I decided that it made the most sense to write one email with the entire story start to finish and
then email it to everyone, rather than answer everyone's separate questions one at a time. With
apologies to the relatives whose email addresses I don't have either in my phone or at work;
please forward on to whoever you think would be interested. I will also be posting a version of
this on the Arcadia blog for my customers to read as well.
Ian and I heard about the storm approaching on Friday and decided to head straight for Trader
Joes and Whole Foods (the two supermarkets in our neighborhood that we shop at) to stock up
ASAP so we could get there before they sold out on everything. Sure enough the lines were
immense but the shelves were still fully stocked. I got on line with a bag of sweet potatoes while
Ian filled up a cart with chickens and briskets, milk, eggs, cheese, and mounds of veggies, and 30
minutes and $185 later we were done at Trader Joes. After bringing all of that home I went back
out to Whole Foods, expecting even longer lines, but the place was quiet, no line at all, so I got
the few things I needed that (the much cheaper) Trader Joes doesn't carry (Friendship cottage
cheese and protein powder) and $60 lighter, headed home to a now very well stocked kitchen.
Sunday seems to have been the day when it dawned on most people that this really was going to
be a huge storm and the stores really got crazy busy. I walked past Whole Foods several times
that day and each time the line TO GET IN was 20+ people long. God only knows how long the
check out line was. We were busy at Arcadia as well but not crazy, just a steady flow of people
buying tea lights and pillar candles just in case plus the usual customers shopping or presents.
The weather reports were very unclear about when and where Sandy would hit. The main issue
was that Sandy was going to collide with two other storm systems just as she made landfall on
the east coast which would mean huge storm surges and severe wind damage wherever she
ended up. By Sunday morning NYC had already decided to shut down the subways at 7pm so
that the MTA could protect the system from further damage, so I sent my employee home at 5
and ran the shop on my own until closing at 8pm. It was clearly getting storm like, with more
clouds coming in, occasional drizzles and temperature dropping a bit, but nothing that suggested
it was going to be particularly bad. The storm was not supposed to start until sometime on
Monday, when the store is usually closed, so we figured we had lucked out and that by Tuesday
it would all be over and we would open as usual.
Monday Ian and I ran some other unimportant errands as usual on our day off and went to the
gym to workout, all the while wondering when or if Sandy was going to make herself felt. I went
in to the store in the late afternoon to do some paperwork, move whatever was on the floor of the
store's storage space up off the floor just in case, and generally to give the store a final once over
before the storm hit. I moved the few perishable items away from the door area, put some towels
down near the door, locked up, rolled up our awning (and then did the same for no less than three
of my neighbors whose employees had forgotten to do the same!) and went home at around 6.
Still no Sandy, although the news had said it would make landfall by 4pm.
I checked the news again and it said Sandy had slowed down; a very bad sign because that meant
that the storm surge and the wind damage would be worse, but the storm path had shifted south
so that NYC was no longer within the cone of the storm itself. By 8pm I had posted to Facebook,
wondering where Sandy was. Friends in NJ were quick to say she had arrived in full force there
but in NYC it was barely even drizzling most of the time. Suddenly at 8:15 she hit NYC with full
force. The wind most have tripled in speed to 40+ mph with wind gusts that were over 100 mph
at higher elevations like amidst the skyscrapers in midtown. The rain started really pouring
down, and the bad news started posting to Facebook from all over. Flooding from the East River.
Hudson River Park being swallowed by the Hudson. Eight foot waves in Long Island bay.
Hoboken disappearing under water. Water rushing into all the tunnels. Then at 8:30 Con Edison
announced that they were preemptively shutting power to all of Area A in Manhattan, which was
already under mandatory evacuation. This was to protect equipment so they could get it restarted
more quickly after the storm. Just 10 minutes later there was a large blue flash that lit up the sky
and the lights went out. We heard soon after on Facebook that the flash was the East 14th St
power station blowing up after it was swamped by the East River.
We had decided to take the dogs out for their evening walk very early since both the dogs and
their humans happen to hate walking in the rain, so when the lights went out we were already
home for the night. Of course, being a Gurewitsch household, we had at least 100 candles in the
house. We lit some, found the flashlights and ate dinner, not particularly concerned. We assumed
the power outage would be a short term thing and once the storm passed they would fix the
power station and it would go right back on. Ian had the forethought to full up the bathtub and all
the water containers in the apartment, just in case - and sure enough within an hour we had no
water at the tap. We went to bed with the windows cracked open just enough to let some air in.
With the power out, the building's vents had stopped working and the apartment started getting
stuffy immediately. The howling from the wind, along with the booming of the wind against the
air conditioner, was loud enough to wake me several times during the night. Most of you know I
have literally slept through earthquakes, so you can appreciate how loud it was.
Tuesday morning dawned cloudy but mostly dry so we hiked down the 14 floors with the dogs
and walked down to the Hudson River to see what we could see. There were lots of leaves and
some downed trees scattered about on our block, but you couldn't really begin to understand
what had happened until you got just a block and a half from our building, to 22nd street
between 10th and 11th avenues. As we walked down the block the high water line became very
clear. At 10th ave it was barely visible above the sidewalk but within 20 feet it had risen to 2 feet
and by mid block it had climbed to 4 feet. By 11th avenue the water line was past my shoulder
height - I would say about 5.5 feet. We walked past as a gallery owner was opening his front gate
and got a peek inside at the disaster that the storm had left behind. The Fire Department had
broken in one panel in every door or window of every building to let the water that had forced
it's way in all out so we could see that every business on that block was devastated. Increasingly
nervous about Arcadia, we walked the dogs back along 23rd street but once again saw the
remarkable difference just a few dozen feet meant. On one end of the block the water had
swamped businesses and apartment building lobbies. On the other end of the same block
everything looked normal. We walked over to the store and everything was fine. No flooding, no
damage, the towels on the floor under the door didn't even get wet. Relieved, we went home to
have breakfast and get to work.
Based upon my experience from the blackout in 2003 when I was held up at gunpoint in the
store, I was not willing to let customers into Arcadia with the lights out but I figured it would be
okay to set up a card table under our awning in front of the store and have Ian help me shuttle
candles outside so we could sell them. We brought the dogs with us as well so Ian could keep me
company and help with sales the entire day and skip walking up and down the 14 floors to the
apartment to walk the dogs at 2pm. We did a huge amount of business, selling out on tea lights
and unscented pillars by midday and then mostly selling the more expensive tapers and scented
votives the rest of the day. I was even able to process credit card transactions by using my
Square application on my iPhone, which lets me swipe people's credit cards on my phone.
Verizon service was slow but never failed completely, unlike AT&T which was and still is so
bad that Mayor Bloomberg called AT&Ts CEO to complain and two hours later AT&T had
trucks on the streets to boost their signals. From what I understand it didn't help much. Cell
phones become lifelines in this sort of situation - thank God I have Verizon.
We closed up shop at 4 pm, as soon as it started getting dark. I had no interest in being on the
street with lots of cash on me in the middle of a blacked out city. We went home, I walked the
dogs while Ian got dinner organized, then we ate dinner. After dinner I went back out again to
find someplace to charge my phone. I asked my doorman (who lived a few blocks away in a
building that has it's own generators so they never lost power) where I could find a charging
station and he suggested the police station at 35th and 9th so I headed north. On my way I passed
a very fancy pizza store called Co. at 24th and 9th Avenue that Ian and I had eaten at at least a
half dozen times in the past few years since they opened and noticed that #1, they had power
(they were part of that housing project) and that #2, there was a group of people charging their
phones right outside their front door. They had an outlet outside, probably for when they have
outdoor table service, and someone had plugged in a power strip so that people at a time could
charge their phones up. Yay! Saved from the long walk, I started talking to the other people
charging, was offered the next available slot and started charging my phone within a few
minutes. One of the other people there was a local resident who is also a customer of mine and a
teacher PS 11, which is a beneficiary of one Arcadia's upcoming First Monday events, so we had
a nice time chatting about the school and the neighborhood in general. Just a few minutes after
that ,unfortunately, someone (I assume a manager from her demeanor) came outside from the
restaurant and cheerfully asked us to please stop charging our phones "because they need to
conserve power". I yanked my charger from the power strip immediately - I had asked when I
started if it was okay to charge here and everyone said "of course" so I assumed that Co. had said
it was okay. I was also furious with them, that they would be so mean to their own neighbors to
prevent people from charging their phones on the flimsy excuse that they need to "conserve
power". Utterly ridiculous. If they really needed to conserve power they could have, oh, I don't
know, turned off some of the Edison light bulbs they light their restaurant with (they are
extraordinarily wasteful bulbs). Everyone could clearly see that no one in the housing project
was "conserving power" with TVs on in apartments, lights on everywhere, etc. I believe that the
management of Co. simply didn't like the caliber of people standing at their door and shooed
them away lest they discourage the more upscale crowd they prefer. I heard from another
customer of mine the next day that they were letting all their paying customers inside charge
their phones for free. Needless to say I will never be a paying customer of theirs again.
I walked north to 30th and Ninth to a Dunkin Donuts/Baskin Robins store that was past the
blackout dividing line and was letting everyone charge their phones and check email with free
wifi. I met another neighbor of mine there who waited with me until my phone was fully charged
(it was nearly dead at that point) to walk home with me since by then it was completely dark
outside and the streets were getting a bit "hairy". Back up 14 flights of stairs, and off to bed early
since none of us had slept well Monday night. The fridge was still cold. I had put all my Blue Ice
Freezits in the freezer before the storm hit and Monday evening I put them into the fridge next to
the milk and the cottage cheese.
Wednesday was a repeat of Tuesday. Walk the dogs down the stairs, around the block, up the
stairs, give them breakfast and then quickly get our breakfast out of the fridge along with leftover
dinner for lunches. I dropped a pile of extra candles off with the doorman to distribute to other
building tenants if they needed it and by 10:30 we were set up on the street and selling candles
all day. We kept a transistor radio going at the table as well for news and to encourage people to
stand around the table since that would attract other customers. Business was still brisk but since
we had sold out already on all the most affordable stuff on Tuesday we didn't do nearly as much
business overall. I checked in via text with my employees to make sure everyone was okay and
told them to stay home. There was no way for them to get to work and Ian and I were more than
enough to staff the table. It was also getting colder and it was not so pleasant standing outside for
hours on end. Ian and I starting taking turns being inside to warm up until quitting time at 4, then
back home for an early dinner, another shlep downstairs with the dogs for their evening walk
(this time in complete darkness except for flashlights and headlights from cars) then back
upstairs. We both had books to read and lots of candle light to read by, so we spent a quiet
evening reading until bedtime.
Thursday was another repeat of Wednesday, with a few changes. Ian and I decided we really
both needed to check and respond to piles of emails that had been building all week. My phone
was having a problem with some of it's settings so I could only read work emails but not
respond, so we trekked up 7th Avenue to find the first Starbucks with power and found one at
7th & 27th Street. Packed, but open for business. It took almost an hour to get online and then
service was incredibly slow, but eventually we got online and got our work done and then
headed for the store. We opened later, around 1 PM, and noticed a change almost immediately.
People were starting to get anxious about the power, quizzing us relentlessly about rumors and
information we may have from the news. Many people were desperate for batteries and the few
stores that had them were gouging, charging as much as $10 for 3 batteries. Images of what had
happened in NJ, Staten Island and Queens (more than 100 houses burned down in one massive
fire) were really pretty astonishing and put our situation into some perspective, but I think
everyone was just starting to get tired of the sheer pile of annoyances that living without power
and in many cases water creates. Thankfully the store still had water and we have a shower in the
bathroom so we took (very cold) showers to clean up a bit and refilled our water pitchers and
canteens every day at work. Sales were slower as more people abandoned Chelsea entirely for
neighborhoods north of us that still had power, but we decided to stick it out at least until
Saturday when we figured the dog food would spoil (our dogs eat raw, usually frozen meat
which was slowly defrosting in the now warm freezer) and we would be running out of food for
us as well. We had lost almost no food at that point; an open container of milk had turned by
Tuesday, but the fresh milk bought in our last minute shopping was fine. The cottage cheese was
fine (bizarre, but true) and we were defrosting chicken in the fridge to help keep the fridge cold,
which seemed to really help. Even Thursday morning, day 3 with no power, the milk was still
coldish.
News was that we might get power back by Friday evening to Saturday evening, so I texted my
employees and arranged for them to come in on Friday to help start setting the store for
Christmas. We usually start setting the store up the day after Halloween so that everything is on
display by November 5th, the start of the store anniversary sale (12th year this year!), so we were
way behind schedule and even without lights there was lots we could do. Leon lives uptown so
he never lost power and could walk from 34th Street, where the subways were now stopping due
to the power outage. Noni lives in Lodi, NJ but never lost power and by Friday the NJ Transit
buses were running again, so she would also be able to walk from Port Authority Bus Terminal
on 34th Street. Both were mostly just happy to get back to work, going stir crazy at home. When
I got home I had the belated brilliant thought that I could charge my phone by plugging the USB
jack into my laptop, which I wasn't using anyway since there was no cable internet service. Very
happy that I had eliminated the need to wander Manhattan at night to find a charging station, I
plugged my phone in when I got home and by 9PM I had a fully charged phone again. Using
Facebook every night I was able to stay in touch with friends near and far, updating people on
what was happening at Arcadia and how things were going. The internet service at home was a
bit slow and choppy, but it was enough to keep us well informed of what was going on. By
Thursday night Ian had finished his book so we played a dozen rounds of backgammon and then
called it a night.
On Friday morning, while Noni and Leon worked in the store using flashlights and candles, Ian
and I sold more candles outside. Even though we were hopeful that power might be restored that
evening, many people were not taking chances, given how spotty news was. Of course, north of
Chelsea life had pretty much returned to normal, with buses running normally, restaurants filled
with people, supermarkets fully stocked with food, etc. In Chelsea, we started referring to us as
East Berlin and the rest of Manhattan as West Berlin. I was increasingly irritable myself, getting
fed up with things that normally don't bother me at all and by 4PM I was very much done for the
day. We all headed home and hoped for the best for getting power back that night. Thank God, at
8:45PM, while we were napping after dinner, the lights came on. As cheers and honking horns
rang through the neighborhood, we blew out all the candles and started trying to put the
apartment back in order. Within a few minutes, cold water returned, and by 11:45PM we had
enough hot water so I could shower properly and shave for the first time since Monday. I went to
bed a very happy man.
Today it's Sunday, and were rushing to try to catch up on getting Christmas organized here at
Arcadia. We still have only spotty internet service at home, but I understand that Time Warner
Cable is "working on it". Without proper internet service, I still don't really have a good sense of
the devastation in NJ and the outer boroughs because images just don't download at home and
viewing images on my cellphone is just not the same. I am mostly just extremely grateful that no
one I know was hurt or had serious damage and that Arcadia got through the storm pretty much
unscathed. We lost a minor amount of business this past week but its nothing compared to many
other businesses in the neighborhood that were closed all week or lost inventory from either
flooding or loss of power. I'm also especially grateful to the building staff who stayed with us,
keeping us safe from uninvited visitors trying to get into the building, being a central news
resource for many tenants, and even shlepping recycleables down all those stairs from the bins
on every floor. The building is incredibly lucky to have such a great staff. I understand the
management company had virtually no storm planning and I talked with a board member this
morning about future plans - I suspect we really all need to assume such storms are going to be a
part of our lives going forward. I will be purchasing some sort of large battery pack for my
phone to give me a week's worth of power for my phone and 4-5 powerful LED lanterns for the
store and apartment so we can stay in business as usual during a blackout in the future, as long as
there is cellphone service.
Thursday evening Ian and I went up to the roof of our building to take a look around at the city
and the blackout and to take some pictures, since I had solved the problem of recharging my
phone so I was no longer conserving power. The roofdeck on our building has a great view north
to midtown, east to all of Gramercy and the East Village down to the City Hall area and south to
the West Village and the Financial District. I attached a picture of the view looking east and
north towards the Empire State Building. The second picture is of dinner Thursday evening flowers were courtesy of Whole Foods, which was handing them out free. Who says a blackout
has to be a miserable experience? That dinner was particularly good and I thought worthy of
taking a picture; soup from left over gravy that had defrosted in the now warm freezer, potted
chicken and veggies, cucumber salad, brown rice with green onions, and grapefruit for dessert.