I work one day a week in midtown Manhattan, actually at an arts organization in Times Square. That day is usually Monday, but of course, nothing was possible in New York on Monday. Today, Wednesday, was sort of the official "first day back" after the storm for many New Yorkers, and boy, was it a different city.
First, while I had some pretty substantial transportation difficulties today, as did everyone around the city, I have it good, because I never lost power, heat or water during the storm, and there are MANY people in NYC and across the East Coast who are still without basic services. And, of course, far too many people lost homes, neighborhoods and loved ones in the storm. But I thought I would write a short diary just to give folks a view of how very different things are a couple of days after the storm.
It is clear that this city cannot function with above ground vehicles carrying the bulk of its citizens. Traffic today was absolutely miserable. I live in Washington Heights, near the 181st stop on the A train. It usually takes me 22 minutes to get to 42nd Street. The buses were running today, so my plan to get to the office was to walk to the George Washington Bridge bus stop and get a bus. When I got there, however, there were maybe 50 or 60 people in front of me and every bus was jammed packed with people. I decided to try to hail a cab and was surprised to find one right away. I started thinking that this was so much easier than I expected!! The ride was going relatively smoothly until we got to about 90th Street. Then we we were essentially stopped in traffic for an hour, crawling our way south. I have sort of a bad ankle due to an old injury, so I couldn't really get out and walk from 90th Street to 42nd Street, though there were plenty of pedestrians passing us. I have several co-workers who walked to work today from Brooklyn, across the Brooklyn Bridge.
Two hours and $65 in cab fare later, I made it to work. Everyone had stories like mine, some much worse. But the real hell was yet to come. In order to try to beat the mad rush home, I left work at 4 p.m. I had to wait for an uptown bus for about 45 minutes, but once I got on I thought I was in good shape. It took over FOUR HOURS to inch up Madison Avenue, across the park and then up to the Heights. FOUR HOURS on a bus with about 100 other people, packed like very angry, exhausted, stressed out sardines (several of whom were wearing Halloween costumes). For the first hour, we went five blocks. That is how bad traffic is in Manhattan right now. I could have flown to Seattle in the time it took for our bus to go about 6.5 miles.
We are a city of moles and gophers. We tunnel through the bedrock, our subterranean maze, entering a hole in one part of the city, only to pop up again in a different neighborhood or borough. We cannot survive without our tunnels and tubes, our snaking caverns that help us traverse and tame this restless city. Some subway service will begin tomorrow and I say on behalf of all New Yorkers, thank you. Thank you to the men and women who are working their asses off to get the tunnels pumped out and safe again for us to use. Thank you to our city government, which seems to be doing the best it can in this extreme situation. Thank you to the State and Federal government for helping our fellow city dwellers deal with the horrible effects of flooding and lack of power and raging fire. There is a general sense here that we are grateful for government in the preparation and now, clean-up from this most intense storm. The truth is that something catastrophic can, and will, happen in any city, county or state in this country, and there is a desperate and growing need for FEMA and government resources to help communities bounce back from this degree of devastation. Because even though the subways will start working in a limited way tomorrow, and even though people were still shopping on Madison Avenue tonight, the truth is that New York City is hurting and it's nice to feel like someone cares.