Kindly Póg Mo Thóin

Cripes.

When I got back from Long Island Wednesday evening (client meeting, sprung on me at the last minute, on a day when it took me two hours to get into work due to track flooding, and the branch of the LIRR we needed to take was shut down, so we took a car), I got dropped off in Manhattan. When I got into the 4/5/6 Union Square station, there was a train in the station with a “not in service” message, and another message telling me that due to a police investigation at Grand Central, various trains on the 4/5/6 were not running. And when I say “various,” I mean “all.” Reason? In MTA-speak, “an investigation.”
I found another way home, grateful that at least at Union Square (versus my stop) they actually let you know the frickin’ train won’t be coming (did I mention it was TWO HOURS Wednesday morning before I got a train? Might have been less had they announced that the uptown trains were running express and, oh, NOT STOPPING at my stop, because Jeez, I could have, like, you know, fucking walked the 10 blocks or so to get there rather than wait TWO HOURS for a train. Only to find out they were stopping at my local stop by then. Bastids.

But I didn’t know about this steam pipe explosion. Crap! that’s literally a block and a half from where I worked until January, and that spiky building in the photo is the Chrysler Building, which is currently the second-tallest building in New York.

Shit blows up here from time to time. I remember a New Year’s Day in 1999 or so, when both a water main and a gas main burst at around the same time, so that not only did the street eat some cars, but it did it with a whole lake of fire effect. Apex Tech blew up one year. And so did some building on Madison (in the 50s — it housed the Vermont Teddy Bear Company, or maybe the building just slid down, it’s been a while) and a theater on 42nd collapsed. And a construction site in the 100s, not too far from where STAB BABY played out.

In fact, I wrote last year about the explosion of the E. 62d Street townhouse of one Dr. Bartha, who was determined to die in his beloved house before he allowed it to be sold to satisfy the divorce decree obtained by his long-suffering wife. And I commented at the time that freakin’ Al Qaeda was just ruining the intermittent explosions that happen in this town for various reasons — bad gas lines, arson, divorce, aged buildings, stupid pilots, what have you. I mean, it’s not frequent — I’ve been here 10 years and I think I’ve witnessed, oh, fewer than 10 weird-ass explosions. Time was when they’d have been written off as Life in the City — now, everyone freaks out about terrorism.

As if fiction could be stranger than truth in this town.