Speaking as someone who walked home from midtown Manhattan to Brooklyn that day, I can assure you that A) there was no panic, and B) contrary to any fear-mongers and New York haters, no one I saw was afraid.
A great example of what I saw: on 31st street, between 2nd and 3rd avenues, there was a little kid who had a lemonade stand set up. Fifty cents for a small cup, a dollar for a large cup. I don't like lemonade, but I had to buy from him anyway. He had his toy cash register set up, and his friend was riding up and down the block on his Razor scooter with a sign advertising the lemonade stand. Where was the panic here?
When I got home, the people were out in front of their homes, chatting away. My wife and I took out all the candles we got for Christmas and had a barbecue on the fire escape that night for dinner. My mother gave us some fresh fruit and zucchini muffins she had made that day, and between the three of us, we had enough flashlights to land a 747. The fruit stand on our corner had a generator going so he could stay open for anyone who needed last-minute supplies. Because of no street lights, the stars were out and I got power back 3:30 the next afternoon without incident.
Now, which other blackout story do you want to hear? The one where cabbies who had their meters off and were offering groups of people rides to different destinations and asked the passengers to pay "what they thought was fair?" The one where people were giving total strangers rides to outer boroughs because it was the right thing to do? The one about how there were only 22 arrests for looting in a city of over 8 million people?
Of course, there were instances of price gouging of food and water along the way, but that could happen anywhere. And if it is true that there was less looting and destruction in a blacked-out NYC than there was in Vancouver in 1994 when the Canucks lost to the NY Rangers in the Stanley Cup finals, then that's pretty noteworthy.
Unless you were here, and are relying on an outsider's point of view whose motivation is either ratings or an inane justification for hating New York, then I'm afraid you're just talking out of your ass.
Michael
