| Followers | 131 |
| Posts | 200914 |
| Boards Moderated | 19 |
| Alias Born | 12/16/2002 |
Thursday, November 01, 2012 8:39:48 AM
Where the City of Darkness Meets the City of Light
Karsten Moran for The New York Times Visitors from the darker precincts of Manhattan charged phones and commiserated in a Chase bank on East 41st Street Wednesday night.
The aftermath of Hurricane Sandy has temporarily created two cities in Manhattan: one where restaurants serve hot food and warm water runs from the tap, and another where the phones are dead and a shower is like a dream.
At the boundary, around 40th Street on the East Side, a unusual makeshift community has sprung up, one where the basic building blocks of a New York neighborhood — a pizza place, an unremarkable deli, a bank — have become an oasis.
Late Wednesday night, by the hundreds, the people from downtown emerged from the cold, enveloping darkness, some with flashlights, some with towels just in case they found a place to shower, some with gallon containers to fill with water to flush the toilet. They stepped into the bright Midtown at East 39th Street at the place where the blackout ends.
Joe Album, 50, had walked with his wife and teenage daughter from 28th Street. They sat at a dingy table in the back of the 765 Food Market on 41st Street and Second Avenue, a few feet from the grim hot buffet with its clumpy ziti and brownish corn. He was nursing a coffee with a fruit fly at the rim, charging the family’s phones on a power strip and postponing the walk back home as long as he could.
“It’s just so dark and gloomy at home that it’s better to be out,” said Mr. Album, wrapped in a hat and warm coat. “Plus the apartment is starting to get cold. And when you just sit there, it gets colder.”
The most popular place, unexpectedly, has become a Chase Bank on Third Avenue, which has been opening its doors to whomever comes, allowing them to bring their dogs inside, charge their phones, use the bathroom and Internet, and get free water and coffee. It has also become something of a tourist attraction.
As downtowners straggle in, some with piercings and leather jackets and mutts on rope leashes, clustering around power strips by the A.T.M.s at all hours, the Midtown tourists take pictures through the large picture windows, capturing what may be the closest they will come to the City of Darkness.
“They say, ‘Look at these poor people,’” said Agata Shultz, 19, who walked up from the East Village and sat on a heated window ledge reading philosophy in Polish and checking her e-mail.
“It’s like a zoo.”
Eric Liebowitz, a photographer who lives on 19th Street, sat on the floor of the bank in a ski hat waiting for his phone to charge. “We are the dark people,” he said.
“The people uptown have no clue what’s going on down here,” he said — and he was enjoying himself, in a way. “Come downtown!” he had just written in a text to a friend. ”You will never have an opportunity to see New York like this again — for another year!”
Some people said they had been turned away from hotel lobbies, other banks and cafes near 40th Street when asked if they could charge their phones. It was as if, said Gabriella Sonam, a massage therapist who had biked up from the East Village, they didn’t even know a national emergency was going on just across the street.
“I’m not traumatized by the storm, I’m traumatized by the indifference,” she said near tears.
Joan Koveleski, a bartender with a Siberian Husky and streaked magenta hair, had walked with her husband from Houston Street.
After so long in the dark, she said, crossing into the other New York felt like culture shock.
“We had to remember the traffic lights worked up here,” she said. They had been walking in the street. But they, too, after getting some cash from a working A.T.M. and charging her computer and phone, would be headed back to where flashing police lights and the headlights of cars are the brightest illumination.
“Maybe we’ll watch a movie on our computer tonight,” she said.
“There’s nothing else to do except sit in the dark.”
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/10/28/nyregion/hurricane-sandy.html#sha=2dce2cfc8
Karsten Moran for The New York Times Visitors from the darker precincts of Manhattan charged phones and commiserated in a Chase bank on East 41st Street Wednesday night.
The aftermath of Hurricane Sandy has temporarily created two cities in Manhattan: one where restaurants serve hot food and warm water runs from the tap, and another where the phones are dead and a shower is like a dream.
At the boundary, around 40th Street on the East Side, a unusual makeshift community has sprung up, one where the basic building blocks of a New York neighborhood — a pizza place, an unremarkable deli, a bank — have become an oasis.
Late Wednesday night, by the hundreds, the people from downtown emerged from the cold, enveloping darkness, some with flashlights, some with towels just in case they found a place to shower, some with gallon containers to fill with water to flush the toilet. They stepped into the bright Midtown at East 39th Street at the place where the blackout ends.
Joe Album, 50, had walked with his wife and teenage daughter from 28th Street. They sat at a dingy table in the back of the 765 Food Market on 41st Street and Second Avenue, a few feet from the grim hot buffet with its clumpy ziti and brownish corn. He was nursing a coffee with a fruit fly at the rim, charging the family’s phones on a power strip and postponing the walk back home as long as he could.
“It’s just so dark and gloomy at home that it’s better to be out,” said Mr. Album, wrapped in a hat and warm coat. “Plus the apartment is starting to get cold. And when you just sit there, it gets colder.”
The most popular place, unexpectedly, has become a Chase Bank on Third Avenue, which has been opening its doors to whomever comes, allowing them to bring their dogs inside, charge their phones, use the bathroom and Internet, and get free water and coffee. It has also become something of a tourist attraction.
As downtowners straggle in, some with piercings and leather jackets and mutts on rope leashes, clustering around power strips by the A.T.M.s at all hours, the Midtown tourists take pictures through the large picture windows, capturing what may be the closest they will come to the City of Darkness.
“They say, ‘Look at these poor people,’” said Agata Shultz, 19, who walked up from the East Village and sat on a heated window ledge reading philosophy in Polish and checking her e-mail.
“It’s like a zoo.”
Eric Liebowitz, a photographer who lives on 19th Street, sat on the floor of the bank in a ski hat waiting for his phone to charge. “We are the dark people,” he said.
“The people uptown have no clue what’s going on down here,” he said — and he was enjoying himself, in a way. “Come downtown!” he had just written in a text to a friend. ”You will never have an opportunity to see New York like this again — for another year!”
Some people said they had been turned away from hotel lobbies, other banks and cafes near 40th Street when asked if they could charge their phones. It was as if, said Gabriella Sonam, a massage therapist who had biked up from the East Village, they didn’t even know a national emergency was going on just across the street.
“I’m not traumatized by the storm, I’m traumatized by the indifference,” she said near tears.
Joan Koveleski, a bartender with a Siberian Husky and streaked magenta hair, had walked with her husband from Houston Street.
After so long in the dark, she said, crossing into the other New York felt like culture shock.
“We had to remember the traffic lights worked up here,” she said. They had been walking in the street. But they, too, after getting some cash from a working A.T.M. and charging her computer and phone, would be headed back to where flashing police lights and the headlights of cars are the brightest illumination.
“Maybe we’ll watch a movie on our computer tonight,” she said.
“There’s nothing else to do except sit in the dark.”
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/10/28/nyregion/hurricane-sandy.html#sha=2dce2cfc8
Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.
- Will Rogers
Join the InvestorsHub Community
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
