I spent most of Friday and much of Saturday morning preparing for the arrival of Irene before heading into the city for a short shoot on Saturday afternoon. Having allowed a lot more time than usual for my travel into the city I found myself with some time to spare and so I took a walk around a few blocks where I shot the following;
More than a few businesses were taking the forecasts seriously and had boarded windows and closed for the day.
With the public transportation system shutting down in the early afternoon one might think that finding a taxi would become almost impossible yet there seemed to be no shortage of yellow cabs
and for the first time that I can ever recall more than one cab driver pulled over and asked if I needed a ride.
There did not seem to be any sense of panic or worry no matter how hard one looked, except
for the slight panic one couple walking beside me expressed as they encountered yet another closed coffee shop. I know, New York; the city where you can get anything at any time. I did find coffee a short while later and despite the horrendous price tag it was just grand and exactly what I needed before my shoot.
As I was loading up my car to leave, by the way the free parking was great, I must admit I was surprised that not only was the night club across the street open but also by how busy it was.
My drive down the West Side Highway was probably the quickest and certainly was the quietest I've ever experienced. My drive through the Holland Tunnel was different indeed as I had the whole tunnel to myself. It was erie and surreal. I doubt I'll ever experience being alone in that tunnel again and although I actually considered stopping to take a photograph of this empty space the thoughts of causing an accident and also being pulled over and ticketed as I exited kept my foot on the gas.
I feel lucky that we dodged the proverbial bullet as Hurricane Irene became a tropical storm and I'm glad that for most of us our clean-up is relatively minor and that our losses are much less than they could have been.
Happy Monday.
