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| View from my window Monday night around 8 p.m. Flag shredded. |
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| Tuesday morning around 10 a.m. "And the flag was still there..." Stars and a couple of stripes remain. |
So I experienced my first hurricane. Though, technically it wasn't a hurricane anymore by the time it got to us. Was downgraded to "Post-Tropical Cyclone Sandy." It was kind of strange because the severity of it didn't register to us until after the fact. I think in the days leading up to it, it didn't even seem like it'd be a big deal. "Oh it's just a Category 1" we thought. When they closed down all the subways at 7 p.m. Sunday night, we thought the government was overreacting. Well, turns out that they reacted appropriately.
Well, if I hadn't turned on the TV or had my eyes glued to the Internet and my Twitter feed the past four days, I probably wouldn't have understood the severity of it either. Luckily, my neighborhood was largely unscathed. It was one of those rare times that it was advantageous to live uptown. The rest of the city (not to mention neighboring states) didn't fare so well.
A rough timeline (including personal) of the past few days:
Saturday: The city was crowded with Halloween-party shoppers. Seemed to be little concern about the upcoming storm. There were rumors that the subway might close at 7 p.m. Sunday. I spent a quiet evening at home doing laundry (which turned out to be a fantastic idea). Went to store to pick up some fruit, bread, milk, and eggs (which also turned out to be a fantastic idea).
Sunday: Spent the whole day indoors. It was cloudy. Wind speeds were picking up. Got a message before noon that school would be closed Monday. Public schools would also be closed Monday. Subways closed at 7 p.m. Still a bunch of sitting around and waiting.
Monday: I woke up in the morning expecting it to be pouring rain. It wasn't. Some light rain off and on throughout the day. Winds picked up more and more as night fell. The flag (pictured above) whipped violently back and forth around the flag pole. Gradually I watched it deteriorate, starting with the edges fraying. Meanwhile, the local news made me feel anxious. Seemed like impending disaster was coming. I hard boiled my eggs. Cooked several dishes of food. Looked for my candles and got my flashlights ready. Filled up pots and pans with water. Made ice cubes and ice packs in case I needed to turn my fridge into a makeshift cooler. Sent several friends the number to my land line (yes, I have a land line). Sat and waited, all day. Then, from about 8-10 p.m. was the height of the storm. I kept the TV on and my eyes glued to the Twitter feed. Photos and videos kept popping up of flooding.
Things seemed calm in my 'hood. I don't know what I was expecting to see outside my window, but I didn't see anything. It was windy, but not the heaviest wind I've ever seen before. It was rainy, but not raining particularly heavy at all. I'm on the 15th floor of a narrow 18-story building. My building creaked and swayed along with the wind. Felt like a rolling earthquake. Or like being on a ship. The window rattled a few times and I worried about it smashing. I got a text from a friend who lives in the Village at 8:35 p.m. Power was out. Said he saw a flash of blue light then the power went out. A couple hours later, his water was out. Everything's fine here, I said. Lights flickered a couple times. But that was it. By 11 p.m. the winds seemed to have died down a bit.
Tuesday: No school, no work. Spent probably all day with my eyes glued to the internet. Got nothing productive done. Tiptoed out once to mail my absentee ballot for the presidential election (wanted to make sure it got there on time since there could be mail delays). Still had enough food. Tuesday night my friend wanted to go for a walk around the neighborhood. Aside from some businesses being closed, and a few fallen branches, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. People were out and about, inside restaurants and bars. Very different from the world 80 blocks south and lower.
Wednesday: It was partly cloudy. And the buses were back in service and running for free. Still no school, no work. We thought it'd be a good idea to ride it to at least 59th Street and explore. It was a bad idea. It was a mad house. Every bus that passed was jam packed with people. We were barely able to get on one. By the 60s I was feeling claustrophobic. My friend got a seat and asked me if I could see what the traffic was like. To put it in Angeleno terms, the traffic was like the 405 on a rainy Friday at 5 p.m. Like getting out of the Rose Bowl after a big game. Like getting out of the Greek Theater after a show. Car traffic in Manhattan can be bad, but it is never like the L.A. traffic situations I just described, especially not on the Upper West Side. Yet that was it. Still we persisted and by the time we got below 40th I got a seat too, so we decided to stay on for the "free bus tour." Traffic got a little lighter as the bus pulled into the ghost town that was 34th Street and below, basically, the blackout zone. There were pedestrians on the street, but all the stores were shuttered, including the pharmacies and banks. That was surreal. At the last stop (just at the upper end of the Village) we walked around and saw people pumping water out of basements and parking garages. We walked by the Hudson River but didn't see anything in particular. We got back on the bus which drove past the High Line and Tom Colicchio's restaurant, Colicchio and Sons. A passing thought - even the super ritzy places are shuttered, as much as the mom and pops. And any of them could be forced to close after this.
We made it back after being out for four and a half hours, most of which was either on the bus or waiting for it, and decided that we were physically exhausted from the journey and called it a night.
Thursday: The sun came out for the first time in a week. But only briefly. It was also back to school/work, though it was relatively uneventful. Subways finally opened with partial service. On the news I saw hundreds of people trying to get on "bus bridges" - free shuttle buses that took people from points in Brooklyn to Manhattan. The bridges were backed up with cars as police tried to enforce a three-person carpooling rule. Gas ran out at gas stations. I was glad I didn't have to be on a bus or a bridge.
...to be continued...
While on the bus ride yesterday, which took an hour and a half when normally it would've taken about half an hour on the Express subway to cover the same distance, I thought about how much this city depends on mass transit. How actually, mass transit has made this city what it is. All these people - we wouldn't be living here, working here, if the mass transit system wasn't what it was. We have built our lives around it. If I had to commute an hour and a half every day on a crowded bus, I'd either quit my job or move closer to my job. There's no way I would do it. If people had to drive across the bridge on a three-person carpool every day, a lot of people wouldn't do it. And this city would not even be a city.
Conversely, how different would L.A. be if there was a good mass transit system in place? Without the stress of driving, people would travel across neighborhoods and blend together more often and on a daily basis. Ethnic enclaves and social divides might change! And L.A. would be a very different city...
