4:11p. All the lights went out. Me = stuck on a conference call.
4:27p. Conference call ends. Power is still out. No email, no cellphone reception.
4:43p. MTV announces that "the building is now closed". Everyone heads out.


Looking out at a dark Times Square from the MTV lobby.


No ads.


No news.


No stocks.


With nothing else to do, I hung around Bryant Park for a bit before wandering home. I wandered down 8th Ave to check to see if the Vindigo kids were hanging out at the Molly Wee (nope), then down past NYU to see if any of the ITP kids were out (nope), and then through the East Village to see if I could find any of the Jup kids at DBA (nope) or maybe even 2A (nope) or Filthy's (nope). So I just went home.

Here, stranded commuters hanging out on the steps of the post office across from Penn Station.


Using the light from my cell phone I navigated the stairwell of my apt, then over to AK and grellan's to exchange blackout commute war stores (yawn). Around 8 or so I was able to motivate The Grellan to journey to Filthy's.

Here, blackout sunset on Stanton street.


After a dinner of Pringles and PBR, we left Filthy's, met up with a six of tallboys and wandered around the l.e.s. Not too surprisingly, most people were out on the streets, wandering with drinks in hand, Mardi Gras style.

Here, bongo players on the corner of Ludlow & Stanton.


And more of a crowd on Ludlow (outside Luna).


Candles.


More Ludlow street bongos. They were all over the place (with flute people too). Where were all the generator-powered turntables? Bongos are lame.

ps: Look at all the digicams. Blackout was like Night of the Living Blogger all over again (er, see Birthday #27 for more on that). Actually, there we like 10x as many people with cameras as you see here - film + digi + video - all over the places.


Me. Grellan. Tallboys.

Note to self: insert stoopid-joke-about-how-much-shit-we-looted.


When the tallboys ran out, we headed back to 125, randomly met up with roommate Abbey and her gangster friend 'Left Eye'...


... grabbed a bottle of wine then hit the streets again, where we randomly ran into Vipul (who's pic didn't make it online 'cause he looked all blurry. Sorry Vip.)


By the time we got back to Ludlow (er, 20 mins later), the bongo dance party had picked up a bit. That's Left Eye in the black tanktop.


More of the same.


The cops were pretty cool with things. Occasionally a cruiser would drive down Ludlow to check up on things only to drive right on through. Later on, they barricaded the the corners off, preventing people from joining the masses.

Here, cops standing their ground.


Aftermath...

... or, more like a photo taken when we ran out of stuff to drink (1am?). As soon as we left the masses and walked south of Ludlow, the cops would't let us back in. Oh well.

Unfortunately the photo-journal version of this story ends here since my digicam broke (again, sniffle) during all the blackout madness. Actually, it wasn't all that mad...

... after (unsuccessfully) trying to sneak into the Surface hotel in an attempt to one-up my arch nemesis Lockhart Steele with blackout pics from the highest point in the l.e.s, Vipul went to bed and Grellan I journeyed a few blocks north. Outside of 2A we ran into exactly one girl with a bloody foot (for the benefit of teendrama readers, I decided not to put that pic online) to whom I donated a Pokemon band-aid, and one completely naked man whom insisted that Grellan and I pose with (those pics forthcoming).

I woke up the next morning laying on top of my bed, sneakers still on, red wine spilled on my shirt. Two trips to blackout city in one night. Good times. Er, kind of...

... the whole blackout thing was fun for the first day. When there was no power on Friday we said the hell with NYC and headed up to the Catskills (yes, yes, yes... pics coming soon).