Дэвид Бирн - Bicycle Diaries

A man named Jimmy takes the mic. He had introduced himself to me earlier. “I do Thursday nights,” was how he put it. Jimmy’s hair is hard to describe. It’s like a combination of a mullet and a Mohawk, but super slicked-back. He’s got on a black jacket and a tie with big yellow trumpets on it. He sings a standard (they all do, except Paul, who tends toward Stevie Wonder tunes), putting his heart and soul into it.

The audience at Arturo’s, which is not a very big place, is usually a mixed bunch: some are paying attention to the singer, some are shoving food into their mouths, and some are talking to their friends. Sometimes all three at once. It’s not an ideal audience for an entertainer by any means, but it doesn’t seem to deter anyone here. Jimmy sings as if there is a whole theater out there, rather than people slurping down a slice. He’s singing to the back row, projecting; it’s incredible.

Jimmy disappears for a second. He has an Asian pianist who has his eyes closed, so maybe he doesn’t notice Jimmy’s absence. Jimmy reappears in a cream-colored jacket carrying a matching cream-colored umbrella. He immediately launches into “Pennies from Heaven,” and one gathers these are the props he keeps on hand somewhere in the back of the restaurant specifically for this number. “Ev’ry time it rains, it rains . . . pennies from heaven” and up goes the umbrella, in the middle of this crowded room! Pizza is being served up, and folks are ordering wine using hand gestures, as the waiters can’t hear above Jimmy’s singing. No one here seems fazed or the least bit surprised by the corny umbrella gag. Jimmy’s jazzing up the song now, scatting and improvising—the tune is almost unrecognizable at times. He sometimes acts out the lyrics as he sings them, holding his hands in a praying gesture or grabbing Mrs. Glover to dance a step or two. They make an improbable couple. Now he’s got a little black hat on too. At one point his singing is so impassioned that he abandons the mic on the piano near the tip jar and begins hopping, really hopping, around the room singing at the top of his lungs.

A Blackout

Yesterday, at four thirty, while I was recording a vocal on my computer here at home, I sensed something had shut off unexpectedly. My musical and recording gear is all plugged into a kind of large battery that is designed to keep everything running on a concert stage for about twenty minutes if there is a power fluctuation or outage, so, despite the fact that all of New York City has just gone down, I am still working for a few minutes more, oblivious to what has happened. I shut my stuff down properly, leave my recording area, and check to see what made the odd sound. I soon realize the power is off, and looking outside the window I can see that it seems to be off everywhere—it’s a blackout all right. I fill up some containers with water, as the building’s pump won’t be filling the water tower on this or any other of these buildings until this is over.

All the clocks—the ones with dials that is—on the nearby buildings now say four thirty. The digital ones are dark. By late afternoon there are traffic jams everywhere, and since I live near a tunnel entrance the traffic around here is stuck for hours. A few cabs roam around picking up people, but most eventually head home. It’s unexpectedly noisy. There are alarms going off everywhere. They started hooting right after the power went out.

I ride my bike downtown to see if my office is okay. A Mexican kid on a bike asks me how to get to the Brooklyn Bridge—I guess he is going home and usually takes the train. I talk to him in Spanish and he says he is surprised, judging by my face, that I know some Spanish.

My office had cleared out in a flash, they were pretty weirded out—memories of 9/11, I guess.

After the sun goes down I ride my bike through Times Square, which is dark except for police vehicles. The great signs and the intense glow that can usually be seen for blocks have been shut down. The signs are just abstract shapes now. It’s even hard to make out what some of them are selling. The area is strangely crowded with people. The tourists are all still here, but don’t know what to do. Black shapes, moving in clumps. Thousands and thousands of people. Many are just hanging out. Maybe they can’t get home. An Irish bar on West Forty-fifth Street is open, and the crowd of drinkers spills out, filling the entire street.

Hundreds of people are waiting at every bus stop—all hoping to get home to Queens, the Bronx, Brooklyn, or uptown. They too spill out into the streets, in clusters that surround the bus stop signs, or they just sit on the curbs, as bus service, though continuing, is slow and intermittent, due to there being no traffic lights. All traffic is moving slowly, tentatively creeping along in the almost total darkness, like you do when you walk around the house with all the lights off. When a bus comes it is a large, looming shape with two blinding lights in front. They emerge slowly from the darkness, like bioluminescent deep-sea creatures.

People are all walking out in the streets, and they’re hard to see in some parts of town. There is a fat man at the intersection of Sixth Avenue and Twelfth Street directing traffic. He is using a sign—a piece of white cardboard on which he has scrawled “Stop.” At another intersection farther uptown a kid in baggy pants is also directing traffic, wildly, energetically; he’s having a great time. There’s no looting. It’s calm. People are helping one another out, and there are spontaneous parties.

The stairway in my building is getting dark (the elevator doesn’t work, of course), and, one by one, the emergency lights in the stair shaft are failing. Flashlight beams now move erratically in the darkness as tenants look for their floors. Most of the tenants are now on the roof, drinking. I join them, briefly. We can see a financial brokerage building a block away. It’s lit up inside—bright as day—though there’s no one in it. We can see desks covered with paperwork, abandoned. I guess they have their own generator. Not much else for me to do now but go to sleep.

In the morning I wake up and sense that it’s starting to get a little stuffy in here. Last night it was still cooler inside than outside—a remnant of yesterday’s air-conditioning—but that temperature difference won’t last long. It’s August, so having no AC it will take its toll. I heat up some leftovers for breakfast before they all spoil. The water pressure is down to a dribble. I have a jar of water in the fridge, but that won’t last long. Many shops and delis were open last night, selling their remaining stocks of sodas, snacks, and water out of dimly lit doorways. Sometimes they lit candles and scattered them on shelves. The candles made the delis all look like little shrines. There were long lines at hardware stores—for flashlights and D batteries. (I’ve got both.) Can’t get phone calls. (Though by using an old landline phone I have lying around I manage to call out.) Cell phone service isn’t working. Gas is working. I’m making coffee this morning.

The traffic is noisy outside. What are they all doing out there? Where are they going? I notice that there are some scallops defrosting rapidly in the freezer, so I cook them for lunch.

I go downtown again to my office and the power comes back on at around three PM.

Kara, my Australian assistant, is moving back there with her boyfriend soon, and they’d scheduled a good-bye party for tonight in Greenpoint where they live. I assume that the party is still on, so as it gets dark I bike over the Williamsburg Bridge. The bridges are full of cyclists, as the subway and bus service is still intermittent, and from this vantage point I can see that not all the neighborhoods got their power back when the Village and SoHo did. Parts of the East Village are still dark, as is most of the Lower East Side. Uptown is all sparkling with lights. Parts of Brooklyn have power, and halfway across the bridge, where the lamps are being fed by Brooklyn, suddenly there is light. So, electrical power is political. I shouldn’t be surprised.