Open Thread Wednesday

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  • AEB

    I Made It Through the Five-Hour Blackout of the (Very) North Heights and All I Got Was…a renewed sense of the great mystery of silence, which was, actually, a lot. I believe it was Edith Sitwell who, when asked if she had any hobbies(!) said, “Yes, music and silence.”

    Some other takeaways: 811 and 911 are useless when the problem is a power outage. The former wanted to connect me with the police; the latter, the fire department. Useless also was calling Con Ed, which by the time I reached their emergency number was long past the possibility of getting through. I finally found the Con Ed guys who were working (on Middagh) to restore power, and they filled me in on what was happening.

    One of the stranger things: in my building, power was off selectively. Power was off in all the apartments; but on in the halls. A neighbor downstairs reported that nothing was working–except her refrigerator…

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7nPOzGeyaw Arch Stanton

    Don’t get you started on what? The original plan for the BQE would have been much more devastating for the Heights, destroying most of Hicks, Pierrepont Streets and Monroe Place. The compromise that was built, saved most of the neighborhood and gave us the Promenade.

  • Concerned

    i don’t think this was a reportable incident, more like drunk teenagers squabbling – given an auto was involved is more concerning from a pedestrian perspective

  • http://selfabsorbedboomer.blogspot.com/ Claude Scales

    So there was no theft of an auto; just, as you put it, a drunken squabble? In other words, no carjacking.

  • CassieVonMontague

    People are saying “carjacking” based on the Citizen App which takes 911 and police scanner reports and creates alerts. These are more often than not wrong.

    I had to delete the app because I kept getting notifications that Shotspotter detected “gunshots” on my street.

  • MaggieO

    the hallway fixtures may have battery back-up to provide light in the event of evacuation during power outage. as for the refrigerator… that one is odd.

  • MaggieO

    i hate that app. agree with the comments above, i can’t find any verification of this incident outside of Citizen App and this specific thread.

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7nPOzGeyaw Arch Stanton

    Most buildings are powered by two hot mains that give 120v to neutral or 240v combined. The 120v circuits in a building are usually, evenly distributed between those two hot mains. It is possible that only one of those mains was down. Thus you would have some lights and outlets with power and some without.

  • http://selfabsorbedboomer.blogspot.com/ Claude Scales

    I believe that’s the famous February House in the center of the photo.

  • AT

    I have no idea what specifically happened (IPV vs random assault vs “car jacking.”)

    But what I do know is that myself and several other neighbors were awoken by screaming at 4am. For what it’s worth I myself could only hear a woman screaming for help. It was loud enough that it left me thinking about her and her safety all morning.

    Several of us neighbors did call 911 because it was that alarming.

  • Andrew Porter

    I meant, “Don’t get me started on Robert Moses and his plans to tear down everything because it’s old and replace it with shiny towers (like Cadman Plaza) or turn Atlantic Avenue into an expressway (destroying all the buildings there and on State Street) and…”

  • Andrew Porter
  • Andrew Porter

    Wasn’t aware of this—nothing out where I live north of Clark Street.

  • Andrew Porter

    Despite the warm weather, it’s been Stinky Gingko season esp. at the end of Remsen Street, for the last couple of weeks!

  • AEB

    The difference that two blocks made in illumination versus not WAS striking….

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7nPOzGeyaw Arch Stanton

    Yes, Moses was a racist, narcissist, megalomaniac and hindsight is always accurate.
    However, NY needed highways and for better or worse Moses got them built. Of course now we can see how some of these projects were flawed, but when they were planned, there wasn’t any historical reference on how to build a highway in. a city. Also, the social impacts of such endeavors weren’t as much of a concern, back then.

    I have heard a lot of, deserved, bashing of Moseses projects but I have never seen any alternative plans that would have avoided their impact. How would you have built NY’s highways?

  • Andrew Porter

    You’re assuming the highways he built are good, which ain’t necessarily so.

    For one I wouldn’t have designed Long Island parkways so NYC buses wouldn’t fit under the overpasses. Gotta keep those NYC slum-dwellers off Jones Beach’s pristine sands…

    Eventually, people realized he was all powerful and answerable to no one, and the king was deposed.

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7nPOzGeyaw Arch Stanton

    I am not assuming anything, I stated the highways are flawed.
    My point is, it is easy for people to criticize the past even though they probably couldn’t have done much better, themselves.
    Yes the racist low overpasses are an abomination, but I don’t see any efforts to correct them either…

  • MaggieO

    worst season. especially when it’s warm since it gets even stinkier… bleeeeech

  • Andrew Porter

    Yesterday, saw a Chinese woman harvesting the unsquashed fruits from around the tree. Glad they’re being used!

  • Andrew Porter

    E-mail I received says they have signed up, so problem, for me, solved.

  • Cranberry Beret

    There was an outage in an irregular swath of blocks running from north side of Orange to Poplar, and west side of Henry to Willow. Noodle Pudding, Wine Bar etc had no power…south side of Cranberry near Willow had power but north side did not.

    Multiple ConEd crews had been working all over the North Heights that day, including one truck which completely closed off Cadman between Henry and Middagh, forcing the B25 buses to detour onto Henry that afternoon. Around 6pm there was a vault fire at Orange/Hicks which was the immediate cause of the blackout, even with all the crews already on location. There was another vault fire later that evening even after power had been restored.

  • bhtsmom

    who cares if its a carjacking… relable the post as “woman attacked on willow /orange”. is that better?

  • MaggieO

    Obviously none of us here know what actually happened and I’m sure we’re all hoping that whoever screamed got the help they needed. i care about accuracy. others do too. accuracy is important. Citizens App creates an unverified report of an incident and only if other citizens update the app with the correct information that report will live on in the cloud. In general these reports can create a feeling that crime is more prevalent and the crimes taking place more severe than what is actually happening. this affects us all as a community as it reduces our trust in eachother and our feeling of safety. so yes, in short, if that’s what actually happened, that would be better.

  • KDHicks

    Did anyone yell out the window or try to scare off whatever was happening?