TheRealTavie
Phone down to 10%. if anyone needs me, I'll be on
this interminable bus line @ 33rd St. to get back to Brooklyn. Tavie
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Thursday, November 01, 2012
Hurricane Sandy. That happened.
I've been dogsitting Adrian while Stephanie's in Texas. I was originally planning to stay Friday through Monday, but then all hell broke loose. So I extended my stay. Stephanie's expected home tomorrow; I'll miss Puppy, but man, I'll be glad to sleep in my own bed.
It's felt like the longest weekend ever. Everyone I know is safe, though some have lost power - the worst-off person in my personal circle lost half her house - but no loss of lives.
Having been basically cooped up in Stephanie's apartment for the previous five days, I was excited to finally try and make it into the office.
Big mistake. Big, big mistake. This Gothamist article (which quotes one of my tweets!) nicely sums up the scene at Barclays Center this morning. It only took me 2 breezy hours to get to work (so glad Stephanie lives so close to Barclays!) Sure, the line wrapped around the stadium twice and no one knew where the end of it was, but, hell. There was light. We could see.
The commute home was a different story. I left at 5, as I usually do, and headed towards 33rd and Lexington, not knowing what to expect; I wasn't sure if the shuttle buses would be picking up passengers at 33rd, of if I'd have to find my way to their terminus at 57th Street in order to get on what was sure to be an enormous line for a shuttle bus back to Barclays Center.
The answer became immediately apparent as I approached Park Ave; shortly after 5 pm, I could already see that the line was monstrous. I was actually lucky - I got there early enough that I only had to wrap around the block; shortly after I got in line, it grew so much that they had to snake it up and down 32nd, and lower still, for all I know - I heard people saying it was 6 around-the-blocks long by the time I got close to halfway through my wait.
Of course, my iPhone quit 5 minutes after I got in line. (My fault; I'd brought my charger but failed to notice that it wasn't plugged all the way in all day. Whoopsie.) My last tweets tell a very pathetic little short story:
Most of 33rd is wrapped with scaffolding, so we were plunged into darkness before the sun even set; I was able to read my book (Peter Beagle's A Fine and Private Place) for about 15 minutes before it got too dim to read. When the sun set, we were basically in blackness. There's no power at all below 34th street. No traffic lights. Nothing.
I waited on that line for about 2 and a half hours. There was a certain comraderie, of course - we all were on keen lookout for line-cutters, and two separate near-fistfights broke out perilously close to me. In the darkness. The only light was coming from the occasional passing bus, the red-and-blue glare of police siren lights, and the occasional flashlight of a passerby. Eventually, a police officer lit a flare in the middle of the street.
We guarded our spaces on the line jealously, made a few grim jokes, but mostly just stood and stood and stood there, shifting our weight on aching feet, tired and glazed and ready to drop and knowing that our journey was only beginning. Early on, a woman behind me lit up a cigarette, endured a few glares from the people around her, and stubbed it out sullenly. She lit up again about two hours into the wait, looking around defiantly for opposition, but we were too tired to care anymore.
There was a definite us-against-them feeling when it came to the police. There were a few clustered near the front of the line, where the buses stopped; there were almost none at all behind that, so most of the crowd was left to fend for ourselves. In the darkness. At one point we were forced to stand next to a 6-foot-high wall of uncollected garbage bags. I was petrified that rats would emerge at any moment. In the darkness.
The fistfights and the garbage were nothing compared to the chaos at the front of the line. The policemen would shout things like, "HEWES STREET NEXT! STEP UP FOR HEWES STREET!" and this became the cue for the crowd behind us to surge forward, crushing us against the police barriers. After this happened a few times, a woman next to me begged a policeman to let her know when the bus to Jay Street was coming.
"Sir," I called out, "We're getting crushed here, can you ask them to step back?"
He blinked at me, pretended not to hear.
The women around me began chiming in with protests - those of us up against the barricades were trying to maintain some sense of order in the line, but every time they announced where the next bus was going, folks to the right and behind us took it as license to start crowding forward.
"Are you going to stand there and watch while we get crushed? Because if we die tonight, that's on you," I told him.
"Ma'am, I can only tell you where the bus is going. If you don't like it you can get a cab or walk home."
"I'm not complaining about the wait, I've been waiting over two hours, I just don't want to be crushed to death!"
"Ma'am, if you don't like it, you walk home or get a taxi."
"If we die tonight, that's on you!" I shouted. Yes, I was shouting at a police officer now. Surreal fucking day.
He smiled at me. "Have a nice day, ma'am."
"PLEASE, make them form separate lines for the different buses!"
"Have a nice day."
I finally made it onto the Atlantic Avenue bus. I was the very last person on, right at the front, my feet crossing the white line; for the first time in my life, the bus driver let it slide. Over the white line! Pandemonium, madness! The bus driver chatted pleasantly with me as we drove, telling me he'd been working since 5:20 am and had no idea when his shift would end, telling me about the barbecue that his family had last night to use up all of the leftover meat in the fridge, the potluck where neighbors came and they all had a big friendly feast and weathered the aftermath of this awful storm together. He was a nice Staten Island guy. He made me feel better, and when he dropped me off a block from Stephanie's apartment, I thanked him sincerely.
Then I got me some fried chicken, because I fucking earned it.
So, experiment over. I will be telecommuting to the extent possible until this mess gets worked out. The police don't use common sense and don't seem to want to maintain anything resembling order, and I don't trust my safety to those mobs. I feel very lucky that I have the option to do any work from home at all, and that I have an employer who is extremely sympathetic and supportive; most people in those lines don't have a choice, have to wait and risk their safety because it's this or unemployment.
I've been dogsitting Adrian while Stephanie's in Texas. I was originally planning to stay Friday through Monday, but then all hell broke loose. So I extended my stay. Stephanie's expected home tomorrow; I'll miss Puppy, but man, I'll be glad to sleep in my own bed.
It's felt like the longest weekend ever. Everyone I know is safe, though some have lost power - the worst-off person in my personal circle lost half her house - but no loss of lives.
Having been basically cooped up in Stephanie's apartment for the previous five days, I was excited to finally try and make it into the office.
Big mistake. Big, big mistake. This Gothamist article (which quotes one of my tweets!) nicely sums up the scene at Barclays Center this morning. It only took me 2 breezy hours to get to work (so glad Stephanie lives so close to Barclays!) Sure, the line wrapped around the stadium twice and no one knew where the end of it was, but, hell. There was light. We could see.
The commute home was a different story. I left at 5, as I usually do, and headed towards 33rd and Lexington, not knowing what to expect; I wasn't sure if the shuttle buses would be picking up passengers at 33rd, of if I'd have to find my way to their terminus at 57th Street in order to get on what was sure to be an enormous line for a shuttle bus back to Barclays Center.
The answer became immediately apparent as I approached Park Ave; shortly after 5 pm, I could already see that the line was monstrous. I was actually lucky - I got there early enough that I only had to wrap around the block; shortly after I got in line, it grew so much that they had to snake it up and down 32nd, and lower still, for all I know - I heard people saying it was 6 around-the-blocks long by the time I got close to halfway through my wait.
Of course, my iPhone quit 5 minutes after I got in line. (My fault; I'd brought my charger but failed to notice that it wasn't plugged all the way in all day. Whoopsie.) My last tweets tell a very pathetic little short story:
I hope I get on the bus before it gets too dark too read my book.
Is this how the world ends?
Most of 33rd is wrapped with scaffolding, so we were plunged into darkness before the sun even set; I was able to read my book (Peter Beagle's A Fine and Private Place) for about 15 minutes before it got too dim to read. When the sun set, we were basically in blackness. There's no power at all below 34th street. No traffic lights. Nothing.
I waited on that line for about 2 and a half hours. There was a certain comraderie, of course - we all were on keen lookout for line-cutters, and two separate near-fistfights broke out perilously close to me. In the darkness. The only light was coming from the occasional passing bus, the red-and-blue glare of police siren lights, and the occasional flashlight of a passerby. Eventually, a police officer lit a flare in the middle of the street.
We guarded our spaces on the line jealously, made a few grim jokes, but mostly just stood and stood and stood there, shifting our weight on aching feet, tired and glazed and ready to drop and knowing that our journey was only beginning. Early on, a woman behind me lit up a cigarette, endured a few glares from the people around her, and stubbed it out sullenly. She lit up again about two hours into the wait, looking around defiantly for opposition, but we were too tired to care anymore.
There was a definite us-against-them feeling when it came to the police. There were a few clustered near the front of the line, where the buses stopped; there were almost none at all behind that, so most of the crowd was left to fend for ourselves. In the darkness. At one point we were forced to stand next to a 6-foot-high wall of uncollected garbage bags. I was petrified that rats would emerge at any moment. In the darkness.
The fistfights and the garbage were nothing compared to the chaos at the front of the line. The policemen would shout things like, "HEWES STREET NEXT! STEP UP FOR HEWES STREET!" and this became the cue for the crowd behind us to surge forward, crushing us against the police barriers. After this happened a few times, a woman next to me begged a policeman to let her know when the bus to Jay Street was coming.
"Sir," I called out, "We're getting crushed here, can you ask them to step back?"
He blinked at me, pretended not to hear.
The women around me began chiming in with protests - those of us up against the barricades were trying to maintain some sense of order in the line, but every time they announced where the next bus was going, folks to the right and behind us took it as license to start crowding forward.
"Are you going to stand there and watch while we get crushed? Because if we die tonight, that's on you," I told him.
"Ma'am, I can only tell you where the bus is going. If you don't like it you can get a cab or walk home."
"I'm not complaining about the wait, I've been waiting over two hours, I just don't want to be crushed to death!"
"Ma'am, if you don't like it, you walk home or get a taxi."
"If we die tonight, that's on you!" I shouted. Yes, I was shouting at a police officer now. Surreal fucking day.
He smiled at me. "Have a nice day, ma'am."
"PLEASE, make them form separate lines for the different buses!"
"Have a nice day."
I finally made it onto the Atlantic Avenue bus. I was the very last person on, right at the front, my feet crossing the white line; for the first time in my life, the bus driver let it slide. Over the white line! Pandemonium, madness! The bus driver chatted pleasantly with me as we drove, telling me he'd been working since 5:20 am and had no idea when his shift would end, telling me about the barbecue that his family had last night to use up all of the leftover meat in the fridge, the potluck where neighbors came and they all had a big friendly feast and weathered the aftermath of this awful storm together. He was a nice Staten Island guy. He made me feel better, and when he dropped me off a block from Stephanie's apartment, I thanked him sincerely.
Then I got me some fried chicken, because I fucking earned it.
So, experiment over. I will be telecommuting to the extent possible until this mess gets worked out. The police don't use common sense and don't seem to want to maintain anything resembling order, and I don't trust my safety to those mobs. I feel very lucky that I have the option to do any work from home at all, and that I have an employer who is extremely sympathetic and supportive; most people in those lines don't have a choice, have to wait and risk their safety because it's this or unemployment.
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