 Blackout 2003 in NYC |
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| Panorama facing West from the Lower East Side, sunset August 14, 2003. |
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| I was up on 101st Street near the Hudson River when the lights went out at 4:11 PM. That's a long walk down to my Lower East Side apartment. My feet were already starting to hurt by the time I reached this spot in Central park. These skaters seemed to be having an easier time of it. |
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| The hot dog vendors were doing good business, taking advantage of their freedom from the grid. |
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| Waldorf Astoria hotel workers forced out onto the street. |
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| Why these clocks continued to work for about forty minutes after the blackout before they stopped is a mystery to me. |
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| In midtown the streets were clogged with cars, and the sidewalks packed with people. By the time I got to Second Avenue around 50th Street, the cars were sparse and the people were spilling onto the streets. |
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| Looking West on Houston Street at sunset. |
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| I took my hi-8 video camera out after sunset. Here's a panorama stitched together from panning the camera. Houston and Essex Streets, lit up by the flares the cops set up. |
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| Deli on Avenue A doing business by candlelight. |
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| Tompkins Park was a wild scene. Here's some folks gathered around some wood and paper burning in a trash can. I heard Mayor Bloomberg suggest cooling off in a tavern as a way of coping with the heat. A lot of people took his advice for alcohol consumption that night. |
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| This guy was the superstar of the trash-fire jumpers. Here he is traversing the flames backwards. |
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| Again, this time head on. |
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| A theatrical landing for the fire jumper. |
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| Everyone wants to be a star. |
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| A campfire in the center of the park. The next day I noticed the ashes of several fires on the central lawn. |
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| A fire spinner gathered a cheering crowd and some drummers a bit north of the trash-fire crowd. |
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| A fellow videographer, lit up by his screen. |
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| Just outside of Tompkins Park. Avenue A and 7th Street. |
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| Cops gathered around the park, but didn't go in that I noticed. |
 
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| Crowded First Avenue bus. The busses continued to function during the blackout, but they were way overloaded. These two photos are a video panorama of a single tandem bus. |
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| First Avenue. |
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| Street commerce by tiki torch, St. Marks Place. |
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| Carrying a skateboard. First Avenue. |
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| A dog walker lit up by the flares and car lights on Houston Street. |
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| Here's the morning after in Tompkins Square Park. It must have gotten way more out of control than I witnessed. What a mess. |
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| Come the light of day, a couple of people took it upon themselves to clean up the lawn. |
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Other folks enjoying the cleaned lawn later that day. The lights returned to the Lower East Side shortly after 9. We were just about the last area of the city to get their lights back. |
2003 Michael Natale
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