3 on Thursday

What a crazy week last week was! I am happy to say I survived my first (and hopefully last) New York disaster. I was not around for 9/11 or the infamous summer blackout, but I have now had the full disaster experience with Hurricane Sandy. I’ll touch on the Hurricane in today’s “3 on Thursday,” but I’m not going to make this an entirely Hurricane-focused post because I’ve been living and breathing it for too long.

Sometimes, in dire circumstances, you just need to laugh. The Sunday before Sandy hit, I discovered Miguel Bloombito on Twitter (@ElBloombito). For those non-New Yorkers, our Mayor is famous for delivering news – whether for celebration or tragedy – in a monotone. He also attempts to speak Spanish at all these press conferences with zero effort towards the accent. He also manages to summarize 30 minutes worth of English speech into a minute and a half of Spanish. From this, a parody Twitter account emerged. Miguel Bloombito tweets in fabulous Spanglish and lent some levity to the dire situation we were all handling for the week following Sandy’s strike.

Losing power is one thing; losing water is another. It was all fun and games on Monday and Tuesday when we were drinking wine and painting our fingernails by candlelight; but once I woke up on Wednesday to find I could not flush my toilet, this hurricane officially became a pain in my rear end. I must say, seeing a New York disaster from the inside perspective is interesting. I come from a small town where we are banded together all the time, but when you move to New York, you learn to embrace the “every man for himself” attitude. You figure, a city this huge must be disjointed. But then tragedy strikes and there is a camaraderie like none other. Basically every storefront above the 39th St. power divide opened their doors to help those in need. Banks encouraged people to use the ATM area as a charging station and gyms allowed any New Yorker to use their locker room facilities to grab a warm shower. Beyond that, I have had so many people reach out to check on me, even offering to shelter me for a full week. I was touched. Compared to those in Staten Island and New Jersey, my loss of electricity, water, and heat was a mere inconvenience. I am so happy so many people have been turning out to help those in serious need. I took the compilation of photos above as I walked back to my apartment after showering at the gym. Above 39th St., life appears to go on as if nothing had happened. Below 39th St., however, it was a ghost town, illuminated only by the light packages (flares) that the city put up after we had lived in complete darkness for a couple days.