By Lisa and Shay Zach
The following is a letter written by two very good friends of mine, a couple, living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. They sent this to me tonight, along with these fantastically poignant photographs. For those of you not living in NY, I thought you’d really appreciate an honest look at the slight over-reaction – thus far, anyway – made by everyone, from media to the authorities, on Hurricane Irene. Of course, we may wake up to an utter disaster tomorrow morning, but today was something very different. Read on.
Dear Irene,
We are sitting in a cafe waiting for you to arrive (they told us you are notoriously late) it is all a bit surreal….the subways and airports have been closed since noon for your impending arrival so we had to walk here in trough the rain.The mayor has been on TV urging people in Zone A to evacuate and run away, most people left town, it seems like a ghost town here, why don’t you come already, we are getting antsy!We are on the border of zones B & C and decided to stay put with our stock of water and wine. The restaurants are either boarded up or packed – I guess the idea of being stuck at home for 24hrs has given everyone the schpulkies. The stores are out of water, flashlights, Monopoly/Clue and sand bags (darn we wanted to make a beach on the roof)Irene please don’t stand us up, we can’t take another rejection. We are getting desperate here in America for some world attention, maybe somebody can send some aid? Maybe Al Qaeda can send some people to help board up stores and pump the water?From,
Bored and Boarded @ home, storm watching and wind surfing
Photo credit for all photos above: Lisa and Shay Zach
Yeah, that’s pretty accurate… I took a stroll down to one of the main roads out here in Eastern Queens and I’ve never seen so many people walking around there as I did today.
Then again, it seems pretty bad out now at 2am… so maybe it was justified? We’ll see.