{"id":2616,"date":"2012-11-06T18:02:20","date_gmt":"2012-11-06T23:02:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/?p=2616"},"modified":"2012-11-06T18:02:20","modified_gmt":"2012-11-06T23:02:20","slug":"reflections-on-frankenstorm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/2012\/11\/06\/reflections-on-frankenstorm\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections on Frankenstorm"},"content":{"rendered":"

drugs<\/span><\/h3>\n

I don’t normally see cops smoke on duty, but lots of cops were smoking last week.<\/p>\n

Beer was being sold for up to $30 a six pack.\u00a0 Not good beer either.<\/p>\n

I overheard a barista at Verb Cafe in Williamsburg say that Tuesday had been their best day ever.\u00a0 They did twice their sales of a busy Saturday and closed early because they ran out of everything.\u00a0 He also said he saw a lot more Nouveau Yorkers than normal.<\/p>\n

I smelled no more weed on the street than I normally do.\u00a0 Stoners are consistent.<\/p>\n

zombie apocalypse<\/span><\/h3>\n

The Brooklyn half of the Williamsburg bridge had power, but crossing into downtown Manhattan was like regressing into a time before electricity, or more accurately, a time after electricity.\u00a0 When it got dark at night, it actually got dark.\u00a0 Anyone who has been to lower Manhattan knows there is a limit to how dark it actually gets: the sheer amount of ambient light prevents real darkness, even in places without street lights.\u00a0 This no longer held for the few days after Sandy.\u00a0 Walking the city was passing through endless empty black canyons, devoid of life and filled with remnants of once useful technology.<\/p>\n

Every so often I’d come upon a person sitting on a stoop, looking haggard and sucking hard on a cigarette.\u00a0 When this happened I wouldn’t notice the person till I was already upon them and walking by.\u00a0 I couldn’t even muster a head nod, not that New Yorkers would be looking for the social interaction, and it was inevitably too late to bother anyway.<\/p>\n

My mom called while I was walking back to the bridge a few blocks south of Delancey.\u00a0 Surprisingly the cell phone coverage held for the duration of the call.\u00a0 I could hear her voice drop as I described the situation:\u00a0\u00a0 The windows are empty and lifeless for blocks, and I can barely make out the sidewalk.\u00a0 There are no people, or none that I can see.\u00a0 Sometimes they would show up, but as I said, they were the strays, and would disappear just as quickly.\u00a0 The cops, wherever they were, were just as cut off as everyone else.\u00a0 She ended the call quickly.<\/p>\n

They eventually got the power down to 14th street and east of Broadway back on.\u00a0 This returned some of the ambient light to lower Manhattan, but not like normal.\u00a0 Instead of the sad darkness, a weak, insubstantial haze took over.\u00a0 It was like being in an old video game where they just colored everything dark, but there were no actual light sources.\u00a0 You could see things, but it wasn’t like things were lit or had shadows; it was all shadows.\u00a0 Unlike the previous nights, which hurt in its collapse of basic New York reality, this haze provided an unreality to the situation. It was a transient state, a purgatory, one where you could feel civilization trying to leech its way back.<\/p>\n

My friends who live and work uptown were barely inconvenienced by the storm.<\/p>\n

banks and power<\/span><\/h3>\n

A bank was robbed clean by Upright Citizens entering the building’s basement and then breaking up through the floor.<\/p>\n

I told everyone that if I had a truck I would have ripped up and ripped off those ubiquitous street ATMs that charge $4 a transaction.\u00a0 I’m actually surprised I didn’t see any of this.<\/p>\n

Goldman Sachs had barricades of sandbags around their entrance ways.\u00a0 Not sure if they were trying to stem the barrage of water only.<\/p>\n

They moved the power lines in the city under ground after the 1888 blizzard, which was the last time the stock exchange had been closed for 2 days due to weather.\u00a0 This was to prevent wind and snow from affecting the power supply.\u00a0 So maybe the banks will ‘encourage’ our utilities to make the power supply more water resistant.\u00a0 Cuomo (NY State Governor)\u00a0 is threatening to revoke the electricity monopolies of ConEd and LIPA due to the power failures.\u00a0 Floodproofing New York City would be an unimaginably huge project.\u00a0 I wouldn’t be surprised to see a proposal to actually raise the entire island of Manhattan.\u00a0 If the banks don’t have battery backup security cameras in a few weeks, though, I will be shocked.<\/p>\n

the birds<\/span><\/h3>\n

Fauna in New York is sophisticated.\u00a0 The animals that live here are either well adapted to living with humans or well adapted to getting out of our way.\u00a0 However, when I saw a pigeon standing very still near the curb in the street, I felt something was wrong.\u00a0 A van pulled up and the front wheel missed the pigeon by not even a finger’s width, but the pigeon didn’t move at all.\u00a0 Then the rear wheel ran directly over the stationary pigeon with muffled bone crunches.<\/p>\n

I walked into Washington Square Park and a very obese man followed me in.\u00a0 I sat on one side of the pathway and he sat across from me.\u00a0 Often, though not generally, people hanging around in public parks who don’t take care of themselves have mental problems.\u00a0 Then a large flock of pigeons, which is strange in itself, all descended upon this man.\u00a0 Standing on him, walking up and down his arms, crowding as close as possible to his body. I saw his face, he looked confused, which I took to confirm my suspicion about him.\u00a0 He noticed me looking and he spoke, completely lucidly:\u00a0 “I don’t even have food. What’s going on?\u00a0 I guess the birds are just as stir crazy as the rest of us…”\u00a0 He wasn’t crazy at all: the birds went Hitchcock on him, and he was trapped.\u00a0 I left Washington Square Park.<\/p>\n

candles<\/span><\/h3>\n

I only type up my philosophy writing when it is being prepared for general consumption, that is, no longer my own notes.\u00a0 Otherwise I write with a fountain pen, which I find to be the least intrusive and most versatile writing implement.<\/p>\n

So I am at my brother’s place in Williamsburg as Sandy shakes the windows, hoping the power doesn’t go out — the internet and cable TV had failed, but not before we saw the footage of the 14th street power station explosion<\/a> and cars floating on C<\/a>.\u00a0 I lit a candle just in case.<\/p>\n

As I am getting ready to go to sleep on his shockingly ludicrous couch (not his fault) I turn off the standing lamp, leaving the candle the only source of light.\u00a0 I think, “Hey, this is how people wrote in the past.\u00a0 Every philosopher up till just recent has sat hunkered over a notebook with a bottle of ink, a pen and a candle.\u00a0 Let’s see if there is anything to it…”<\/p>\n

OH MY GAWD.<\/p>\n

It is fantastic.\u00a0 Modern lighting is excellent, but it sprays light everywhere.\u00a0 Normally this is a good thing: one or two lamps can light an entire room easily.\u00a0 But for focused concentration, the single flickering point light of a candle melts everything else away.\u00a0 Romance is good for philosophy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

drugs I don’t normally see cops smoke on duty, but lots of cops were smoking last week. Beer was being sold for up to $30 a six pack.\u00a0 Not good beer either. I overheard a barista at Verb Cafe in Williamsburg say that Tuesday had been their best day ever.\u00a0 They did twice their sales of a busy Saturday and closed early because they ran out of everything.\u00a0 He also said he saw a lot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,24,31,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-nyc","category-random-idiocy","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2616\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.noahgreenstein.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}