It was fifteen years ago today when a massive power grid outage found the lights going out on Broadway and well, pretty much everywhere else as well in this section of the Northeast. Are you old enough to remember this happening? I do and I was temping at a major investment banking house at the time doing some sort of technical hoodoo. I wasn’t writing any Metal articles yet but the time was drawing near for that to become the case. The photo below was a satellite image of the states and that sizable section of complete black on the East Coast was us. Good grief.

The incident occurred just after 4pm and of course everyone was still hard at their tasks. I remembered a “disruption” in the PC performance and vaguely recall a generator going on but it would be a short thing as my co-workers and I stopped what we were doing to figure this out. It wasn’t long before all were sent out of the building to make their way home in whatever fashion they could. The concern was what could have caused this to happen. Could it be another act of terrorism and had something destroyed power in the city? It didn’t seem to be the case and everywhere I looked, the people seemed collected and on the calm side which made moving about easier despite their being thousands of people at every turn. A friend had suggested we try to get a bus out of the city so I veered in the other direction towards 57th Street and once there determined that there was no way to get on a bus unless you rode on top of it like you see in those train videos from India. We still had daylight on our side so a hasty trek was made down Broadway with the plan of walking over the bridge back into Brooklyn and somehow getting to my apartment on 86th Street in Bay Ridge. Was I really walking home from the city? I guess I was and as I neared the Brooklyn Bridge I mused to myself that it was only 90 or so blocks once I got over the span. That’s doable right? Right? I remembered people walking too slow over the bridge and as someone who moves on the quick this was killing me but I am also chatty and made some travel companion friends along the way. One of them said that her friend was waiting on the other side and would most likely take me at least halfway to Bay Ridge since they had to go that way themselves. Getting to this dude took me about 7 blocks out of the path that I needed to stay on and of course when the woman and I found him, she got in and the ride was not extended to me. Truth be told I wouldn’t have given a complete stranger a life but also I guess that he was hoping to “get some” from his female friend with his “Knight in Shining Buick” rescue display. With her being a nervous wreck the whole walk I didn’t that was going to happen and I laugh at this today since I had hoped he wouldn’t after making me lose pace that much distance and being sidelined. A seven block veer is a problem when the night is coming up soon and the notion that there will be 0% light to guide you home is on your mind. I was both happy to have kept her company and also to have been rid of her since she was walking too slow anyway. I guess its safe to say that if we are ever in a “The Walking Dead” scenario that the slow pokes will not be in my command of the New Saviors at all.
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