Ons Tien, escry vito. Shon Schade suom The night New York City oe =a. | shopQ)rss t dark | betaine: Fisx OFF DRAMA & ARTS ‘Thursday, July 14,1977, 10:020.m. ye Usecooe DRAMA "Nick an are citing touched and dragged-out at the bar in Jimmy Days, ae . | f ¥ determined to drink whatever drinkable beer might be letin Greenwich Village before ital warms up. There is nawhere ta go, no rae from the heat anywhere;the blackout has stopped even time. People sit around wherever they happen tobe, or walk by outside the windows, limp andrad- 60 Geeyonpre, ‘eyed, sticky with sweat. Everyone going about whatever they do in im eras] Prenat en darkness inside and bright smelter out. But making no progress; nothing works and nothing gots done, Jom ror cy kind of Mardi Gras-tke lacking, have grown dreary and wrung out, everyone weary food beginning tort in refrigerators, ice gone, beer warming helplessly on shelves of walicine and reach-ine everywhere — this ast development being our prineipal concern atthe moment, Nicks and mine. Ithad brought us after long night to Jimmy Day’, the high-ceilinged, big windowed, early-morning corner place where people came after the afterhours joints closed and before other Village bars opened forthe day Nick and had not been in the afterhours; wo just stayed on atthe Bale, ‘our bar, the place we worked, sitting around in candlelight after closing, waiting for some reason to leave Wednesday July 13, 9:34 pm. ‘There had been akind of a gound toit, more a whispered gasp than a a shriek, 8 everything — the world — went black. Foe HRSA REN sxe Consumer Aimee NEWSHOUR he quipped, "See, this is what you gt for not paying your bil st ‘The waitresses began lighting and delveringeandles to tables around the Spucedtomaia narjee ion room and along the bar, the place taking onthe glow of a bygone era rorenertanrcuncamen LUptown, naked cast members ofthe avant ‘garde Broaday review 3, Cateutta” Creatas args tenons Cron fro the darned sag, oping octane ‘themselves in bits of clothing offered by a = poopie inthe oie, thon tube oit Ht Way ok oreobs See Win saconds ha ardor ofthe ol : na hake th peopl crewing gti ws ua that came spillingin fom the neighborhood's instantly usel apartments and befudedingly blackoned streets. In the skies over Queens, commercil plots — who had moments earlier been easing their planes down through the humid summer night when the runway ight ot Kennedy and LaGuardia ond o wast blanket of gitering ee Culizetion below them suddenly blinked cut and vanished — begon on Instructions from contro towers to itt their planes toward Philadelphia Nowork or Boston, iow ating shonin Nick and | scrambled to Keep up, strangers and regulars allke shouting for ‘ur attention across the bar. Butt was pointless. Without electricity, the soda guns didnt work, the cash register was locked shut, and every second ae brought new hordes pouring through the door — their numbers seemed funetorminne US Limitless, daunting, In Brookiyr, amusement park turn Coney isiona’sgiont Ferris whee! by ors summer shirts damp with sweat nd from the ground, bringing down those souls stranded aloft, go got tho erank from Milly’ place lcallod to Nick, thon duckod under the haten, too many people leaning ontop of ito open, and started to ‘squeeze my way out through the crow. lenew the gay barthat had opened across the street where Hilly’ art bar Weld used it before, ossengors on subway troins stalled too deep down in the tunnels to alow ‘escape though a nearby station begin what wil become hours oF tem nd eweltr, averting Outside, the strects wore remarkably bus. filled with dazod but not unhappy people strolling and moving about in the darkness, People whistling and hooting and calling to one anather —to complete strangers — everyone feeling somehow charged by the outage, stricken bythe ‘wonder and surprise of ill, as though they found themselves guests at great surprise party thrown completely out of the blue in their honor, a Crowds are growing on the streets of Bushwick, Jamaica and Har Flatbush and Bedfora-Stuywesont. [At the corner, a guy standing outin the middle of Sixth Avenue was playing traffic cp, directing traffic through the intersection witha flashlight, ‘everyone, even cabbies, obeying hie commands inthe most unlikely, Un New Yorky way imaginable rushed in and out of Hillys place and back tothe Bells, the throng inside when lyanked open the door having grown even in the brief minute 'é been gone. The frst the 22,000 fons who'd been wotching the Mets losing in the sixth Inning tothe Cubs, start to fumble their woy down the dork stoiwoys of Shee ‘sodium, | squeezed my way back behind the bar, the only few fest of safety anc relative comfort inthe whole place. People onthe ater side were now packed as ‘ighy a8 riders in a ush hour eubway ca. ‘Somewhere in Queens a bricks thrown eroshing through store window By 10:20pm, Nick and had eet into a steady hythm. Nothing we id vould help us keepup with this kind of crowd, We kn that, So we didnt ry, |usthita certain acceptable stride and let things pay out, wating forthe power to come back on. Which kept thinking would be any minute, ‘ors backed up to storafants an Fordham Road nthe Bronx rip down window ron pops, Glas shatters, Voie roe In frenay faint amoke drifts from a Brooklyn factory warehouse overcun by bora with chains hooked to telr ax in Manat Sh purses teen gangs s id rob pedestrians unchecked ‘on East Fourteenth Street, blacks from the Bells Uptown, grown men are hauling boxes of steaks and roasts from a breached meat market an 125th Street. Ten blocks tothe south, two 10-year-old boys try to wrestle acolor tolovision out tho smashed front door ofan apalianee store Circa ren Video courtesy of PRS'American Experience, “Blackout” Rules were the first things tego. more than once naticeda certain woody fragrance drifting out ofthe back room, forcing me to leave the bar and go back there otell people atone table or another to stop smoking dope in the place like it was bloody Morocco ar somewhere. t's « power outage, you know, notan amnesty, | scolded. We could lose our license. ‘ory, mon, sorry, they'd say, nubbing outa joni the ashtray a8 eagualy ‘as they might sitting around Timothy Leary’ ving room, the roach slipped Under the cellophane ofa cigarette pack and pocketed — Sorry man, really! wos thinking. Thursday, July 14, 12:37 a.m. Homeowners in Brooklyn's Clinton Hill stand watch from thelr stoops, sharing small tlk and cigarettes with neighbors, their flashlight beams swooping the darknoss.Posses of toonoge vigilantes patrol the telian ‘merchant districts of Myrte Avenue armed with baseball bats Fie fighters responding tothe non-blazing worehouse fre are met witha hail Frocks ‘and battles rom the crowd. The lomo n security guard in an ABP supermarket driv looters back ou the store's broken front windows by ashing his pearl-handlied machete their way. Blocks away, « drugstore ‘uner has just shot a men brondishinga crowbar, even os others continue ta stream in through the store's bent window bars, ‘The Bells is stifling. People keep comingin, but noone leaves. The aris thick with cigarettaemoke and nol, Happy noise. No one it seems, other than Nick and myself has the slightest concern or thing to do, Everyone is Liberate ‘A bogpipe's lonely keoning rings without ease throu (0F Grand Control Terminal, the anonymous git of an unknown piper tho hollow caverns Shorty before three dllack in the morning, sick oft, but with no end in sight, I stopped to light a cigarette. What the hell was taking so long with the lights? What are the peopla in charge ofthese things doing, for God's ‘lamas from the warehouse fire in Brooklyn eop the street, setting of fourtenement apartment houses opposite it obioze, Sirens wol in the ight ‘a.m, closing time, people simply refused to eave, just would not be Grivan offs though the blackout had brought with Some abrogation of fhe liquor laws, aif with no clocks to keep track of closing tie had lost any meaning at all ‘The latest of what willbe more than 40 firemen injured overnight twists on nko on debris fighting the Brooklyn worehouse fie. “ OSs ey hie workers at Consolidated Edison electric company eerombled to restort ther flled power system, New York Citys pole force tried to ‘maintain order with na lights or radio equipment, Video courtesy of PBS" ‘American Exporionce, "Blackout Thursday, 5:27 a.m. Finally, when we'd cleared everyone out, Nick and | just settled in atthe bar, the two of us, waiting, drinking, resigned to stay put —as though there were some purpose to our vig. Peter had gone once it was clear the crowd would disperse, We were on our own A fire department Lwopped between accuponts ue squad a lost cuts through the back of ane lors ofthe New Yor Hilton, releasing ts eight Ve talked about people who'd been in, about people who hadn't, wondering why nat, where they ended up. About books. About writers, Hemingway in Paria, Fitzgeral on bie lawns (Eve, Nicks? You sure?) and drunk atthe Plaza. Jewish Hospital tend the wounds of those bot red Physicians ot Brookly’ by the blackout — knife and glass cuts, mostly — in aparkin-ot-turne: tgency-room lit ith spotlights powered by fire department generators | trusted Nick on the literary matters. He was a writer Areal writen! ‘thought, ad a recurring if aceasional, column in “The Village Voice" and a couple of alms en but some ather people has. finished novels that a never He began to grumble now about the column he was tying to finish, how he could get back to it now, not withthe blackout and al, how the whole ‘damned thing had made it impossible for him to meet his deadline — damned dificult, ne complained Precinct lockups ond courthouse holding pens ewell By daylight, some will hold 10 times the number they were built to handle, We sat on, waiting fr who knows what;ashtrays filled; the darkness Eventually the unexpected sound of a key being slipped in the font door Shattered our iyi The porter asranky excmerchant esaman had come, e8 he did every morning, to clean the place up {As ight breoks over the city, crowds tin, melting back inte neighborhoods, He was going tobe alot to deal with on a morning lke this one, We knew that: cll vignt lads, e's have yous now: We grabbed a cab for Jimmy Days, afew blocks tothe south The Brooklyn warehouse ond tenement ruins glow red ond gray nthe early sunlight, emouldering ash heaps. From the the barn Jimmy Days, we watched people tamging by outside fon the sidewall Across the ety, mare than @ thousand fire burn at some pon during the night, nearly 1,700 fase alarms are called in Police intake books taly near 14000 arrest in the city’ ive boroughs “They say it was lightning, Niko," lead, ckimming the pages of a Dally [News someone had left on the ber *Lightning! Hit a power station ar something Nick grunted in esponse, | glanced over accounts of free and looting with amazement: spontaneous city-wide brawl seemed to have broken out without our ever knowing "Nothing tke that hed happened inthe Village, other people a the bar confirmed. Only few had heard anything about i, Like us, most said they’ been pretty busy. The paper also reported thatthe city had reopened its mothballed Tombs prison — just so they’ have somewhere to putall the peopl ar ‘overnight. The Tombs! Man, | thought that sounded like an excelent place to stay out of sted ‘Nick eae to hell witht, he was headed home, “See you tonight, iit ever *Me too, gotta some sleep: The streets outside were blazing bright, the air thick, difficult to breathe. had grown old this blackout. ned for the electric world Thursday 8:55. hoping fora quick bite of dinner before work power would becoming beck on sometime before daylight. Several newspaper reporters at the bar — the Loni rewspepermen and wtes among it regulars confirmed that afew power stations were already fring again. But the e-lighting ofthe city will come gradually, thoy es. Fist, the outer boroughs. Tien Manhattan starting uptown. ‘Someone across the room said the lights wer ready ona the fringes of ‘Queens and on Staten Island, places that right now sounded tome as distant as Wyoming imagined earty sparks of ight slowing lke fiery new strain the citys crown, ‘he glittering rebirth cescending na bright vai southward, bursting seross Washington Heights into Harlem, pouring down around Cental Park, through Midtown, Murray Hil, Hel Kitchen, and Chelees — than, finally sometime before morning, reaching us herein tiny tired Greenwich Vilage. Ealtor's Note: NewsHour deputy senior producer David Coles wos working (9s a bartender in Greenwich Village on July 13,1977 when a massive ‘olectrcity biockout struck New York City lunging it into dorkness.On the 40th onniversary, he shores his memories of those two days Pas American Experionce, “Blackout,"ie avilable fr streaming here until uly 17