Category Archives: New York City

Survival Stories from Zone C – A First Look at the Aftermath of Hurricane Irene

Posted on by
Reply

“You’re in Zone C,” a special Hurricane Irene version of Google Maps told me. “And you’ll maybe experience major flooding if the storm somehow gets a lot worse than it already is. But probably not.” Like the rest of Manhattan’s residents, it was time to panic/blow things out of proportion. Rushing past apocalyptically long-lined Duane Reades and empty city bakeries toward Target on 116th street, I prayed the droves of people cleaning out flashlight/water bottle aisles from Battery Park to Central Park hadn’t made it up to 116th st yet. I was wrong.

The flashlights (flashlight aisle pictured above) were nowhere to be found. In fact, it seemed almost everything in the store was gone, save for those Pringles, which no one seemed to be interested in. They’re way, way overpriced, after all. Nowhere near as good as regular potato chips. Still, we managed to stock our “emergency rations bunker closet” with everything we thought we would need.

With enough water to last us years and years, Hello Panda cookies from Chinatown, a medium-sized watermelon, and extra soy sauce, just in case something happened to the soy sauce I already had in the cupboard, we were ready. We taped the windows, said one last thoughtful compliment to each other (just in case they were our last words on earth. I was told I had nice calves), and began waiting it out.

Minutes turned to hours, and after unsuccessfully trying to find an english version of True Grit again and again for what seemed like days, it was finally morning. And it was time to survey the damage. In fact, as a self-titled “Hurricane Overreaction Correspondent” in my neighborhood of East Harlem, it was my duty to.


East Harlem, though visibly bruised and battered, is eventually going to be okay. The trash cans uprooted can probably just be stood back up by people walking by who have an extra second or two, while the branches down may require two people (as per the OSHA regulations I remember from working at Target) to remove them from the sidewalk.

A rough estimate of the damages in East Harlem due to Irene run, at this point, about $14 – $16, depending on how many issues of “El Especialito” were contained in the El Especialito newspaper machine pictured above. That number could have easily reached $2014, if that branch had hit that car.

The real fallen “heroes” of East Harlem, however, are the cheap deli-bought black umbrellas. Though these $7-$10 items don’t normally make it through a regular rainstorm in New York, anyway, we found an unseasonably high number of them within a few blocks this morning. They did the best they could, and we’re proud of their sacrifices.

Perhaps the strangest and most alarming piece(s) of debris found is pictured above. Whether it was one person who lost a relatively decent looking Nike shoe, bottom jaw dentures and leather mask, or three separate people, it should be noted that these items appear to be okay. To the owner(s): if you’re out there, and if you’re looking for these things, they’re just past the 110th street 6 train stop going west. By the dumpsters. Hurry, because the looters’ll grab these up so quick if you don’t.

Though the hurricane was not nearly as bad in New York City as Bloomberg yelled to us on the television, there’s still a lot of damage elsewhere and a good amount of people who didn’t make it. My heart goes out to their families.

Photo Essay: New York, After Osama.

Posted on by
Reply

Note: You can find this article (and others) on my new site, http://www.TwelveBitterPeaches.com! This site will be used primarily for photo essays, so check out both often and enjoy!

Sitting in a chilly, empty subway car racing towards Times Square last night, I was a bit nervous about what I was going to find. I’d heard that there was a “celebration” picking up speed on 7th avenue, but didn’t know any of the details beyond the general statement. And my nervousness was grounded in historical fact…

I’m from Pittsburgh,  after all, where “celebrations” are never just celebrations… Inevitably, someone always climbs a traffic light pole and somehow (with superhuman capabilities I’m imagining) manages to tear the light itself down. There’s always a car that gets flipped for no rational reason at all by groups of kids who never once even got a detention in high school. There’s typically a dude carrying around a speed limit sign with a huge mound of earth still attached to the bottom (again, superhuman capabilities). And riot police, saddled up on angry, foreboding death horses, always charge down the street to break it all up to the tune of 18 and 19 year old girls screaming for their lives. This is not what I wanted to find.

Man Raises Flag over Times Square in Celebration

And it’s not what I found. I found others exactly like myself – emotionally overcome by the scope and importance of the news… people who wanted to not just celebrate Osama’s death, but also the healing that can now take place in America. We were there to remember the (arguably) most horrific event of this nation’s young history, and those the day (and ensuing years) took from us. I have more respect than I’ve ever had for this country, and I want to thank the people of New York for being so respectful in this “celebration.” I’m going to stop talking and let the rest of the pictures speak for themselves. I think they do a pretty good job of it. Enjoy!

A Boy and his Father Celebrate the Historic Night Together

Elated Man Joins the Celebration with a Huge Flag

Man Shields a Remembrance Candle from the Wind in Time Square

Scores of American Flags Rise over Times Square

Young Boy Waves Flag under the Glowing Ticker Tape

FDNY Firefighter's Emotions are Gauged by the Press

A Young Girl Reports from Times Square while her Sister Watches the Historic Celebration

New Yorkers Share the Light with Each Other

Man Wrapped in American Flag Witnesses History

That’s all for now! I have hundreds of others that I’m sure I’ll share with you over the coming days/weeks, but these are the ones that had the greatest impact on me. If you’re interested, you can order prints of these photos right here. I want to close by urging everyone reading this to do everything they can to help maintain the incredible level of unity we’re all feeling and experiencing all over America right now. We really can do anything if we unite together towards a common purpose, and I hope we all take a lesson from what unfolded last night, and what will continue to unfold for days, weeks, months and hopefully years.

Notes on the Everyday Trials and Tribulations of Spending Winter in NYC

Posted on by
Reply

Most of us would agree that winter isn’t much fun in most cities and towns in the cold portion of the world, ski resort towns and mountain villages excluded. If there isn’t any real form of winter entertainment in a given place, the freezing cold air and the angry people it creates aren’t much fun to deal with. If you live in New York City and you either aren’t that graceful at outdoor ice skating or don’t have anyone to do it with (check and check), there isn’t a day of winter to look forward to after Christmas. I love living here, and I can’t see myself anywhere else at this stage of my life, but I’m still allowed to complain.

You see, over the past 4 weeks (in which I’ve slept on a couch every single night… nice), I’ve noticed a few patterns of winter terribleness that are making my life a lot harder, and I want to bring them out into the light (which, unfortunately, is not bright enough or warm enough to make them go away). There are 4 altogether, and they make maneuvering a wintry New York City not only a daunting task, but an impossible one. They wipe the smiles straight off those who consider themselves smilers, and bring us right home into our beds at night instead of out with friends. I don’t have the evidence to back this up (I never really do though), but they also increase the viewership of terrible shows like “Skins” and “King of Queens” exponentially, as people who are hiding at home have nothing else to do. These 4 recurrences are a plague, and something needs to be done about them before our world is destroyed a la the black death hundreds of years ago. Let’s explore. (Pictures taken with Instagram for iPhone!)

1. Camouflaged Lakes of Slush

My daily commute to work is the same every day…. charging down the streets of NYC as fast as I can, desperately trying to get around larger, slower individuals whose walks are more crooked than the Nazca lines in Peru. Unfortunately, it’s not a consistent charge. You see, every time I get to a cross street that I have to, well, cross, I have to stop and assess one of the most difficult situations I’ve ever faced… slush lakes. Every single corner of every single street in New York has them… giant puddles of dirty, icy street water that infiltrate even the most formidable shoes and keep your feet wet for days and days and days. Most of these lakes are manageable… they’re generally easy to spot if you know what you’re looking for and, if you’re 6’4”, are very easy to leap over. Shorter people have more trouble, but I’m not concerned with them, because I’m not one.

Every day, I brave the slush lakes in courageous fashion, leaping and stretching over them more gracefully than the greatest olympic hurdlers you’ve ever watched. However, things change when I get closer to work. You see, the closer and closer I get, the less I concentrate on where I’m walking. Unfortunately, at the same time, the lakes become more and more camouflaged. A block away from work, it happens. I take a bold step into what looks like street gravel (see above), and then I sink… not just a mere few inches, but several feet down into the coldest puddle in the entire city. My lightning fast reflexes (I’m very good at a lot of things) get my foot out immediately, but it’s too late. My sock has already been soaked and my toes are already purple with hypothermia. I get to work and can’t take my shoes off, because it’s a respectable business, and end up having the worst day ever. And it never ends.

2. Trash Mountains

I don’t know how much “sanitation engineers” make in New York, but it’s apparently not even close to enough to make them do their jobs after a snow storm. Maybe they don’t want to get their hands cold, or maybe their frozen fingers can’t grip the outside of the truck as it drives down the street, causing them to fall and break parts of their bodies, leaving them physically unable and ineligible to work. Whatever it is, the consequences are severe… trash mountains. They’re on every street in New York, and they grow every day. The one you see here is a pretty modest sized one (taken in Midtown Manhattan… where they care a little more about these things, so they don’t let them get too big). It’s still impressive though – if you planned on having a picnic lunch at the top, this mountain right here would probably take a full day to hike. If you’re lucky, you’d get to the bottom by sundown, before all of the horrible trash animals come out to feed.

Others are bigger – some of the trash mountains in Brooklyn rival the ancient Appalachian mountains of Pennsylvania, and may take 3 or 4 days to climb if you’re in the required physical shape to do it. There’s really nothing we can do about it – people just tend to create giant amounts of trash. It’s in our blood. Until spring comes and the sanitation workers decide it’s time to get a paycheck again, we’re pretty much at the mercy of these mountains. If you have a day off to climb them, the views on top can be incredible. If you work, like most of us here in NYC, you have the wonderful privilege of only getting to walk past an ever-growing, ever-smelling pile of rotten waste every day. What a life.

3. Never-ending Construction Projects

I don’t want to go into a huge rant on this, because I could go for days, but 90% of New York City (and every other city I’ve ever been to) is constantly under construction. And there’s never anyone actually working. The stick man on the orange sign does more work than the construction workers who put him up. I understand it’s snowy and it’s winter, but you chose the profession. Please, fix this road. It’s making taxi drivers angry, which makes the whole world dangerous for the rest of us. Not a healthy situation.

4. Irony

Now, I don’t really know how to describe this to you in words, so I’m going to let the pictures explain this one, because the kind of ironies you experience every day in New York city are confounding, and, a lot of times, very sad. Here:

Imagine this scenario: you’ve just picked up April, a cute, free-spirited girl you met through a friend who set you two up on a first date… which is starting right now. You’re sitting in the back of a taxi getting to know each other as the taxi driver sings along to that LeAnn Rimes song everyone would never admit they used to like. All of the sudden, the collision occurs. The taxi driver had taken his hands off the wheel for a few seconds to air drum, and now the car is on fire in the middle of a snow bank. You don’t panic yet, though. After all, you’re surrounded by the very substance that stops fires! All you have to do is wait for it to melt…. fire melts ice, right?

Not in New York City. You wait and wait, but the ice holds strong as the fire gets bigger. When the soles of your feet begin to melt, you decide it’s time to get out. You all burst out of the car and run screaming down the street. After a night in the ER, you decide  to walk back to the location, only to find that the car is now completely burned out, and the snow has never melted. The irony is palpable… and very, very sad. Fred (the taxi man) probably lost his job. What’ll he do now? Better question, what do we do?

The answer is, unfortunately, to wait. Spring is coming friends. Spring is coming.

Student Loan Debt Reduction Tactic of the Day: Ebaying All Legal Rights to My Hair

Posted on by
3

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I’ve been very unfortunate in the “successfully navigating through college without garnering massive debt” department of life. In fact, I’ve done pretty much as badly as one can possibly do. I try not to complain about it too much, since it was my idea and it got me to where I am today, but it is something that swirls around my head almost every minute of every day. I’ve tried plenty of rational ways to rid myself of debt to no avail. It was high time to start getting innovative, so I went to work. And I went to eBay, where everything in the world that’s not illegal or alive can be sold. I won’t say much more, but check it out! Interested parties can contact me on here.

Now, I know what you’re thinking… this sounds creepy. I assure you it’s as legitimate as anything you’ll find on the site. Read the description before you judge. Click to enlarge:

This probably smells very strongly of “desperation” to your untrained noses. I assure you that it’s innovation that you’re smelling, and the chance of a lifetime. Free shipping to boot? How unselfish! Inquire here, and help me pay off my loans:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110636115937#ht_720wt_1141

Get your bid in early. I have a feeling this auction is going to reach historic heights. Good luck, friends!

An Old French Horn and the Wonderful Scamming Capabilities of Craigslist Users

Posted on by
5

For as long as I can remember, my dad has been (at one time or another) trying to sell his old French Horn in every possible venue you and all your friends could ever think of, to absolutely no avail. We live outside of Reading, PA, a musical, educational and cultural black hole, so it never really surprised us that no one wanted it. It’s nice, and deserves to spend the rest of its days in a good home full of music appreciators, just not in Reading. Anyway, when I moved to New York, my dad, having the sharp entrepreneurial mind that he does, decided it would be smart to list his French Horn on Craigslist in NYC, opening up the market to hundreds of thousands of new people. Smart guy! Here’s a picture of his french horn. It’s nice:

Now, a lot of you know my relationship with shady businessmen and women from Nigeria and surrounding countries. Lotta empty promises of huge, life-changing sums of money. Well, it’s very possible I’m dealing with another one (though I won’t point fingers just yet). We received an e-mail almost immediately regarding the listing:

Now, I should have seen the sign, the blinking light virtually screaming “this guy is no good” right away: the longevity (or lack thereof) of the e-mail. There are only a couple of reasons one might write an e-mail this insultingly brief, only one of which might be okay:

1. The writer is in a hurry (this is usually okay, and what you hope for)

2. The writer knows virtually no english, and has google searched and free translated his way into a simple, coherent english sentence.

3. He’s not even a real person.

Giving our friend “Steve Evans” the benefit of the doubt, even though his suspiciously simple first and last names is another sign of a bad transaction looming, we responded to him telling him that it was, and got this in return:

This is where things started taking a turn towards “this guy is going to take everything you own” town. It doesn’t take a grammar connoisseur to figure out that english definitely isn’t this guy’s first language. Now, I understand and respect that there are a variety of languages spoken in this country, which is why we continued to give him the benefit of the doubt, though it wouldn’t last long. Beyond the poor english (another calling card of scammers from strange regions of Africa), one sentence stood out to me in this part of the exchange: “I’m on the ship right now.”

The problem? There are probably about 700,000 ships registered in this country. Maybe more. I don’t know. But he’s on the ship. I”m assuming he’s trying to convince us that he’s a soldier in the Navy. Now, somebody who actually lived in America would understand that, even in the Navy, there is more than one ship you could potentially be on. Steve Evans doesn’t seem to understand this, probably because his country does only have one ship. Still giving him the benefit of the doubt (out of either extreme generosity or desperation to finally get rid of this french horn), we followed up, giving him our paypal e-mail to transfer the funds. Things went downhill reallll quick:

Oh boy. Let’s try and sort this one out together. Steve, being at sea, obviously isn’t able to come pick the French Horn up in Manhattan. A giant Navy ship wouldn’t make it very far trying to get to 31st street and 5th ave. Makes sense. So he’s working through an agent to try to get the thing delivered to him on “the ship.” Guy must really want this French Horn. Should be entertaining for the whole crew, anyway! Now, ignoring the fact that a French Horn would probably never be allowed in the bowels of a Navy ship due to its sheer size and the amount of noise it creates, this all could potentially still be true.

Then, Steve steers himself into a nosedive. He asks for us to give him money. Now, I was a business major in college, so I understand these things, but I think you may be able to get a grasp on this concept as well: I’m pretty sure when you sell things that you own on Craigslist, you’re the one that’s supposed to be getting money, not your buyer. Steve wants us to wire him $600 dollars so he can pay his agent to get the French Horn sent to the ship. Then, he’ll happily send us the rest of the money he owes us (plus $700) via Paypal.

Now, I have a whole lot of trust in the human race. But to just give a man who claims to live on a boat $600 with good faith that he will promptly return it kind of goes beyond the amount of trust it is possible for one human to have in another. Steve, I support the arts just as much as you do. Just not enough to give you $600 on a whim. If you’re a real person with real money, buy this French Horn! If you just want me to send you money, I’m $80,000 in debt. There isn’t much to give. Have fun on your boat. Or your war torn country. Wherever you are.