\t\t\t\ti feel like i missed out on the earthquake fun. i felt nothing, whilst
\nwalking around outside, toward Queens Plaza. the first inkling i had that
\nanything odd was afoot was when i noticed dozens of people standing
\noutside of the apartment buildings and places of business. it seemed
\nstrange, but perfectly acceptable, for crowds to gather for no apparent
\nreason except that it was a beautiful, beautiful day. i did overhear
\nsomeone talking into his cell phone, saying “5.8” and “Virginia” and then
\nearthquake, but that bit of overheard circumstancia didn’t set off any
\nalarms in my head that an earthquake had struck. in fact i remember
\ndismissing that possibility out of hand, puzzled at where an earthquake
\ncould realistically have hit for there to be any impact here. then i
\nforgot about it, not putting anything together until i got to queens
\nplaza. at queens plaza i saw hundreds of people standing around, and
\nthat’s when i knew something was going on. the government office buildings
\nwere all evacuated, with people complaining about cell phones not
\nworking. i asked a police officer what was going on. i saw the crowds and
\nexpected they were gathered around *something*, but the police officer
\ntold me there had been an earthquake in Virginia, felt here, and that
\n“it’s really bad in Manhattan.” i looked toward Manhattan and saw the Citi
\nbuilding standing there, as straight as ever, not turned 45 degrees to the
\nleft or flipped asunder. it looked fine, as did everything else i could
\nsee of Manhattan, but maybe she meant there were riots and looting and
\npillaging and fornication in the streets. whatever she meant, i was going
\nto Manhattan anyway, so i expected to find out just how bad it was.<\/p>\n
i was asked not to walk on the sidewalk outside the Department of
\nEducation building (where the famous “Rubber Room” is, or used to be). i
\ndidn’t flinch at the request, but noted it as an example of security
\nguards gone amok at any opportunity to assert their awesomeness. i guess
\nthey feared the building would collapse under the mighty forces of this
\nhorrendous shaking of the earth, or perhaps they expected mass suicides
\nfrom those left behind, those who refused to evacuate and found themselves
\nlocked in, imperiled and serving at death’s pleasure.<\/p>\n
i crossed the street, then, to where the few hundred people were standing.
\nQuintessentially, a bicyclist came racing into the area, spewing
\nobscenities and ordering everyone out of his way. “Get the FUCK outta the
\nbike lane!” he yelled. In response everybody laughed at him. One man said
\n“It’s an emergency, man,” but the bicyclists was having none of it. “No,
\nit’s not, it’s a BIKE LANE!”<\/p>\n
I don’t know if he was just ignorant of the situation (he probably was)
\nbut it seemed like pretty routine cyclist primacy being asserted at a
\nrather inappropriate time and place. It reminded me of a time on 34th
\nStreet, in Manhattan, when a bicyclist raced the wrong way up the middle
\nof the street, causing a few cars to screech to a halt to avoid hitting
\nher. people standing nearby saw the near-collision and gave the asshole
\nbicyclist a thunderous round of applause for her douchery.<\/p>\n
i don’t know how much success today’s “get the fuck outta my bike lane”
\nguy had in forcing people to get the fuck out of his way, but i fucking
\nhope he got wherever the fuck he was going.<\/p>\n
coincidentally, i had been making calls from payphones along my way,
\ncalling in to a voicemail i set up for a project in which i call
\nmyself from payphones to report in on random thoughts. eventually i might
\ncollect the messages and write them out, but i’d rather get it down to a
\nscience whereby i can use the recordings as-is. at any rate, it turned out
\nthat with the cell phones knocked out there was a lot of looking around,
\npeople needing to find a phone but unable to do so, since most of the
\npayphones around Queens Plaza are gone. so there i was, unintentionally
\nhogging a valued resource in the closest thing we’ve had to an emergency
\nsince the blackout of 2003.<\/p>\n
i walked over the Queensboro Bridge, thinking to myself, is this really
\nwhere i want to be when the aftershocks come? i had flashes of faded
\nmemory from a Richard Gere movie, the Mothman Prophecies, in which, if i
\nremember correctly, a bridge is destroyed. the Queensboro Bridge shakes
\nand rattles so much that i might not notice an 8.2 earthquake if i
\nhappened to be on that span when it hit.<\/p>\n
the oddest thing i saw all day was from the bridge. the Roosevelt Island
\nTram was descending into the station on Roosevelt Island. a
\nwell-dressed man with a cardboard cylinder in his left hand was standing
\non top of the tram — on the roof. i had never seen this before, and the
\nman’s resemblance to Ben Affleck was disconcerting, but at the time i
\nimagined that the Tram had been stuck on account of the earthquake and
\nthis one man either freaked out and climbed onto the roof or else he
\nbravely volunteered to do some kind of manual steering of the vessel to
\nbring it back to Roosevelt Island after the earthquake rendered it
\nimpotent. then i considered the possibility that it really was Ben
\nAffleck, and this was some scene from a movie being filmed.<\/p>\n
i snapped a few pictures, and when i looked at them later i concluded that
\nthe man on the top of the Tram was an inspector, or engineer, or whatever,
\ndoing some kind of work or structural assessment of the tram. in the
\npictures i could see that there wer no passengers on the tram. there was
\na ladder on the floor and two people who didn’t appear to be passengers.<\/p>\n
so, my brief moment of fancy that the earthquake had somehow compromised
\nthe Roosevelt Island Tram was quickly vanquished into the dull reality
\nthat this was some routine activity.<\/p>\n
it made me imagine, though, a trend that might evolve, in which people
\ndare each other to ride on top of the tram as it travels over the East
\nRiver. oh, sakes alive, i get a little nauseous just thinking about
\nthat… i know that a fad in riding atop subway cars has come and gone at
\ntimes, usually ending with a brutal and messy death, but riding atop the
\nTram would be a new level of daredevilry.<\/p>\n
as i crossed the Queensboro i thought, without getting maudlin or
\nhyperoverreactive, about September 11, 2001, in particular the beginning
\nof the long walk from 34th street and 9th avenue in Manhattan to Astoria.
\nas i walked along 35th Street in Manhattan i looked at all the tall
\nbuildings in teh garment district, tall and dark but seemingly human on
\nthat day, and i remember thinking “Is all this going to be gone soon?” at
\nthe time, with the twin towers smoldering and the smoke rising within my
\nview, it seemed like a reasonable question to ponder. in retrospect it
\nmakes me chuckle, as do other events from that day, the inane remonstrance
\nof seemingly inevitable epic doom.<\/p>\n
and yet the memory of that thought still pains me, for it exposes the
\nsincere fright and the fear of the day, and the days that followed.<\/p>\n
today, though, i had the same thought, but from a more realistic point of
\nview. holy shit, i thought, what if all this really *was* gone? what if
\nthe earthquake pulled the magic carpet from under Manhattan, sending the
\ntowers and the trillions of dollars of concentrated wealth into the waters
\nof New York Harbor, the East River, and the Hudson. Mannahatta would rise
\nagain from beneath the architectural sticks of conspicuous wealth, the
\nimpacted nature stacked under the pavement like so many centuries of
\npancakes would replenish itself, triumphing over and proving feeble the
\nseemingly invincible march of humanity.<\/p>\n
i got to Manhattan and, daggumit, i found no riots, no looting, no
\npandemonium or chaos. i don’t know what the police officer meant by
\nsaying it was really bad in Manhattan, but she must have heard something
\nsomewhere that made sense to her enough to share it with this passing
\nstranger.<\/p>\n
i made a few more calls from payphones along 1st Avenue, noting that abotu
\nhalf of them don’t work, or do not work as expected, and then i walked
\nback over the Queensboro, opting out of a subway ride in anticipation of
\ncataclysmic aftershocks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
i feel like i missed out on the earthquake fun. i felt nothing, whilst walking around outside, toward Queens Plaza. the first inkling i had that anything odd was afoot was when i noticed dozens of people standing outside of the apartment buildings and places of business. it seemed strange, but perfectly acceptable, for crowds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-text","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paumAn-tM","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}