6:15 am.
If the Big Mike-a-Mike is looking for heroics from New Yorkers bravely marching to their dead-end jobs - he's not getting it in my nabe. Very quiet here. Very few cars coming off the drive. On the Avenue a lonely yuppie couple wondering where all the cabs have gone.
In my dreams I saw a Lichtenstein-like poster of Hillary Clinton with a big tear rolling down her eye: "Transit Strike? Oh, No! There goes my power base!"
7:35 am.
Apparently the streets are pretty empty all over Manhattan. Probable cause: cops are turning away all cars (including taxis) with less than four passengers - and you know how Americans feel about picking up strangers. I guess lack of class solidarity is a two-way sword.
Reminds me of that shtick in the movie "Little Big Man" where the stage-coach is under attack and Our Hero shouts: "give me that gun!" - "No! It's mine!"
9:35 am..
Manhattan feels a bit like a better version of after 9/11.
Post Office closed and a few people waiting, complaining, but not about the strike. The Avenue's almost deserted, people walking with odd little smiles, against the cold, I guess. Scab cabs with "Off-Duty" signs, meaning: I'll charge as much as I can get, I'm almost tempted to resent our Muslim brethren for that. Meanwhile, overhead the blackhawks. At least the cops get a ride to work...
2:10
As Karl Kraus put it, it's not a crime scene until the cops show up. Walking cross-town, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd are virtually empty, maybe a couple of empty cabs trawling. Lex. is fine, Park is bumper-to-bumper jammed with cars, you can jaywalk like a native. Madison and Fifth are empty, "for emergency access" a cop tells me. Otherwise, the weather's warming, and Madison looks like a beautiful day on the frozen polder in seventeenth-century Holland.