresh. People might still panic, and mistrust one another and turn on each other. Would the city once again be plundered and looted, like it was back in 1977? Would the once-infamously dangerous streets of New York City once again turn violent when everything went pitch black?
And what about food and water? I pop into a convenience store, and grab two bottles of still-cold water. Amazingly, the long lines are orderly, and people are even friendly.
I start walking down Christopher, to the renovated piers. A woman literally hurls herself in front of a cab. The driver rolls insists there be at least four passengers, each to pay $50 for a ride. 'Get his medallion number!' several passers-by yell. 'He can't do that, it's illegal!' But it's also supply and demand, and happening all over.
The packed park looks almost like gay pride day, with so many men running about pumped and shirtless. The people who populate the park, including large numbers of gay men and lesbians, seem happy for an excuse to take the afternoon off. There is, of course, a lot of cruising going on. But there is a larger sense of camaraderie, too.
All of us, I am sure, are thinking about the last time a crisis pushed tens of thousands into New York's streets. There is an odd sense of relief, knowing that this crisis is not of the same horrible magnitude. But there is determination, too—as if we share an unspoken pact, a quiet agreement that we will not let our city spiral into tragedy.
As night falls, I begin my long trek home, what will turn out to be a three hour and 15 minute walk into the borough of Queens. It is dark now, but the city, far from being pitch black, seems to me illuminated in a way I have rarely seen.
I come across people barbequing on the sidewalk, and literally singing in the streets. It's like one block party after another. Entrepreneurs with small generators sell ice-cold waters and sodas from makeshift stalls on the street corners. The Mr. Softee ice cream trucks boast lines half-an hour long in some places. And civilian volunteers with nothing but glow sticks direct traffic.
But most of all, people on the streets are talking to each other in an unguarded way that New Yorkers rarely experience. Somewhere near Bryant Park, a young, lanky gay man and I start a conversation. We walk 20 blocks together, before our paths part ways. In that time, I learn how he moved here from small town America to be an artist, the troubles he had with his ex-boyfriend, that he lives in a tiny apartment on 109th Street, and how he hopes he won't have to go to work in the morning.
As I cross over the 59th Street Bridge, I pause and look behind me. The view from the bridge is one of the best of the city skyline, and many films, television shows and photographs use it as a vantage point. I stare at the shadowy big buildings normally bathed in electricity, now dark. On this night, they seem to absolutely glow.
