Friday, August 15, 2003


coffee during the great blackout

so i was in my office at ground zero at 4:08pm yesterday with a project due at 4:15. entire day had been a mad scramble.

then, boom. the blackout. we lost all power immediately. since by now we at the great little company i work for are well-practiced in fleeing manhattan over the brooklyn bridge on foot, we did so.

i happened to be wearing isaac mizrahi straw mules with wooden kitten heels. perhaps not the best shoes for such a trek. but about 500,000 people went over the bridge with me at that time, and i must say the view was lovely.

along the way people were good humored, telling jokes, stories. . .some young african-american men were singing a frankly vulgar impromptu rap song about the blackout, 'hos, and bush. . .(the president i think but perhaps it was a double entendre) anyway you probably can figure out the gist.

on the bridge the general consensus was that mayor bloomberg has definitely lost any hope for re-election now. not that it was his fault, or that the city agencies were unprepared. (long-time readers know bccy is absolutely no fan of bloomberg.)

but really -- new york needs more power strategies and he should have figured that out after 9-11. same goes for gov. pataki too.

all in all it was a tremendous day to run over the bridge light-heartedly with your fellow new yorkers in all their fabulous and fascinating variety.

got home to bklyn finally at about 5:26pm. i love isaac and his shoes, but my feet hurt.

mr. right and i decided to hang upstairs in our still house until dinnertime, when we strolled down the street to a local turkish restaurant with a pleasant garden.

the local wine store was pouring the last of its somewhat-kinda-chilled italian white and handing out cheese on the street corner. a few people had set up bbq grills in the street.

the atmosphere was decidedly festive. everyone hung out along the brooklyn promenade to see a dark manhattan -- except for downtown below city hall, where most wall street buildings had acquired their own generators after 9-11. there the lights blazed merrily.

catch a clue, bloomberg! but eventually everyone treaded home, dreading the usual blackout ritual: the ceremonial eating of the ice cream before it turned to soup.

mr. right and i had a pint of super-primo dark chocolate gelato, which we devoured with great sorrow and anguish by candle light. we listened on our battery-operated radio to the intrepid reporters of wnyc as they phoned it in: "yup, no lights."

then bloomberg spoke, promising power in "3 or 4 hours." in your dreams, mean mayor mike.

amazing. i awoke at 7:15am to no power and desperate for coffee. but naturally, i have no pre-ground coffee in the house! and no way to grind it short of mortar and pestle!

thus i dug out my trusty bodum french press, heated some water, and cracked open a tin of illy espresso pods the wonderful todd of wholelattelove had given me.

you guessed it -- 6 coffee pods into the french press, measured in the water at 200 degrees, let 'em steep for 4 mins. and wa-llah. best use of coffee pods ever.

as i was drinking my morning coffee, the phone rang. my boss; no work today. as i hung up the phone. . .power! everything lit up like a movie set at exactly 8am.

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