The Gotham Gal and I have received countless messages from many of you wishing us well and volunteering all sorts of things. We even were offered use of a 3400 sf apartment on the upper west side! It is very gratifying to know that so many of you are thinking of us and wanting to help.
The past few days have been very strange here in NYC. North of 34th street in Manhattan and in most parts of Brooklyn, everything seems quite normal. But downtown manhattan is eerie. There are no working stop lights. Crossing a major avenue is a life threatening experience. Lower manhattan is a ghost town.
Our apartment building is on the hudson river. The Gotham Gal has a photo of what happened to it on Monday night on her blog. Our basement filled to the brim with part of the Hudson River and possibly a bit of the Atlantic Ocean as well. Happily we've been able to pump all of that water out as of last night. Every building on our street was pumping water out into the street the past two days. The Far West Village is a mess and will be for a while more.
We will be in remediation and repair mode for a while. We don't know how long yet. So we've been focusing on finding a place to live in for the next month or two. We are committed to getting back downtown as soon as power comes back on. All signs indicate that will happen in the next day or two.
In the meantime, we've been staying with friends on the upper west side. They have not one, but two families, camped out with them for the past few days. We are very fortunate to have such good friends.
What comes to my mind most as we struggle through all of this is how others who don't have the resources we have are dealing with things. I have to believe that tens of thousands of NY'ers are homeless or seriously displaced by the hurricane. And I am equally sure that many of them don't have the wherewithal that we have to deal with it. Those are the people that need help in NYC right now, not us.
I would guess this goes without saying, but I am not working this week. I am trying to stay up on my emails and doing a few calls here and there on urgent matters. But if you don't hear from me this week, don't be surprised. My attention is largely elsewhere.
