Repost: Silence in the City

Just after Superstorm Sandy, I wrote this post about getting to work in the city:

As you all know, Kitty and I have spent the last few years living and loving our life in New York City. Our brownstone has been our base of operations for the past five years and many of our adventures have been documented on this blog.

On Monday, our family lived through our very first hurricane.  We were abundantly blessed as we did not have any damage to our home, loss of power or even internet service.  Seeing the devastation of lower Manhattan and New Jersey was an experience is cognitive dissonance.  Our lives have been normal in almost every way, while the lives of friends and co-workers have been disrupted beyond anything I wish to imagine.

Despite our blessings, life has changed dramatically for us in New York City.

On Wednesday I had to get to an appointment and then rehearsal in the city.  As you know, the trains only go so far as Brooklyn near the bridges.  From there, you have to get a shuttle bus to go across a bridge and then get to points in Manhattan.

When I came out in the sunshine of the day at Jay Street Metrotech station, I was greeted by the largest crowd I had ever seen.  All were waiting on line for the shuttle.  I could see the line was moving fairly quickly, but I could not find the end.

I knew that this would be a possibility and I had left the house in running gear and with the minimum supplies for the day.  Armed with that and an opera-singers almost pathological need for self-determination, I turned left and followed Jay Street to the pedestrian entrance to the Manhattan Bridge.

I picked up pace to an easy run and it took about ten minutes to cross the bridge to Canal Street.  Following the vacant thoroughfare of Chinatown to Broadway, I saw every shop gated at 11 a.m.  What should have been a packed street was almost devoid of cars, trucks and people.

I followed Broadway up to East 8th Street, running through the hollow streets to East 8th where I cut west to Greenwich and then up to 8th Avenue and 14th Street.  No traffic lights or significant number of people presented themselves to slow my pace.  In daylight, the city was serene and silent but for the occasional sirens or police convoys.

Only at 31st Street, did I start to see lights of the city again and by 34th Street, the city was almost completely back to normal.  There were more police, but otherwise, business carried on as usual.

I spent the rest of the day alternating between my day job and rehearsal.  I walked out of the rehearsal space at 7:50 p.m.  Darkness had settled over the city and the lights and life of the Lincoln Center area and Broadway prevented any real running pace to be achieved.

I alternated running and walking through the crowds of Columbus Circle, down 8th Avenue where I saw the crane dangling over Carnegie Hall.  The trip to 34th Street and 8th Avenue took almost a half hour because of the crowds and occasional police barricades.

It was again at 31st Street, south of Madison Square Gardens, that I felt the scourge again of the hurricane.  I ran, lit only by the headlamps of cars down to 23rd Street where there was a large police lighting system set up.

On the dark sidewalks I could pick up my pace and I ran by occasional people trying to live a normal life- walking dogs, going for walks with flashlights and talking on their cellphones on the way back to their homes.

The run down 8th Avenue was lit by flares that marked intersections.  Police officers guided traffic.  I retraced my steps down Greenwich.  The whole street was pitch black, there were no flares and the street was completely deserted.  The only lights I saw were Gusto and Fiddlesticks, bars lit entirely by candles.  They were so empty and strangely beautiful and inviting that I nearly stopped to go in.

From there, I continued down the flare-lit Sixth Avenue until Canal Street.  It was near pitch dark as I followed Canal East to the pedestrian entrance to the Manhattan Bridge.  As I moved up the dark west side of the bridge, there were a few more people making the commute in both directions.  Almost halfway across, I met the first lights of Brooklyn.

I finally ended up at the Jay Street Metrotech station where I walked onto a train that then took my the last stretch home.

All in all it took about 1.5 hours each way to do the commute.

In my next post, I'll tell you a bit about my Thursday commute.  Following that, I'd like to share some of our families reflections on how this experience has colored our experiences of New York.