Magic Jewball

all signs point to no

 

What? I can’t hear you guys over the sound of my AC!

Filed under : New York City
On July 24, 2006
At 4:20 pm
Comments : 14

You may or may not know this, but there’s a blackout going on here and it’s been on, or off I guess, for a week now. You might not have known it even if you lived here because it’s going on in Queens. That’s that piece of land to the east of us here in shiny Manhattan. You may remember it from such shows as “The King of Queens” (I’ve never actually seen that, but I can read a title as well as the rest of you) and “All in the Family.”

Yes, many of the folks in Queens have been without electricity in the steaming heat of July for a week. No phones, no lights, no motor car, not a single luxury. Like Robinson Crusoe, it’s primitive as can be. Well, I take that back, they have phones and cars, but I really love Gilligan’s Island. Also, no AC, no fans, no refrigerators, no grocery stores, no take-out food, no elevators, etc. Some have no water and/or no functioning toilets. Yesterday, I blew a circuit breaker and lost power to my fridge for 4 minutes and almost had a panic attack. I can’t begin to imagine a week of juicelessness.

The remarkable thing is, no one seems to care. Being who I am, I find the fact that no one cares even more interesting than the actual blackout. Today, for the first time, it made the front page of the NY Times. After a week. And I don’t ever hear anyone talking about it. They give it the lead story on the news and then move on. A few years ago, the entire city (and nearly a quarter of the country) didn’t have electricity for one night and everybody went nuts. That’s all that was on the radio news all night long. I know because I was up all night sweltering by candlelight listening to it. Now, they’re lucky if the mayor gets a word in about it.

But I guess it’s all location, location, location. I saw a woman in Queens on the news the other day saying indignantly, “if this was Manhattan, it would have been fixed by now!” Damn straight. I pay eight times as much as you for the same apartment. I expect my fridge to run, OK?

I just hope it’s fixed in time for the US Open. Because then I’ll care a lot.

 

 

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark – Electricity