Now that my life is finally semi back to normal, I recently got the urge to pick up my fingers again to jot down my thoughts about Sandy before I forgot all about it. I would say my entire experience can pretty much be summed up as follows:
- NO SHOWER.
- NO SEAMLESS.
- NO SHOWTIME.
Without my 3 S’s I was a complete wreck.
Here’s how the entire week went down:
SUNDAY
Spent all day recovering from the Halloween parties on Sat night, where I pregamed on one too many picklebacks and as a result got kicked out of M1-5 for pouring drinks on every girl who started to annoy me. The hurricane was not a priority at this point, and I ordered my usual Chinese lunch special to cure my hangover, not to stock up for Sandy. At around 7pm when I started to feel somewhat alive again, I realized I hadn’t prepared one bit for the storm and rushed out to Walgreens last-minute to stock up on bottles of water, only to find that they were out of water packs. The next best thing was to stock up on super sized Vita Cocos, which was a pricey way to stock up on water for the hurricane, but I had to do what I had to do.
MONDAY
This was the day the storm was supposed to hit but never did, which was annoying for one main reason: Places started to shut down on Seamless in anticipation of the storm, even though it was seriously perfectly fine for delivery boys to be riding their bikes in this non-storm.
Usually 200+ restaurants available on Seamless at any given time:
Usual Seamless
During Sandy, the number of available restaurants were literally cut in half:
Seamless during Sandy
Luckily, some select restaurants recognized this absurdity and stayed open for delivery the entire day. Thanks to those folks, I was able to stock up on Chinese food lunch specials, Mexican food lunch specials, and bought myself three sandwiches from Gracefully, along with a box of cereal.
That night A+U came over to seek refuge at our place since they were technically in the evacuation zone. Roommate M had already abandoned us the day before, and roommate L was in Nashville, so it was just roommate K, the dog, A+U, and me. By then apparently the storm was getting pretty bad outside, and there was some serious flooding going on right across Stuy Town at 14th and C. I sent this picture off weather.com to my parents to let them know what was going on in case they weren’t following the news:
http://iwitness.weather.com/_Flood-on-Ave-C-14th-Street-NYC/photo/17928387/148597.html
I then got a relatively prompt response from my mom, who gave zero acknowledgement of the image I had just sent her of the major flooding occurring literally four blocks from my apartment, and instead received this email and attachment:
L- I have attached a card filled with some pictures from Papa’s 60th Birthday party.
Insensitive email
Great to know my parents had zero concern that their only two daughters were stranded in a hurricane while they were having the time of their lives at my dad’s 60th birthday party in Dallas. There is the bigger issue of- WTF is going on with the above collage anyway… let’s take a quick Sandy pause to ask a few questions:
- Why is there a cutout of Texas Rangers player Yu Darvish in the bottom left corner??
- Is that a cutout of Maria Sharapova up top??
- Are those multiple cutouts of my dad’s face on popsicle sticks that I see??
- What is going on with that cake in the middle??
- Why do my parents and their friends continually insist on perpetuating Asian stereotypes??
Anyway, shortly after I received the above infuriating email from Tiger Mom, the lights went out, the TV suddenly shut off, and we were left in complete darkness. Luckily I had identified several Mardi Gras beads that I had caught earlier in the year that were all glow-in-the-dark — including my Hermes necklaces and Orpheus headband and baton — that were surprisingly quite effective in lighting our small Stuy Town living room.
Glow-in-the-dark Mardi Gras beads
At first it was all fun and games — our next door neighbors, who are a bunch of NYU recent grads and huge potheads, came over with a bottle of wine and more flashlights, and we played board games for a good several hours before we all got bored and went to sleep, expecting the lights to all be back on by the time we woke up.
TUESDAY
We woke up to find out our TV still wasn’t working, which was devastating. My computer was running out of juice, as were my phone and bberry. We also weren’t getting any reception whatsoever in our apartment, so after a few hours of failed attempts to send a bunch of outbound calls and emails, we mobilized over to A+U’s place in Peter Cooper up the street, which was also powerless but where we at least got reception.
At this point it was still somewhat fun and games for us, though not really. The no-power thing really started to get to us, especially after the fourth time we had to climb up and down a pitch black staircase where we felt a murderer was lurking in every corner given our apartment building entrances had been unlocked, and the only thing to connect us to the outside world was the crank radio that U had randomly found in his closet. To try to cut our depression, we decided to play some beirut by daylight in A+U’s living room, only to find that we were low on beer. We played two rounds of beirut until we completely ran out of beer, at which point we switched to playing with leftover Chardonnay, then with a bottle of champagne, then with pure vodka.
Sandy Beirut
We were shitfaced and starving and only had cold and disgusting leftover Mexican lunch special to chew on. We ended up walking out of the apartment later that night, stumbling 30 blocks uptown until we found a small pizza place that was serving cold pizza without cheese because they had run out of cheese.
This was slowly but surely getting very depressing. We came back to the apartment to pick back up our beirut game, now playing by candlelight in the otherwise pitch black living room. After losing that round given my horrible night vision, I started thinking to myself that I couldn’t stay here any longer, and having to take a shit and blindly wipe my ass in complete darkness was the last straw. A+U were thinking the same.
I thought to myself in this time of desperation- lucky me, literally 80% of my best friends in the city live in the UES, which was completely unaffected. So unaffected, in fact, that I called M that night to describe to her the shitshow that was going on downtown, to which she answered, “How strange. I went to soul cycle today and got my nails done.” That’s great- I hadn’t showered or eaten fresh food since Sunday.
I started making phone call after phone call to each of the 80% of the best friends I had in the city, and while they were all open to me coming by to seek refuge, they were all opposed to me bringing the rest of my crew. They were literally actively discriminating against anyone who wasn’t me. Fortunately A+U had other options for refuge, but K and her dog were fucked. This was a shitty situation all around, and after a few hours of wanting to cry, we passed out on A+U’s couch cold, drunk and depressed. We would sleep on this overnight in hopes we would know what to do in the morning.
WEDNESDAY
Woke up still cold, drunk and depressed, and still completely powerless and more importantly TV-less. I had already missed my Monday and Tuesday night shows — I couldn’t bear the thought of another day like this. After eating some more disgusting leftover Mexican food for lunch, we decided the best course of action would be for all of us to split up for the remainder of this mess. So A+U headed off to Greenwich, I packed my bags to camp out in the UES for the next week, and K was left alone in Stuy Town with the dog.
Getting up to the UES from Stuy Town was quite the adventure. Not only did it take more than 1 hour 15 minutes to get up there — the cab ride cost me $45. It was so absurd. I mean, was I going to JFK or was I going to the UES?!? Of course the minute I got to K’s apartment at 97th and Lex, which is practically Harlem, the first things I did were take a shower and order a fresh meal off Seamless. I immediately felt 10x better.
But I still didn’t feel complete. I had been drinking for the past 3 days straight because there was nothing else to do during the blackout — I knew I would have to continue drinking for the next 3 days straight to be able to forget about the last 3 days. The only place I knew would make me feel at home in this sad time was Dorrian’s. With all of my girl friends refusing to visit Club D, I was able to convince fellow Stuy Towner D to come with me for an early drink at 7pm. The early drink turned into late night at Club D, where the thrill of being some place with heat and lights prompted me to drink heavily in elation until I literally fell down and my feet went flying over my head in front of a crowd of 24-year-olds. It was great though- a typical night like that at Club D was the only thing that successfully made me forget about the fact that Wednesday was the first day I had showered or eaten real food in 4 days.
THURSDAY — SUNDAY
Thursday through Sunday were essentially a repeat of Wednesday, where I spent the days ordering everything possible on Seamless and taking long hot showers just because I could, and the nights reliving my early 20s hitting up all my favorite bars from 2008 — including Club D and Tin Lizzies at least two more times and awkwardly running into my friend’s 24-year-old brother — and subsequently attempting to pick up other 24-year-olds so I would have an alternate place to stay for each night so that I wouldn’t be overstaying my welcome at K’s.
MONDAY — THURSDAY
By Monday I was really hoping everything would be back to normal, but sadly it was not. Apparently we had gotten power back in Stuy Town, but still no heat or hot water for days. Having overstayed my welcome at K’s, I switched over to my puta J’s place at 87th and Lex, where I camped out for another several days and continued to frequent Club D in an attempt to take my mind off why I was still living out of a suitcase in my own city.
After Thursday, it was finally all over, and I was able to come home. Here’s what I have to stay about this all:
- At least I didn’t die
- At least I have friends (thanks friends)
- At least I got to frequent all my favorite 2008 bars in a period of 4 days
- At least Seamless was still working fine in the UES
- At least all Showtime series are available on demand
Fuck you, Sandy — I’m going home.
Poverexic in NYC 