Saturday August 16, 2003

BLACKOUT NOTES. A little deprivation is good for the soul. I'm just not used to sharing it. Not on this scale, anyway.

My walk from Midtown West to Williamsburg was delayed for a variety of reasons until 7:30 pm yesterday. The atmosphere up around those parts was at first survivalesque, then carnivalesque. The street-choking mobs near Port Authority in the first hour were purposeful and dour (especially when we got a load of the closed doors and scant chance of escape), but once we started to radiate back into the neighborhoods, a cheerful determination took over. I talked to one friend through the window of a stalled bus, another on the street as he made his sweaty way to his girlfriend's place in the West 40's. (It never ceases to amaze me whom you run into, and how, in the City.)

Far West in the more Puerto Rican environs, bright acceptance was the rule. In a NYCHA building west of Tenth Avenue, they were hauling food down from the useless fridges for barbecue, and chatting amiably in the darkened stairwells as they conveyed themselves or their hobbled relations up and down. The kids were happy as shit, playing ball in the yards and screeching merrily to one another, like the gathering darkness was a pleasure to anticipate and the blackout a holiday. I can't imagine this town without Spanish people. I think the rest of us would have killed each other by now without them.

As I made my way dowtown in the last moments of sunlight, streets, sidewalks, and stoops had become social centers, sometimes with lawn chairs and frequently with coolers, or just piles, of drinks. Guys hauled bags of ice ("Cost me five bucks!" one guy yelled. "You wouldn't believe the line!"), at least half yapped on cell phones or stood diligently tapping the keys, trying to get through. At Rudy's on Ninth, where I stopped for a beer (knowing this would all be a little easier with one at least under my belt), the warm, stinky dimness reminded me of bars I'd frequented when A/C was not so ubiquitous: in the languor of the barflies, content on their stools, I felt again the old New York of pleasure amid squalor and lack.

I made my way through Times Square in the first hints of gloom, thinking only, I don't want to be here when it's really dark. But that was silly of me in retrospect. The big dead electronic billboards were something to see -- those vast panels of desire looking a little dull, frankly, without all the juice coursing through them, like constructions for a trade show before the crowds showed. But the people were -- well, cool would be the best world, were this not August -- they were damp and sizzled a little, not angrily, but complacently, like carriage horses waiting for custom around Central Park. I saw the now-storied sidewalk loungers, their nice shirts matted with sweat, their hair disarrayed, their name-brand shoes stretched uselessly before them, as they parked their haunches on backpacks, on newspapers, or just on concrete, and looked surprisingly resigned that their hotels or trains home were out of the question. They chatted and laughed as if their bus had been briefly stuck in traffic, or as if the ferry to their weekend house had been delayed by a storm and there was nothing to do but have another drink (of bottled water, in most cases) and make conversation with fellow-sufferers.

Further downtown, darker still. The clots of pedestrians were thick and took advantage of every available byway -- sidewalk, temporarily empty street, park, traffic island. Some sought assistance. A well-dressed man stood proudly at the edge of Sixth Avenue, holding five or six twenty-dollar bills fanned out in front of him. A cab miraculously stopped for two older women with shopping bags, who hobbled with delighted laughter toward it and toppled, still laughing, into the back seat.

Traffic was tentative. Cops in thin plastic reflective ponchos waved flashlights. One bicyclist, a chubby black guy in overalls and a tank top, skidded to stop for a sudden lurch of sidestreet traffic. "DUDE," yelled a cop, "THERE'S NO LIGHTS. TAKE IT EASY." The biker yet angled his front wheel for a break in the traffic. "IF YOU GET HIT," the cop loudly advised, "SANITATION'S GONNA BE A LONG TIME PICKING YOUR ASS OFF THE STREET."

As I got further down I thought of my cats and checked several of the open delis for comida del gato. Supplies were dwindling and lines were long. Sometimes Coleman Lanterns lit the stores; in one case at least, a parked car shone hi-beams through the glass front. Mister Softee trucks were everywhere, and had long lines. On Houston, in an amazingly stinky and hot bodega, I got the cat food, and some Gatorade and a Luna Bar to keep myself going. By then it was very dark. The Lower East Side was all it usually was, but with the revelry now mostly (though some boites were lit by candlelight, like sets from Gangs of New York) on the street: on Ludlow, blocked to traffic and nearly pitch black, residents straggled or sat in the streets with six-packs and howled and bayed and sang. You had to step lively to keep from toppling over them.

Crowds gathered on Delancey for access to the Williamsburg Bridge. A fat, black female cop, with a proper mesh vest emblazoned TRAFFIC, yelled into the night, "GOING OVER THE WILLIAMSBURG BRIDGE? WAIT RIGHT HERE." So we stood attentively like schoolchildren, waiting for the signal, and were conveyed through a sideways-waving gauntlet of cops to the walkway. The path across was dark and crowded. I passed several couples talking energetically, earnestly, and wondered if not a few of them had never before had this chance for uninterrupted and (it must be said) romantic talk before, and what might come of it. I kept peeping also over my shoulder (for the traffic moved quickly and almost in a mass) at Manhattan, in the moonlight and harborlight an awesome sight, the festival glow of its windows and streetlamps dead (but for one full-blazing building midtown and I'm still wondering which one it was). It looked gray and vast, like a rock formation exquisitely carved.

At the far end of the Bridge volunteers from the local Hasidic ambulance service deferentially handed out tiny cups of water. Some journeyers dunked their heads in a gush of water from an open hydrant. On my block I noted a crowd cheering around a lantern-lit bodega. A middle-aged woman in a short, frilly black dress was humping a gray folding chair to music from a boombox. At the corner, some youngsters burned scrap wood in a metal garbage can.

My own corner store sold me a beer, still cold, and I trooped up my dark, dark steps, gripping the railing and counting the flights, till I got to my own lightless piece of the City. I turned on my lantern, fed my cats, and sprawled on the bed. Through the open window came a light breeze, distant cries of roving groups of citizens, and firecracker explosions.

Around 3:30 the next afternoon we got power out my way. But of course, though they don't know it (though maybe they do, now, a little bit), the people had the power all along.