A Very Unpleasin' Sneezin' and Wheezin'
December 9, 2012
"Super-storm Sandy" got a lot of well-deserved hype, but honestly, if I didn't have any source of news, I wouldn't have had a clue what was going on outside at the time. Even the occasional flicker of our lights wasn't all that unusual. I expected ferocious winds to hammer at our seventh-floor windows all night, but somehow our apartment faces in such a way that they were sheltered from the whole shebang. If I didn't know better, I would've thought, "Hmm‚ it’s a little rainy tonight. I guess I'll stay in." (As if I don't stay in most nights anyway, but that's another story.)
Opening the window, I called out, "Where the hell are you, super-storm?" Turns out it was all around me. I watched a few cars traveling on the BQE swerve to avoid a metal highway sign that tumbled against traffic. The wind must be pretty vicious to blow that sign around, I thought. It sure is weird we can't feel any of it.
I channel surfed the hurricane coverage and saw a newsman from CBS reporting on the storm surge from a dramatic vantage point: The Allenhurst Beach Club in Allenhurst, New Jersey -- the same place Deborah attended the Race of Gentlemen this past October.
On a beautiful Indian summer day full of decent people engaging in some good, clean American fun, I figured the Race of Gentlemen was the kind of event whose time had long passed. Drag racing on a New Jersey beach? I wish! Well, my wish was granted. And judging from the size of the crowd, I wasn't the only one who wished for it.
The races were scheduled to begin at 10 AM, but the start time was delayed because the tide didn't cooperate. "Races delayed until 11 o'clock." And later, “Races will begin at 1 o'clock", and then "Racing begins at 2:00 PM". The MC, perched atop a checkered tower at the starting line, ad-libbed for hours.
Deborah suggested we get some lunch while we waited.
"Good idea, " I said, but the only nearby restaurant — located in the beach club near the finish line — was jam-packed, and the hotdog stand was fresh out of wieners. "Oh well, I have some granola bars in my pocket," I said.
We bought a couple of bottles of water and milled around, taking in the scene.
Hand-painted signs, giant checkered towers at the start and finish lines, various handmade props, greasy, rusty jalopies coughing out smoke and kicking up sand, and more beards than an Amish parade.
Low tide never really came, but there was just enough sand by the afternoon to get the show on the road. A steamroller, which had been rolling up and down the beach all morning, made a final pass along the shoreline race strip, and they were good to go.
The tide refusing to go out was a small precursor to what would happen just a week later.
Thankfully, aside from some power outages, my friends in New York and my relatives peppered up and down the East Coast were spared any major trauma.
The company I have been freelancing for, whose ground-floor office is located near the South Street Seaport, didn't fare quite as well. Even though some precautions had been taken, including moving all of the computer towers off the floor and onto the desks, it wasn't enough. Four feet of water sloshed throughout the building, engulfing everything in super-storm muck. Nowhere, other than a higher floor, would've been safe.
Like many people, I didn't work for a while afterward. Recently, however, I began working on-site at the seaport location again. Not on the ground floor, of course — the ground-floor studio is still a mess and has been converted to a staging area for the contractors and cleanup crews still working to bring the building back online — but rather on the 29th floor of a 32-story office building that, as recently as last week, was still running on generator power. Can you imagine? “How many miles per gallon can this rocket ship possibly get?” I wondered as I rode the elevator on my first day back.
All the area buildings appear to be on life support, wheezing through huge Mummanchantz-style vacuum tubes fitted to giant machines on the back of flatbed trucks. Moisture Control, they say. Giant hair dryers. I can't tell if they are sucking or blowing; all I know is they are loud as hell.
