Blackout Remainders
The power is back on, the subways are running, my cable and Internet connection work. However, I still can't get my phone messages due to problems at Verizon. (Update: The Verizon voice mail was finally working when I checked just after 4 p.m. Saturday.)

Here are a few other bits about the blackout:

Paul Frankenstein directs traffic, becomes local celebrity. People brought him water, an orange vest and the cops driving by tipped their hats. His account is posted at his friend's Mike's site since Paul was sans Interent.

A restaurant somewhere in Park Slope was giving away free pizza during the blackout, according to a post on Chowhound.

E-mail from a friend of mine in California: "heard a new york grocery owner on the radio this morning, he said he lost just about all his meat and dairy...but figures he made up for it by all the beer and hard liquor he sold...right on new yorkers!"

Patrick Nielsen Hayden describes his Thursday night dinner during the blackout: "We finally found a take-out Chinese place on Flatbush that was cooking in the dark over gas--one person would cook while the other held a flashlight over his head, looking for all the world, as Teresa observed, like Mad Max Does Chinese."

My husband and I had dinner at Two Boots last night -- this time with lights. I checked their menu and confirmed that indeed the prices they were charging for BBQ during the blackout were lower than normal. Last night, one of the specials was a "blackout pizza." As we were getting ready to leave, we heard the waiter tell the people next to us that they've run out of ice for drinks - so they could no longer make margaritas. ... I'm telling you, my loyalty to that place went way up due to how they took care of their neighbors during the blackout. Very nice.

Since we had a little bit of cable TV yesterday night, I got a chance to see the BBC report on the blackout. The BBC - just like everything else I've been reading online and hearing on the radio made the blackout only about New York and not all those other cities still in the dark. What seemed weird was that the blackout seemed far more traumatic when I saw it the BBC way. Especially how they did their footage. I think it was supposed to be in the style of that Keiffer Sutherland show "24," which is a big hit in England. I've only seen the show once, so I'm not completely sure how much it mimicked the Keifer Sutherland thing - but I am pretty sure the drama is all about the 24 hours leading up to a nuclear strike on Los Angeles and they repeatedly show the clock ticking. And that's what the BBC did for its blackout coverage. Something like 24 hours in New York - with a photo montage of quickly changing pictures and a clock ticking in the middle -- starting at 24 hours. Luckily, we didn't all blow up at the end.
- posted by Amy @ 8/16/2003 08:20:00 AM