8/15/03 DAY AFTER THE BLACKOUT OF 2003:







I woke up at 6:00am, after about 5 hours of sticky sleep. It was Brian's cell phone, set as an alarm clock, that woke us up, to find the power still out. So, Brian decided that he would sleep in. I sat up for what felt like an hour, waiting for a more acceptable time to try making land-line phone calls again. Around 7:00am, I called my mother, and finally got through. We spoke for about an hour, as she also made first contact with my brother (at a friend's house in Roslyn). We compared notes, and she was glad to hear that I was all right, and not stuck in a subway or elevator.


After talking with her, I decided that I had to try getting to Circle Line. I had been booked to work a 2:00pm "special" boat today. I had no way of knowing whether or not Circle Line would be running, or even if they had power. So, at about 8:00am, I decided to get downtown to my apartment, get my uniform, and get up to Circle Line on New York Water Taxi.


In the above photo, this is what I first saw, immediately upon leaving Brian's apartment. Across the street, people were lining up to use a pay phone. I don't think I've ever seen a line for a payphone in the post-cellular age. So, this caught me off guard, and I took a photo from across the street.




When I got to 7th Avenue South and West 4th Street, I waited for a downtown M20 bus, bound for Battery Park City. I figured that Battery Park City was close enough to walk to my apartment from the bus. Nobody was at the bus stop when I got there, but people soon began to collect all around me. So, I had obviously just missed a bus. One gentleman asked me how long I was waiting, and I said, "about 7 minutes." He told me he didn't know if he had to get to work or not, because he couldn't get in touch with his office. So, he said he was going anyway, just in case, and that he works near Wall Street. In the above photo, as you can see, the traffic lights were the most visible reminder of the lack of power. That and the fact that crossing 7th Avenue South involved taking your life into your hands. At one point, while we were waiting, a woman, from a third story window, yelled out to the street, "What time is it?!!!" And two or three gentleman simultaneously called out the time. I've not seen that happen before either.




An M20 pulled up about 15 minutes after I started waiting. It was PACKED to the gills. I let everyone else get on. I figured that because I wasn't in a rush, I would wait for the next one, and hope that it was running light, right behind this one. The gentleman heading to Wall Street also stayed put.

While waiting for the second bus, out in the beautiful less-muggy morning air, the gentleman waiting with me got a cell phone call through, for the first time, and was told that he didn't need to go to work today. He smiled, and walked off, wishing me luck.




The second bus came 11 minutes later, and was also packed. So, I pushed my way in. The subways were still not running, of course, and so, this single bus was trying the handle the load of many 10-car subway trains on multiple lines that would have been making this trip in the past 11 minutes. It remained civil on the bus. Strangers made more smalltalk than usual about the blackout. And as people got off in the back, and others got on in the front, I slowly got closer and closer to the back of the bus. I got off on West Thames Street, and walked to Rector. No lights.




While walking, I was behind a woman who was holding a large orange flashlight. People walking around with flashlights in New York City!




Also on my walk, I stopped to appreciate the building behind mine. It's being called 90 Washington Street. As they gut the interior, and turn this old office building into residential, they are replacing the windows from the top down. Just doing that will make this a more attractive looking building.




When I got to my front door, I found a little party occurring just outside. Someone had brought some chairs out front, and people, including a few maintenance men, were hanging out.




Here's Finnegan with his owner, also out front. Being the building's unofficial mascot, Finnegan made this sidewalk party complete.




Isaiah was on duty, and he had been since last night with no sleep. He was in charge of making sure that the building stayed in one piece. I figured that when the power goes out, you don't have to do any maintenance. Isaiah told me some amazing things about this building that proved me dead wrong:

88 Greenwich Street (formerly 19 Rector Street) is built on top of a natural underground stream!!! Water from this underground stream comes into the basement of the building!!!

Now... many buildings have their sewage collect in a tank ("pit") in their basement, and then they pump the sewage UP to the sewer. Our basement works this way. When you flush a toilet, it goes into the pit, and then, when the pit fills up, a pump "flushes" the sewage up into the sewer. The pump is needed because the pit is deeper than the sewer.

When the power went out, the water pumps, for the building's water supply, stopped pumping. Within a couple of hours, the reserve water in the tower on top of the roof, ran out, and the building was without water. No more water, no more sewage. So... what's the problem? No sewage, nothing to pump out of the "pit." Right? Wrong.

Because this building has a stream running into it, and because it just flows into the "pit," the level in the pit is always rising, whether the power is on or not. So.... Isaiah had to use the gas-powered pump, to occasionally empty the pit, and avoid an.... accident. [The pit overflows and the basement becomes smelly and disgusting.] But... Isaiah only had so much gasoline on hand, so he was trying to use the pump as little as possible to combat the stream. And he had been doing this all night. It was now 9:00am, and he was getting sleepy.





I hung out outside for a few minutes, and then decided to begin my ascent. To get my uniform, I needed to climb the 10 stories in the pitch black, only armed with my little flashlight on my keychain. Surprisingly, I passed a whole bunch of people in the stairwell. I got my uniform on, made sure everything was in order, grabbed some cash, and headed back down. On my way down, some people were passing me, going up, in the absolute blackness, without flashlights. They were feeling their way up. One guy asked me, "what floor is this one coming up? I lost count." I told him. "5." He said, "Thanks." I wished him luck and headed down.


At the bottom, I found Isaiah, finally passed out, on the couch in the lobby. I took a photo. The flash didn't wake him. He may or may not kill me for this one:






I walked out, now in my uniform, towards the ferries in Battery Park City. I was so happy to be in uniform, finally. It automatically gives you the ability to take charge, and it gives people the idea to come to you first if they need help. And, usually, in New York, I know what they are inquiring about. It made it easier for me to stop traffic for people (and myself) when crossing the street (like West Street.) And it has the odd effect of making me feel a little more in control when still nothing is working.

I got to Circle Line using a free pass on the New York Water Taxi. It was an excellent ride, and the boat had the first air conditioning I had felt in almost a day. It pulls up right next to the Circle Line Pier at 43rd Street. I clocked in, and I went to Market Diner for breakfast. It was TOTALLY PACKED. And the wait staff was running around like chickens with their heads cut off. I found the only bar stool left in the place. I got my order in a reasonable amount of time and without any mistakes. I was so impressed, I left $15 on a $4 bill.


I got back to Circle Line and had loads of time to kill before my 2:00pm boat. I read a bunch of the book my mother gave me for my birthday two days ago. It's about the history of various interesting NYC buildings. I grabbed it when I got my uniform.




During this down time, the engineer on boat #8 opened a hatch on the deck, and invited me to climb down with him to take a look at how the toilet system works on a Circle Line Boat.




He says the key to the whole operation is "reclamation." In other words, there is only so much clean water on the boat. After a certain number of people flush the toilets on the boat, the dirty water is siphoned off from the raw sewage, and sent back to the toilets. So, as people use the bathrooms on the boat, the water in the toilets gets dirtier and dirtier. Airplanes often use this technique as well. He was quite proud. And now I know not to drink out of the toilet bowl on a boat. EVER. Just in case I ever wanted to try it.




I was told to come in to do the "2:00pm Special." I was told that the passengers would consist entirely of members of a local community group who would board for free. I imagined what they would be like, and the above photo is what I imagined. But these people showed up for the 1:30pm boat.




This is what I got instead. 31 teenaged orphans from a local church group. Mostly black and Latino. Mostly very tired, and most of them took naps on the 3-hour tour. [We did the route of a 2-hour tour very slowly, so it took 3-hours. Even I got bored.]



I had a wired microphone, so I was stuck to the front of the inner cabin. There were only 31 passengers. It was almost a farce.




So, during a break, I made myself a tourist, and took a photo of the skyline in the distance. It was a beautiful day.




I took long intermissions, and at one point, went to hang out in the pilothouse with the captain.




After the trip, I got a sandwich and waited around for my Harborlights (7:00pm 2-hour tour). I found my captain and an engineer from the #11, playing chess. The captain (on the left) lost, and shelled out $6. It was an exciting game, too. I'm glad to see this kind of stuff amongst the crew in between shifts. It gives me the sense that I'm looking at remnants of the family-feeling that was probably more prevalent at Circle Line when it was a mom and pop operation. Now it's owned by some large Swedish conglomerate... But some of that still exists.




At the end of the day, I was looking forward to getting home to electricity and taking a shower. I was pretty sure, from what people were telling me, that my building had regained power during the day. I got on the M42 bus, with the intention of taking the M20 downtown from Times Square in lieu of the still-stagnant subway trains. I was so happy to see Times Square all lit up, something that I definitely take for granted... even turn my nose up to sometimes... that I took a photo.




Once again, the bus was totally packed. I shoved my way in, and within a few stops of re-shuffling people, I got a seat. And then, at about 34th street, the driver seemed to go insane. He started skipping bus stops all over the place, and at each stop, people who had been waiting for what looked like a long while, waved their arms and made pissed off gestures as we passed. Essentially I was living a NYC bus dream: The driver decided to go express for no apparent reason, only making the stops that the #1 train makes underground [the M20 bus makes about 3 times more stops than the subway underneath]. So there we are, flying downtown for the benefit of me, and those who needed to take the bus for its entire length, leaving all sorts of people in the dust along the way. It was magical. I felt bad for those people, but this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. This was making up for all the times I have been rushing, wishing that the bus would somehow go faster, just for me. And when we got downtown, the driver came on the speakers: "Ladies and Gentlemen. The front cover of newspapers in Germany this morning say 'America in Chaos.' Well, tonight we showed them, we are not in Chaos!" And of course, to this, he got a round of applause from the passengers off of whose commutes he just shaved 10 to 20 minutes. He went on, "In other parts of the world, when a blackout happens, everyone goes home. Here in New York, we turn it into a big party!" Another round of applause. What a bus ride.




I went back to my apartment. Going into the elevator made me hesitate for just a moment. What if the power goes out? But, I sucked it up, and went upstairs. I turned on the faucet, resulting in a fit of spurting water, as the air pockets worked their way our of my pipes. The final spurt was accompanied by a vomit brown belch which made me nauseous. But.... no hot water. No shower. So, I continued on to Erin's place, by bike, in my sweat, and hung out with them for a few hours before coming back and finally getting to my own bed in Air Conditioning. What a pair of days. In the above photo, Aaron demonstrates the book light he used to get around in the dark. He climbed the 23 stories to his new apartment in the dark during the blackout. Mike supposedly got stuck in the subway, but I have yet to hear that story.