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.