The Toyota Prius remains on Maiden Lane, 44 days after Hurricane Sandy.
December 11 – 44 days after Hurricane Sandy
The signs say it should move. 
But it won’t until the generators and boilers are gone too.
Prius hides three cars back.
And that doesn’t look like it’s happening any time soon.
Fueling up the generators
But Christmas is coming. 
Shouldn’t it be decorated or something? Some red and a wreath perhaps? We’ll see.
New York City streets are notorious for defects and foibles. 
The website for the NYC Department of Transportation (DOT) has pages devoted to reporting problems, including cave-ins, hummocks, ponding, missing manhole covers and pot holes.
Driving through the city, over grates and grills, around barriers and pylons, can be a disquieting experience.
It’s not just the hazards, but the mottled surface, the cracks and excrescence.
And how it seems to have always been here, not senescent but permanent. 
Sometimes it just needs to have its contiguity checked.
Broadway, also called the Canyon of Dreams, is a location for an early morning scene in my novel, My Bad Side:
A flock of small black birds swirled above Bowling Green, hovered a moment, a single organism, and landed in the bare glowing branches of the beech trees. 
Apollo watched, his mouth open, moaning softly. We followed the plaques. 1910, June 18: Theodore Roosevelt, following return from his African Safari; 1926, August 27: Gertrude Ederle, first woman to swim the English Channel. 
Crystal called.
“You’re up early.”
“More like late.”
1950, August 31: William O’Dwyer Upon his Resignation as Mayor of New York. “You remember the Santa Claus Parade?” 
“I was an icicle.”
“I was a workshop elf.”
“They painted my face with silver glitter. I had that crazy hat that pointed straight up.”
I could hear her moving, her mouth muffled, distant from the receiver, and then the tinkling of glass, bottles going into the recycling.
“I sat on a giant wooden mushroom.” I switched the phone to my other hand. 
“We should go on a trip.”
“Where?”
“Las Vegas.”
There was scaffolding on both sides of the street now, the black and silver crossbars, rusted bolts sticking out through broken strands of duct tape. 
“The Galapagos. We could swim with the seals.”
“They would just freak me out.”
“It would be incredible.”
“Rome,” she suggested. “Or St. Petersburg.”
“Really?”
“The Crystal Palace.”
A rat popped out and veered wildly back at the sight of Apollo. “The Winter Palace.”
“Is that what it’s called? The Winter Palace?” There was the snap of her lighter and the intake of another cigarette. “It should be called The Crystal Palace.”
New York City Hall
New York’s famed Broadway starts at Bowling Green, the city’s oldest park. 
It was here, on July 9, 1776, where the Sons of Freedom, in an act of defiance against England, took down the statue of King George III and sawed off the finials from the fence – the saw marks which are still visible today. 
Bowling Green is also where New York’s ticker tape parades begin, all of which Manhattan’s Downtown Alliance has documented by imbedding granite slabs into the sidewalk. The first parade was impromptu – a collection of people going up Broadway after the dedication of the Statue of Liberty. 
There were another six parades over the next 35 years…
27 parades in the 1920s…
17 in the 1930s…
22 in the 1940s (all after the end of World War II in 1945)…
A whopping 62 in the 1950s…
32 in the 1960s…
And 20 over the past 42 years, many of which were sports-related. It is actually an interesting exercise to review the list of these ticker tape parades, especially to note how these celebrations have transformed from a focus on politics to that of sports. 
It is the very apolitical nature of the more recent parades that might indicate how unlikely it is that the current statue in Bowling Green will be taken down any time soon.
Wall Street’s Bull at Bowling Green
The Wolf of Wall Street was only on Maiden Lane for one day – Tuesday, November 27.
Mr. DiCaprio will be elsewhere.
Whether that was their initial plan or it was due to the lack of power and excess of damage, there will be no DiCaprio sightings here. Meanwhile, 33 days after Hurricane Sandy, the generators and fuel trucks remain,
Fuel delivery on Maiden Lane
as does the Prius.
Prius on Maiden – 33 days after Hurricane Sandy
It is as smashed up and dilapidated as ever…
but it is still there, and with a message.
Leaving us to wonder how exactly ‘off’ does it mean?
It’s one month after Hurricane Sandy, and much of downtown Manhattan seems to be getting back to normal…except for the stores near the East River. 
The water damage has yet to be resolved for many of the businesses on the last three blocks of Maiden Lane (below Gold Street). 
Some of the signs are professionally printed. 
Flowers of the World
Others are not.
First Republic Bank
Others have no sign at all…but the message is still clear.
Au Bon Pain
One business is open because of major external support.
It is a little sad with so much shut down like this. Hopefully the city will do what it can to get things back to normal.
Holiday Star at the Federal Reserve.
At least that’s a start.
I took Biba out for her morning walk the day after Hurricane Sandy. We found this car on Maiden Lane just below Pearl Street, a Toyota Prius, most unfortunately parked.
October 30 – One day after Hurricane Sandy
I didn’t think much about it except that I would hate to have found my car hit by one of the few trees in Downtown Manhattan. I imagined the owner was still in his apartment, calling his family, telling them that he was all right.
Biba and I came down Maiden Lane again the following morning; the car was still there.
October 31 – Two days after Sandy
I thought about how it would almost be worse to see the smashed hood and windshield without the tree still on it. I thought that the owner – let’s call him Tim – had probably come down to find it, cursed, and gone uptown to power his computer and email pictures of his afflicted Prius to the family. They could forward them to the insurance company for him.
A day later, three days after the storm, and the car was still there.
November 1 – Three days after
I figured that Tim had realized that there was nothing he could do about this and decided to deal with everything else first – water, power, food. If the city towed it, so much the better.
One week later, a day after the Nor’easter, the Prius was unmoved.
Tim had probably left town to get away from everything. Maybe he had got a ride with his girlfriend to her parents’ place in Virginia. He could have a proper shower there, sleep, and forget about all of this. That made sense.
Days turned into a week and then some; nineteen days in all; the Prius remained..
November 17 – Nineteen days after Sandy
Did Tim leave New York altogether? Was he not coming back? Was he that upset about it? Was it even Tim’s car? Or had he borrowed it from his girlfriend without asking and now he couldn’t admit it? Had he abandoned it just to get out of a lie? Didn’t he realize that the police would tow it eventually, and she would find out then?
November 18 – Twenty days after Sandy
No, he didn’t realize that. He was leaving it here. He didn’t care. He didn’t really love her anyway. It wasn’t worth the hassle. At least he had had those few good warm days in Virginia. 
The truth was that he had never even liked her or her Prius that much. I mean where had all of this environmentalism gotten him in the end? It had got him here. He had always dreamed of something else, something exotic and incredible. The Mercedes Sedan CLS…now that was a car!
Mercedes Benz CLS
He knew that he could really love that. (Poor Tim.)
Downtown Manhattan has been under invasion for three weeks now. I’m not talking about the wind and tidal surge…but rather the vehicles and machines that followed. 
It started sensibly, almost innocently, with the official Disaster Response vehicles
in tandem with the water pumping trucks 
and fuel tankers. 
There were also the portable generators 
and tractor trailers. 
But then, the vehicles became ominous and strange.
The streets began to look less like Manhattan and more like Terry Gilliam’s dystopic film Brazil. 
And so I began to ask myself: Just what are these daemonic vehicles and contraptions? Are they taking over? 
The answer wasn’t as mysterious as I had imagined. After a pittance of research, I learned that these imposing, brooding machines are generally one of three things. They are either mobile – albeit massive – generators, 
mobile – albeit massive – boilers,
Go Giants!
or mobile – albeit massive – dehumidifiers.
In other words, the guts of the buildings are no longer hidden in the basements but outside, naked, for everyone to see. 
Yeah, I think you get the picture.
New York City has been called The Capitol of the World – albeit mostly by New Yorkers – and is iconically loved. 
It’s a great city, overwhelming in its needs and offerings, inhabited by peoples of all nationalities and faiths, many of whom live and work well with each other – as symbolized by their recent action and compassion to those devastated by Hurricane Sandy.
Volunteers at Occupy Sandy Hub in Brooklyn
But what New York is really known for is its money, its business and its buildings.
World Trade One
The unrelenting canyons stretch out, the sun barely there, the sounds and smells swirling within. 
And while there is a dynamic aesthetic to the steel and asphalt, there is something else, something sinister and unfeeling. As I blogged last week, many of these buildings remained fully lit through the blackout caused by Hurricane Sandy, buildings such as 222 Broadway (Bank of America)
222 Broadway on left
and 140 Broadway (Brown Brothers Harriman). 
There was no one in these buildings during the blackout, no one working, no one moving, no one. The assumption is that the employees simply couldn’t get to work and the buildings were kept lit and heated by generators, but it is an ominous image. It seems that these buildings just might aim to carry on without us…
leaving us to wonder: “Who are they here for?”
One of the neighborhoods subjected to the most devastation by Hurricane Sandy is the Rockaways, in southern Queens. 
I rented a car and went to the Occupy Sandy Hub in Brooklyn to ferry supplies and volunteers. 
We loaded the car with food, diapers, cleaning supplies before heading out through the traffic and confusion. The Rockaways is a very long peninsula, spanning some 180 streets; many of the houses have been badly damaged by flooding; power remains out at most intersections; and the sand and detritus is everywhere. 
We drove slowly through the streets – slowed by emergency vehicles and construction equipment everywhere – and made our delivery at Inglesia Pentacostal Rehoboth.
There was a gas station with no lines across the street, however I had rented a car with a license plate ending in zero (which counts as an even number in the current gas rationing system) and therefore was not supposed to have access to gas today. (The rule is odd number plates on odd number days). 
I thought about this and the fact there were not only no lines, but there were absolutely no cars either. It seemed like a good rule to break. I left my volunteers at the St. Gertrude Parish.
Directions from St. Gertrude Church
I returned to the Occupy Sandy hub for more supplies. I re-stocked with blankets, batteries and volunteers – three moderately hip 20-somethings from Brooklyn – and was directed out to Coney Island.
Coney Island’s iconic Wonder Wheel
Coney Island, a geographical neighbor to the Rockaways and yet separated by many miles of roads and traffic, appears to be doing better than the Rockaways, but is still struggling with a lack of power and an excess of sand
Neptune and Surf
and muck. 
We delivered food to a small apartment building, climbing the cold dark staircase, knocking on doors and doing our best to communicate with the mostly Russian inhabitants. I was brought into the apartment of an elderly Russian lady who showed me how she has cleaned up after the six inches of flood water. She didn’t need food or water. She had been provided with those. She needed her power to be turned back on. I couldn’t do that. We hugged instead.
Social Widgets powered by AB-WebLog.com.