I have decided to bring my blog out of semi-retirement to give everyone the run down about the events surrounding this hurricane. No one I know really has a television, so this storm was pretty much hearsay until about Friday afternoon. I get to work and my bosses are losing their shit because we are located a mere blocks walk from the waterfront, and keeping up with their general preparedness for most things, lack flood insurance. So with over a million dollars worth of motorcycles and equipment housed in our facility, I spent a large part of the day breaking the news to customers and moving shit off the floor. Sand bags were brought in, supplies were purchased, and with my caring, empathetic heart, I grumbled about just hoping my damn vacation wasn't ruined.
I am not a particularly panicky individual (unless its a freaking earthquake, and then you had better get your kids out of my way because I will trample them to get to the door first..), but after they had announced the evacuation of millions of people from the city and decided to shut down the entire transit system at noon on Saturday, I started to take a little bit of notice. More so because transit has only been shut down 2 other times in NY history, and that was on 9/11 and in 2005 when the metro workers went on strike. So by take notice, I don't mean that I went and punched people in the face for the last pack of batteries or case of water, I mean that I noticed the inherent flaws in this plan.
Coastal areas were ordered to be evacuated by 5pm on Saturday evening, yet there would be no public transportation starting at noon. Now I am no statistical analyst, but that just sounds retarded. You want these people to get the hell out, but you are going to halt the one way that more than half of New Yorkers use to get around. Okaaaaay. Also, the amount of shelters provided by the city, wouldn't even be able to house a quarter of the people evacuated. It might also be noted that a good deal of the evacuated were Housing Projects, people that most likely lacked the resources to find alternate travel or living situations. Neat-o. Any one ever hear the story of the Titanic??
Also, all airports were to be shut down at noon. I thought I was in the clear, I had been earnestly clicking back and forth between Virgin Americas website and the status of JFK. All flights were still a go as of 1 am. JFK was to close its doors at noon, and my flight was scheduled at 11:45, so I assumed that we would be okay since the storm wasn't even estimated to arrive in NY until 2 am SUNDAY morning. Well, its a good thing I decided to sit on hold with Virgin America for not one but TWO hours. When a very frazzled gentleman finally answered my phone call, I was told all outbound flights from JFK were canceled from Saturday morning til Monday afternoon. My usual response in situations like this is to yell and belittle the defensless phone monkey until I get my way, but he was genuinely apologetic and had probably been yelled at no fewer than 500 times that evening, so I spared him. My flight was changed until Monday afternoon and we got comped 2 extra days so that my stay wouldn't be affected. I guess thats the most I could squeeze out of Virgin, so I let it go. Now all there was left to do was wait.
I woke up Saturday afternoon around 1 expecting some sort of pre-disaster storm action, and found that it wasn't even fucking raining. It was almost 80 degrees and muggy as hell, but it sure didn't look like any of that would have stopped a plane from taking off. Now I am pissed. I also realize that because my boyfriend and I were planning on making a break for it during the storm, we were sorta ill prepared. I still wasn't completely convinced the situation was going to be as bad as Mayor Bloomberg was making it sound, but if by chance, "they" were right, I didn't want to be caught with my pants down sans flashlight. I made the call to my roommates who were in possession of beer, water and candles but without much food. We had food and weed, and no beer and water, so we decided we should join forces. We headed from Bill's house back to Bushwick where we were going to set up shop for Hurricane Party 2011.
Now, I don't know if the media touched on it at all, but a New Yorkers sense of "preparation" largely consisted of fridges full of beer and water, and an apartment full of amusing company to wile away the night with. Everyone seemed most concerned about weather or not this meant we all had the weekend off. Alas, the ONE upside of transit shut down. The perfect excuse. We settled in for the long haul, checking updates via weather.com, posting at the window waiting for a hobo to fly by in a gale gust of wind, and waiting for some action, and waiting, and waiting, aaaaand waiting. We had 2 pots of coffee, played made up drinking games, baked a cake for Sagey's Hurricane Birthday, and waited and waited some more. I was still sore over my flight, so I was determined to be bitter until I saw some real catastrophe type shit. As the hours wound down and 2 am approached, the wind was pretty hectic, the rain was coming down in sheets, but nothing close to the hype I was seeing on the interwebs. Family was calling to make sure I was still alive, and I just yawned into the phone and smoked another cigarette on the fire escape. Talk about anti-climactic.
I know it sounds amazingly retarded and selfish to say that I am a little disappointed to not have some crazy amazing story about how I survived Hurricane Irene, but its true. The city spent some odd million dollars on this hype. And as I learned from some seasoned New Yorkers, Bloomberg was mostly just covering his ass for the lack of judgment he showed during the major winter blizzards. I know they say "better to be prepared than blah blah blah", but I think the city could have went about this with a little less media driven frenzy and a little more...whats the phrase?? Oh yeah, common fucking sense. We are an island, we are surrounded by water. Isn't there some better precautions set into place to get us through something like this?? Los Angeles has spent millions of dollars making sure our city doesn't crumble into pieces during an earthquake, there is no way a seaboard metropolis can't get its shit together for a hurricane? Absurd I say, absurd.
So, even though this storm was probably much more exciting for those of you watching the footage on the blockbuster news from afar, it did afford all of us an unexpected day to hang out with good people, get drunk, stuff our faces and try our hand at conversation. All in all, the most pleasant disaster I've ever encountered. And my heart does go out to all of those on the eastern seaboard that get trampled by this hurricane, but maybe that will teach to you stop rebuilding houses in a town that gets consistently trampled by Mother Nature every season. And on that note, see ya Monday Los Angeles.
