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.
Compromise (verb): Settle a dispute by mutual concession.
Compromise can be a noble action. It is something that leads one from an extremist position and actively helps in avoiding acts of conflict and war. It’s an action to which we should aspire, and yet an action that evokes terror to those in power. When asked to compromise to avoid the upcoming fiscal crisis, House Speaker John Boehner, balks, insisting that Obama intention to raise taxes on the wealthy “will destroy jobs in America.”Boehner, like many other in the Republican Party, are wedded to a pledge of not raising taxes and believe that to compromise is to sully this position, or, as the dictionary says: to weaken a reputation or principle by accepting standards that are lower than is desirable. A good example of this is what happened to New York when it was compromised by the tidal surge of Hurricane Sandy or what has happened to the public reputation of David Petraeus in admitting to his extra-marital affair.
Mr. Petraeus and Ms. Broadwell
But this not the understanding of the word when opposing groups are asked to seek compromise. As absurd as it is to think, even those negotiating the current dispute for the National Hockey League believe this as well. Players’ representative Donald Fehr and League Commissioner Gary Bettman remain entrenched in their positions, 56 days into the lockout and only a short time from potentially cancelling yet another season. They don’t seem to understand that if there is no hockey, there is no revenue…and leads us to another interesting word: extinction.
It was cold and ugly last night: a mix of freezing rain, snow and wind, all in all, utterly lousy.
7th Avenue and 20th Street, Manhattan
Fulton and Gold Streets, Manhattan
It was just a storm like so many others, not that bad, but I went to sleep with a feeling of dread, thinking about the people in Staten Island, the Rockaways, along the Jersey shore, everyone hit so hard. This was anything but just another storm for them.
It was cold this morning, but the wind and rain were no more. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I had expected. Battery Park was quiet and peaceful. And people were pouring back into the city. The tourists were here too.
At the Stock Exchange
Everything seemed the same, like this storm had never happened, like it was just another hyped event, just more news to cover. But it did happen. It really did. And so now what? What do we actually do? There’s a mountain ahead, overwhelming, almost impossible…but perhaps we might follow Governor Christie‘s advice (via his mother): “Do the job you have in front of you and the rest will follow.” I know that I’ve got to get back to my book. It’s time for the final edit.
Okay, Obama won. And that’s good.But there’s another storm coming to New York today, a powerful Nor’easter, and that’s bad.Winds are expected to be 25 to 35 mph with gusts up to 60 mph. There are warnings of coastal flooding and more rain and snow. Much of the Hurricane Sandy cleanup operations have been put on hold. Parks are closed. People are being urged to stay inside. And so we wait…again.
Looking southeast from Battery Park
It’s a good time to think. What can be done? Can the melting of the ice caps be slowed? What about the release of methane from the polar tundra? And the rising seas? Indeed, can we really do something that will address this climate change? I have my doubts. It’s depressing to think about how badly we have behaved as stewards of this planet. However if President Obama is looking for a legacy, this is it. Or not and we can just ride out this storm and the one after that and the next…just remember that you can never have enough candles.
The problem with us humans is that we tend to forget. And most of what we like to forget is all the bad things that we’ve done. This planet is in trouble and we are to blame. There is no doubt about any of that.
Con Edison truck acting as temporary barrier to the Stock Exchange
Sadly, we have stacked the cards badly against ourselves and it doesn’t look good…but at least we can try. And today there is a choice for American voters. Barack Obama on climate change: “The issue of climate change is one that we ignore at our own peril. There may still be disputes about exactly how much we’re contributing to the warming of the earth’s atmosphere and how much is naturally occurring, but what we can be scientifically certain of is that our continued use of fossil fuels is pushing us to a point of no return.”
Mitt Romney on climate change: “My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet. And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us.”
Kepler 22b …and only seven hundred light years away!
It is true that Obama has a long way to go on this issue, but he is the only option…unless we’re thinking of taking a starship to another planet so we can fuck that one up too.
Before today, I had not visited Staten Island properly – only a couple of times on the final leg of the popular Five Boro Bike Tour in the spring. The truth is that Staten Island does not get much positive hype in New York from the other four boroughs. It’s often derided as the weakest link, if it’s even acknowledged as a borough at all. But the news is dire from there. NY1, New York City’s much-loved 24-hour news station ran a story about an emergency relief center at Miller Field (marked as New Dorp Beach above) and they needed volunteers. I knew I could do something and took the Staten Island Ferry this morning. It was another cold crisp day, perfect for pictures of the city. I biked south on a rolling road, past brick houses and closed gas stations before going under the Verrazano Bridge and arriving at the northeastern shore of the island, the area that has been most severely hit. The wreckage is absolutely overwhelming: poles, stairwells, signs twisted and broken,entire sidewalks and yards vanished, remarkably neat rows of debris piled in front of house after house after house, and the trees and debris piled in parking lots, the abandoned cars, and the garbage piled together along the shore.
Note the dried seaweed twisted around the pole four feet off the ground.
I came to Miller Field, driftwood dotting the landscape, and went to the emergency center. I found a woman in charge who told me to work in the clothing tent. I was asked to make sure that people didn’t leave clothes on the ground, that they collected only one bag each and stayed no more than 15 minutes. I wasn’t very good at that and sort of wandered around instead and picked up the loose clothes and shoes and then finally got into what I’m good at: consolidating. (My mother ingrained this into me at a young age. ) I went at the piles of boxes and garbage bags and moved the coats and blankets outside, piled the boys and girls clothes separately as neatly as I could and got the garbage outside. There were quite a few of us there – another seven or eight volunteers just in this one tent – and we soon had the area in much better shape. The people were incredibly focused, direct and hard-working. This wasn’t about being nice and pleasant; this was about getting something done. I got stupidly emotional thinking about what wonderful people they were and how I was such an ass for participating in the bad-mouthing of this, the distant borough.
This food truck handed out free waffles.
I had pizza and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and worked for another couple of hours. Someone called out, “If there are any extra volunteers, the blanket lady needs help!” Somebody else arrived and announced, “Any volunteers out there? We got to move a boat out of a living room.” But I had to get going and beat the dark. I biked along the beach, much of which has been moved further into shore
Note the trucks and garbage pile in the background.
and is wind-swept and oddly littered. The ride was easy, and it was cold going back to Manhattan. I stood on the bow of the ferry and imagined that I was the surge of last week’s storm, that I was coming at the city like that, relentless, constant, unstoppable. I actually spooked myself thinking like that, focusing on what it might be like to be an unconscious force that just goes on and on until it is spent…and then thought about this week’s forecast of a storm moving in, the dreaded Nor’easter, and wondered what the people of Staten Island would be doing to prepare for that.
There were only a few people in the streets of Lower Manhattan last night, nothing compared to the crowds in Brooklyn. We went to see the the BAM Opera House to see the Brazilian dance troupe, Grupo Corpo.The performance was very enjoyable, most invigorating really and enthusiastically received by the packed house. And then we had our cold walk home through Brooklyn, around the long lines for shuttle buses and across the Brooklyn Bridge – 41 degrees now – back into Manhattan, many of the buildings on the lower end still dark. We returned to Ward III in Tribeca, our refuge after the storm, to see what it would be like with power and lights. It was still dark, bu it wasn’t the same. It was loud – both the music and the people – and crowded. Our drinks were great, but the Narragansett was now in a glass and the Negroni had ice. We were still content and waxed sentimental about the Days of the Surge before going home to watch Saturday Night Live’s parody of Bloomberg’s press conference, all very amusing, especially the jokes on Bloomberg’s mastery of the Spanish language.
It is cold and bright again today and much of the wreckage remains.The Con Edison trucks are everywhere. As are the emergency relief vehicles, the used hoses and sandbags. But Leo’s Bagels is open again! Amazingly, the line is not yet out the door. And that is most definitely something. Egg and cheese, please.
It’s cold today, bright and cold on Saturday, November 3.We have our power back in the building; however that’s not the case for many of those to the east and south of us. Generators are still the norm.There isn’t so much water being pumped out now. The level is going down in the Battery Park underpass as well. Some stores are trying to open…if only half. And I’m happy to report that there was finally another animal at the Dog Run.
Biba finds a friend.
There are shades of normalcy coming back to the neighborhood, so much so that we have decided to venture out tonight, across the Brooklyn Bridge, to see Grupo Corpo at BAM. It will be a long, cold walk, perhaps something worth reporting.
We got our power back at 7:30 last night. I was actually writing my previous post (Sandy IX) in a deli while it happened. Oh well, missed the moment. We did have the salmon and shrimp and then played Scrabble by candlelight – and waxed nostalgic over the recent dark days.
Two blocks below Stock Exchange, October 29
I read The New York Timeson-line later, and there are a lot of depressing numbers: casualties, those without power, percentage of operational gas stations, etc. It’s overwhelming. Here are my numbers, hopefully a little less daunting: 95 hours without power; 264 floors (ascended & descended) for Biba walks; 7 locations visited for connecting/powering up; 5 meetings cancelled; 3 buildings sighted with full power and no occupants throughout the week; 3 movies viewed (at $27 per visit!); 2 Negronis consumed ($12 per); 1 new bike lock purchased ($119!)…and 10 blogs posted. (By the way, the number of floors for Biba walks does not compare to people we were told about who lived on the 53rd and walked their dog three times a day. They eventually moved to a hotel.)
World Trade One: Power returned
It was still dark to the east and south of us; not everyone around here has their power back just yet. I took Biba out for her late-night walk before going to bed. The elevator is a marvelous thing.
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.
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)
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?”
