Podcast episode NYC power outage
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thank you for tuning into hashtag I love you. This is the production where we talk about something controversial and I look into it and find something to love about it. Tonight we're gonna talk about the blackout in Manhattan. This is not the blackout from 2003 that affected everything from the Great Lakes Toe Washington, D. C. We're gonna talk about the black out of 2019 that affected about a mile off the west side of Manhattan from 42nd Street to 72nd Street. For anyone who's ever been to New York, that includes places like Columbus Circle on the west side of Central Park and several train lines. But that's not what I'm gonna focus on. What I'm gonna focus on is the leadership. So our mayor is currently running for president. His name is Bill de Blasio. Today, when the blackout happened, he happened to be in the state I grew up in, which is Iowa, which is a major major swing state. Four politics and elections. And in lieu of this blackout, he elected, not toe, leave Iowa and come home to New York and handle his city and do his job but stay in Iowa, Continuing to campaign for president This is the same Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City, who's polling at 1% in the Democratic polls. And while he was in Iowa campaigning Manhattan shut down in a way I've never seen. I've been here through 9 11 through the black out of 2003. Through her came Sandy. I have never seen the city shut down the way it did today. And while it did, our mayor and our Democratic presidential hopeful elected not to do his job in his city, but to continue campaigning in a state that's 1000 miles away. So here's what happened. My experience, much like most New Yorkers, was that we didn't even know we were not notified of the blackout until well after it was underway and affecting the transit and the mass transit and the trains and the buses and traffic. Once you were aware of it, everyone decided that they were gonna go and look at how the best way to get home would be. Now I checked, Uber was charging $40 to go 10 blocks, which is a trip that would normally cost $4. The buses were affected because the traffic lights were not working. The trains shut down throughout the entire city. In my restaurant where I was working at the time, one of my customers was having a birthday party and had a guest that was supposed to come and join them for their birthday party. But their guest could not make it because their guest was in Brooklyn. For those of you who do not know, Brooklyn is south of Manhattan, and the blackout was in Midtown, which means North Manhattan so their friend could not come from Brooklyn into Southern Manhattan to celebrate their birthday. This this customer dined alone on her birthday and then because she lives on the Upper West Side, didn't know where she was going to sleep because there was no power and spent her evening on her birthday during the meal that she paid for by herself alone on her birthday, figuring out where she was going to sleep this evening. And then after my shift was done, I had to come home to Queens. The train that I usually take the mass transit that I usually take operates on the East side of Manhattan and gets me into Queens. The West Side of Manhattan is where the blackout waas, and it's a small area about one mile, Like I said, from about 42nd Street to about 72nd Street is about one mile, 1 to 2 square miles of the West Side of Manhattan. After my shift, I got on the train that was supposed to take me to Queens up the East side of Manhattan, and I got as far as where the 42nd Street where the blackout started. But I was on the East side and the train operator told me, and I quote, This is the last stop on the train. If the seven train is running, take the seven train into Queens. Otherwise, take a downtown train back to Delancey, which is where I came from, essentially, and then take a train in tow, Brooklyn, which is a whole different borough and then find transit from Brooklyn. This is after I waited on the train for almost a Nower, and I know there's many New Yorkers that had the same experience, and the reason I'm doing the podcast right now is because I'm not complaining about the weight on the subway train or the fact that there was a power outage. A lot of New Yorkers were affected, and I do not consider myself such an elitist that I would have to bend your ear toe. Listen to my problems. The reason I'm doing the podcast right now is because I've been through this multiple times tonight. What they did wrong was shut down the empty A so badly that so many New Yorkers were affected that you couldn't get from Brooklyn to Manhattan, which is south of where the problem was and you couldn't get anywhere else at all. And I've been through this before. Like I said, when I did this before was the black out of 2000 and three in 2000 and three? It was not Mayor Bill de Blasio. It was Michael Bloomberg and he had the city up and running within a handful of ours. A dozen hours or so, everything was pretty much back to normal. Gridlock was stopped or taken care of. The trains were back up and running, and that blackout, like I said at the beginning, affected all the states from the Great Lakes to our Great Nations capital, Washington, D. C. This blackout today only affected one city in one state for about a mile and 1/2 from 42nd Street Manhattan to 72nd Street, Manhattan on the West Side only. So why did all the train shook down? Why did the whole city come to gridlock? Because our mayor, I was in Iowa campaigning for president. The second point I will bring up is I was here for September 11th 1 2009 11 Even on that day, our city function better. Then it did. Today. Terrorists attacked our nation, brought down two of the largest buildings in Manhattan and others and started a war. And on that day, our city was functioning at a higher level than it was this evening. At the time of 2011 the mayor happened to be Rudy Giuliani, who, many of you might know is now president. Sorry to say President Donald Trump's personal lawyer and I could wax on about how crazy our president might be or how crazy Rudy Giuliani might be. But this is the program called Hashtag I love you, so I want to hearken back to Rudy Giuliani and September 11th and tell the whole world that if you were a New Yorker today during this minor minor blackout, you would be ashamed of our leadership for putting us in a situation where we cannot get home, where millions of people are affected by the transit shutdown. That happened this evening. And you would remember a time when Rudy Giuliani was our mayor and terrorists drove planes into our most prized buildings and killed tens of thousands of Americans and started a war. And you'd remember that the city functioned that the city continued to thrive and survive in a way that Bill de Blasio, our current mayor, couldn't handle this evening, even though it only affected power on one mile and 1/2 of the West Side of Manhattan because he was too busy campaigning for president in Iowa. So in the spirit of this podcast, I'd like to say and I hate to say it because I really, really don't like the guy these days, but I have to say it. Hashtag, I love you, Rudy Giuliani. Thank you for getting us through 9 11 Bill de Blasio come back from the Heartland and come back to the hearts of New Yorkers. Thank you very much. My name's Kevin Bruckner. This has been