I had an interview for a story that I
had to do today. My subject was flying back to
Los Angelestomorrow. The interview was in uptown
Manhattan, where my subject had weathered the storm at a friend’s apartment. I live in Brooklyn. With no mass transit options and no bicycle, and cabs already filled to capacity with passengers, my only means of transport were my feet. My route would take me eight miles each way.
I put on some comfortable shoes and a backpack that had within it a bottle of water, one Clif Bar, my reporting tools (notebook, pens, tape recorder, extra batteries and a sheet with 15 “starter” questions) and my rain jacket. I kissed my wife and two daughters goodbye and made off, on foot, for Manhattan. I figured the trip would take—taking into account stops and possible detours—almost two hours each way. It was Halloween.
My home in Brooklyn is on a promontory near the Brooklyn Bridge. When my wife and I decided on this spot, we did not take the threat of hurricanes into account. But after Irene last year and now Sandy, it has proven to be a serendipitous choice of location. We were spared during Sandy, our only real troubles a loss of cable television and Internet service. We maintained electrical power throughout the storm. We were lucky.
I started my walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. Those who have crossed the bridge by means other than automobile are familiar with the too-tight coexistence of the bike and walking lanes. Bikers fly by the walkers, less than an arm’s length away. Some bikers keep whistles in their mouths to warn walkers–many of whom blithely wander as they stroll–to stay out of their lane. The bikers all seemed impetuous and annoyed, with good reason. Someday, the city will have to address this walkway.
As always, tourists dominated the walking lanes. Far Easterners intermingled with those who wore the craggy faces and thin, stylish, black-rimmed eyeglasses of the old country. Some of them stopped suddenly in place to snap a photo of the beautiful but menacing cloud formations that had followed the hurricane like vultures.
Then I was across the bridge and in lower Manhattan, another world, still without power. The streetlights, perhaps the single most important and overlooked part of this normally well-run city surface, were all out. At some big intersections, cops in day-glo yellow vests directed traffic. At most other intersections, it was a fairly well-mannered free-for-all for both cars and pedestrians. Still, it was important to pay attention to your surroundings.
I walked north on Broadway. All but a few stores in the usually busy section from Canal Street to Soho were closed. Even the stores that were open were, inside, pitch-black. Among the open stores were those that seemed to serve some essential need: an EMS store with a sign that said “we have gas!”, a handful of liquor stores, a strip-joint and one bodega with a noisy generator grinding away just outside of its door. All of the clocks in lower Manhattan were stopped at 8:37.
A few cars and cabs moved south on Broadway, slowing only slightly at the ungoverned intersections. Occasionally, a cop car came racing through, sirens wailing. Only a smattering of people were walking Broadway. There was one woman who yelled loudly into her cellphone: “You’re in a cab? Well why the hell didn’t you tell me?” Then she took off in a hurried jog. But most folks I came across spoke in hushed tones and kept moving, clearly goingsomewhere.
Then on 27th street, the lights came back on. There were more people on the streets. They spoke in louder voices, with more confidence. The traffic slowed to a crawl and came to complete stops at the working lights. Almost 40 blocks later, I reached my destination, entering a restaurant in the base of one of Trump’s tasteless towers. I ‘d made only one detour on my journey: Several blocks around 57th Street were blocked off because of the famous dangling crane. Gawkers stood at the police barrier and snapped quick photos. Bored-looking cops occasionally waved back those who tried to get in for a closer shot.
Within the restaurant, there was the normal hum of diners and servers, the clinking of forks and cups, making it hard to discern that anything outside of the restaurant was in any way unusual. I gave my backpack to the coat-check woman.
I did my interview sitting at a table, my tape on the white cloth. I drank an Arnold Palmer in a tall glass. My interviewee had a café latte. The interview went long, as if its participants—including me—didn’t really want to venture back out onto the streets. Something about the familiar sounds of a busy Manhattan restaurant, of commerce, was comforting.
With the interview over, I retrieved my backpack and left, and started to retrace my steps home. The day had grown darker and colder. I contemplated trying to find a cab, then decided against it. I watched others who tried to flag cabs down. Those walking up Broadway, against traffic, had no success. Those walking south—with traffic—were occasionally awarded with a ride. Something for future urban survivalists to keep in mind.
It seemed like I made quicker time on the way home. Familiarity always makes a trip go faster. I walked through Times and Herald squares. More people seemed to be on the street now. I was reaching mile 10 on my day. I felt good, with only a slight tightness in my hips. The cooler air seemed to help matters.
I paid closer attention to the lights as I came within three blocks of 27thStreet, that demarcation point. As I looked down Broadway at the last working traffic light in Manhattan on 27th Street, I heard a pop, then a collective gasp. People ahead of me raised their hands to their faces as they stopped suddenly and gazed east. I thought a gun had gone off. I slowed my pace, knocked suddenly out of my walking daze. A cop car pulled up to the corner, fast, and a young policeman jumped out and ran east, leaving the car door open. As I walked up, I saw him frantically waving people away from something on the ground. He looked like he didn’t know what exactly to do other than wave his arms. The flow of traffic around the scene, both foot and automobile, stopped dead. Most of the walkers had a hand over their faces, like they had just smelled something repellent.
I approached the scene slowly. I looked east on 27th Street. And there, in the middle of the street, was a woman lying on the pavement, her legs curled unnaturally under her body, one arm flung back behind her as if she’d been trying to grasp something. She was not moving. A pool of garnet-colored blood gathered under her frizzy dyed blonde hair. A leaper, people around me said, under their breaths and hands. The young cop continued to try to shoo people away. He never touched the woman on the pavement. No one did. She was clearly dead. She was at the edge of darkness or the edge of light, depending upon which way you were going.
I kept moving until I got around the corner, until I could no longer see her, near Broadway and 26th, back in the powerless part of the island. One glimpse for me had been more than enough. Other cop cars started to arrive quickly, stopping at the scene in that willy-nilly way that cop cars do, nearly causing a few more casualties. When I got out of eyesight of the scene, I finally stopped walking. “Did she jump?” I asked a man and a woman who were hovering nearby, looking back. “I think she did,” the man said, without looking me in the eye.
I trudged on, following a group of Hispanic teenagers who were talking loudly about the woman. I felt envious of their companionship. I wanted to talk to someone about it, then and there. A boy in the group spotted a family, a white couple and their two young kids, dressed in Halloween costumes, walking north on the street toward the scene. The Hispanic boy walked right up to the father and grabbed his arm and pulled him aside. “Man, trust me, do not keep walking up the street here. There’s a dead lady in the street. Walk somewhere else.” The father, initially taken aback, seemed to understand quickly, and veered off, leading his family, all in Star Wars Ewok costumes, west on 25thStreet, away from the sirens and lights and the dead woman.
It seemed to me that the Hispanic boy had performed some mildly heroic act. He did it, I felt then, to both save the family the trauma and save himself from the vision of that family—and those kids—coming upon that scene.
I kept going, deeper and deeper into a dark of lower Manhattan, in what could only be called a funk. The corporate slogans on the darkened stores seemed utterly ridiculous. “
Adidas is All In” it read above the Adidas store.
All in what? I wondered,
and why would anyone ever give a damn? “Live your life” read the slogan outside of the shuttered American Eagle Outfitters store. The
Apple store, usually a place of blinding lights and bustling hipness, was eerily and thankfully quiet.
Brooklyn, as seen walking east on the Brooklyn Bridge
I walked faster down Broadway, forgetting about the discomfort in my hips. And, gradually, I began to work through what I’d seen, at least a bit. This is a big city, I remembered. Things like this occur every day. I just happened to witness it. It would stay with me, perhaps forever, but already I was thinking ahead. I wanted to get back and see my family and walk with them as they Trick-or-Treated. I wanted to see my wife in her space suit, my older daughter, the Dalmatian, and my younger daughter, a six-year old dressed quite convincingly as a baby. I wanted to reach the bridge.
I finally did. The foot and bike traffic on the narrow walkway was considerably sparser as the sun made its quick descent. I hoofed it across, occasionally veering into the bike lane—after a quick over-the-shoulder-glance—to pass slower walkers. I made it home seven hours after I’d left. I caught my family on my street as they made their last Trick-or-Treat stop on our street. The lights were all on. I hugged the astronaut, the Dalmatian and the baby, and we walked, slowly, back home.
–
The Impact of Hurricane Sandy
Getty Images
+show more+show more
Atlantic City, New Jersey
People walk past debris in the area where a 2000-foot section of the 'uptown' boardwalk was destroyed by flooding from Hurricane Sandy with the Showboat Casino in the background. Sandy made landfall just a few miles from the center of Atlantic City on Monday night.
