The Great Hoboes of New York may be characters and may be wildmen(and women), but like every other New Yorker (and seemingly Northeasterner) we were stuck in the Blackout of 2003. These are our stories.

Jimmy Koehler's tale:

Gareth's tale:

I was standing at my sink doing dishes at about four o'clock when the power went out. The TV was playing some junk which I half heartedly listened to, the volume loud to reach the kitchen. The noise stopped and at first I simply kept doing dishes, but then I decided to go check the fuses, which were fine, so I decided that i was probably in trouble, I had the responsibilty of sending the utility payments in, and I assumed I forgot. So I called Con Edison. The woman took a minute answering my query, of "How do I get my lights turned back on, I lost power."

She spoke after the pausem, as if speaking to a small child..."Excuse me? There is a situation. We don't know when the power will be back."

I responded to her confusion with a happy and excited voice. "So, this isn't my fault! Well I am sure you guys won't take long fixing it."

"Sir, there was a problem and the northeast is all blacked out. We are trying to fix it as soon as possible."

"Oh I am sure you will," still gleeful at my lack of responsibility, "Good luck with that, and thanks."

And then I hung up on her and went back to dishes. All of this seemed perfectly harmless to me until I realized without power I would not be watching TV or checking my email, but with a fool0hearty confidence that it would all work out, I continued doing dishes. I was just about to shower and get on the subway to meet friends, ignoring the blackout all together when I heard a knock at the door. Sweaty and dirty from the house cleaning I had been doing, wearing boxers and a tee, I went to the door, assuming a neighbor was interested in a candle or something trivial.

Instead my attractive friend Nikki was there, and along with the joy of seeing her was an incredible burst of disgust at my appearance. I sprinted up the stairs and pulled pants on, came back and offered her water. She sat and said her train had stopped working and she walked to my house because she was much closer to me in Sunnyside then to her home, miles away in Little Neck. As she said this, I realized that I was not going to be getting into Manhattan. After chatting for a while, she decided there was no way she could get to work, and although I wanted her to stay around. Romantic images of thawing food and candles flickering in mind, I ended up walking her to Northern Boulevard to try and get her on a bus.

Although until then I had ignored the blackout, the sight of hundreds of sweaty sad looking people walking home from work, already tired, streaming past us was impressive. They had walked more then a mile and a half already, you know because they came from Manhattan over the 59th street bridge, and where I stood was close to a mile and a half from the Manhattan side, many I am sure had walked frther. It made me think of making the same walk on September eleventh. I tried to think about something else, and noticed with a certain amount of enthusiasm that there were people thumbing rides from drivers along Northern. Similarly, other cars simply stopped loaded as many as they could fit, said they were going to go to whatever street and then zoomed away, not charging. I approved. People actually were being considerate, and many were trying to help each other. I actually saw a business man let an elderly woman into a cab ahead of him.

Amazing.

So after placing her into a van with a dozen others, driven by a sweet faced young woman speaking rapid Spanish, driving as far as 99th street, I walked home, seeing barbecues, people on their stoops, smiling faces and chatting neighbors. For me, the black out was a good thing. It seemed to bring people together. Of course, I was comfortably at home, and not inconvenienced. Maybe that was why i got to wear the rose colored glasses.

Oh and i did end up showering, I didn't set the house on fire, and I didn't get to be romantic with anyone while the candles burned. Oh and if anyone knows Nikki, say she should call and tell me she got home alright. I still haven't heard from her after she got into the van, but I am still optimistic.

Julio's tale

I’m going out to buy more comfortable dress shoes this weekend once the subway system comes back online.

Maurice's tale

Tyler's tale

The Traffic Lights, They Turn Blue, Tomorrow

"Aren't you glad you climbed down all thirty-seven flights of stairs from our office?" asked one of my chipper co-workers. "And you wanted to stay and ride out the crowds. Tyler! We all made it! Let's go get some cabs and go home!"

"Yeah," I said, clutching onto the revolving door for dear life. "Thirty seven floors...that's all...it was..." I went around and around a few times for fear of releasing myself into the throngs of Midtown Manhattan. I hadn't wanted to get into a pissing match with my co-workers when I was alllll the way upstairs, but my hesitancy of heading downstairs at 4:15, 5 minutes after the power went out, was that everybody else under the sun would be dashing down and grabbing a cab or bus. Furthermore, most of my colleagues lived in Manhattan. I live in the 'burbs, and it was going to be a long walk, whether I joined the fray then or waited a few minutes. In the end it didn't matter. NY was going to be a nightmare for at least a day...

The crowds outside were evil. Sweaty, angry, confused. Traffic was going any direction it could, albeit slowly. Cabs were already full up, buses were packed, and the city had only fallen apart maybe thirty minutes earlier. I walked towards the East River, and stopped in the middle of Fifth Avenue to stare at the most peculiar woman. She looked like something out of a French art film - extreme makeup, chiseled features, far-off glare. In her arms she held The Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting Rich. I couldn't help but laugh. It was like some sort of Twilight Zone episode - a lady who wanted millions and only got them when the world's power went off...

As I ventured home on my long day's journey into night, many great ideas occurred to me. Unfortunately, they often occurred to me about 30 blocks too late. The thought to crash at my Manhattanite buddy's 52nd street apartment didn't occur to me when I was still near the UN - it occurred to me when I was in Chelsea. The notion to visit my old office Times Square and travel back to LI in a pack of people didn't occur to me until I was in the East Village.

Most embarassingly, the best of my ideas - "Cross the nearest bridge to Brooklyn or Queens, jackass" - was wrecked by my poor geography skills. What bridge is closest to 46th & the East River, boys and girls? I'll give you a hint - Simon and Garfunkel wrote a song about it. Yes, in double- deedy, the 59th Street Bridge. But did I remember that? Oh, no, I walked over the UN and asked which Bridge I should take. The guard, who obviously didn't care and didn't know, said to go down to the Brooklyn Bridge. That's the last time I hold faith in the UN. Hell, I might even become one of those isolationist wahoo's we have running the country. So, Downtown I went.

By that time, I was starving and looking for someplace familiar. I took care of the starving part by visiting a bodega and buying up all the grapefruit, bottled water and Pringles I could carry. Sonofabitch, my shoulder was gonna hurt from hauling all that stuff, but I was gonna have my vitamin C. The familiarity I took care of by heading to East Seventh Street I was disappointed but not surprised to see Brewsky's closed. They often don't open until at least 6, and any bartender worth his salt would know better than to rush into the angry, bitter mob that I was walking through and add alcohol to the mix. That would be akin to placing a fifth of whisky in tins of C-Rations during a war. And this was war, believe you me.

And perhaps it was because that they've been open through every war we've had since the Civil one that McSorley's was wide open, distributing the bottles they had stored in the basement. Those old Irish friends of my Grandfather and his Grandfather before him know how to carry out a civic duty. Beer wasn't on my mind as I walked in the door, though. Oh no. I had a kidney to tap, so I made like a regular (which I once was), and walked through the back room. "Hidey Ho, Cap'n!" I said to one of the waiters, who couldn't see me in the dusky darkness of that back room. He nodded, and I walked past him towards the loo. Now there were no lights in the bathroom, and I almost pissed on a fella because of that. Finishing things, I dashed out the restroom door, and then out the front. No beer for me, that night - I had to stay hydrated.

Now, if Midtown Manhattan had been bad - an angry mob in search of mass transit that wasn't there, and paranoid, despite the radio reports, that terrorists were about to pop out of every manhole cover - Down town was worse. The Midtown people were rushing to get home, and were frightened and frustrated that their best attempts weren't getting them anywhere near home. Most of the folks Downtown already were home, and coming home to no power, a bad smell, and thousands of suburbanite assholes on their steps must have been the collective nightmare of the hepcats downtown. I was happy to see that the Bowery bums were already lined up at the Bowery Mission for their evening meal. Some things don't change no matter how hard things get. Count your blessings.

Now it was about this time that two genetically predisposed parts of my personality became my ruin. One, I am a man, and we are notoriously bad about asking directions. Two, I was raised to be humble and embarassed of my privilege, and even though my apartment is no Shangri-La, I felt bad asking people, who were sweating their balls off and miserable, how I could get back to my little beach community home. The fact that I had more than once cleaned toilets for a living suddenly didn't matter. Despite my protestations, I was all of a sudden one of those commuting yuppie scumbags who I despise to this day. A pretentious asshole, aren't I?

Through moments of clarity and humility, I was able to find my way to the Williamsburg Bridge. According to the Internet, I was about four and a half miles through my trip at this point. The power wasn't back on yet, and I was in the throngs of thousands walking over the bridge on the bicycle path. People were fainting in the heat, and the Fire Department were rushing back and forth trying to hydrate those people. I stopped to catch my breath and eat a grapefruit, and somebody came over to ask me if I needed help. It was one of only three moments during the day when I had respect for my fellow man. All respect and hope was to be dashed as soon as I got to the other side of the bridge, though.

If I'd ever had any faith in the Bloomberg administration, it was destroyed when I stepped off the bridge. First off, I found not EMTs or any medical staff helping people, but volunteers from Brooklyn's hassidic community. Bless them, they had gallons of water that they were giving away. Secondly, any cops you asked for directions or help just told you to get moving. Thirdly, and this is the one that really gave me a brain bubble, they had closed the entrance to the Brooklyn-Queens-Expressway. I'll repeat that. In a city where none of the traffic lights are working, they had closed the entrance to the second largest traffic-light-free thoroughfare, probably for the sake of keeping it open for emergency vehicles. That said, there were tens of thousands of vehicles trying to leave the city, and they had closed one of their only avenues of egress. It was the stupidest thing I'd ever seen in my entire life, and I was a hippie at one point.

While I'm ranting, let me thank my fellow man for helping me get on the wrong buses - not once, but two fuck times. Somehow, even though no bus route seemed to stick to its usual pattern, anybody I did work up the courage to ask for directions had alllll the answers. Say, next time someone asks you something and you don't know the answer, say so, asshole.

No, the first bus I got on ended up going to Bed Stuy. When I asked a fellow passenger if indeed I was going in the right direction, they looked me up and down and said, "NOOOO! You're NOT going the wrong way! God help you!" As I shit in my dress shoes, realizing that my fate was to be knifed in pitch black darkness in a neighborhood I'd never dreamt of visiting, I stepped on Umberto's toes. Umberto, as his friends called him, was a drunk wannabe gangbanger who had decided to take his sneakers off on a packed bus. When I stepped away from the terrified lady who foretold my doom, I placed my big heel on his little toe. "MOOOOTHERFUUUUUCK!" he yelled, followed by something in Spanish that I had heard my grandfather say only once, when his cat jumped in his lap, got scared and clawed his balls through his chinos. I'd translate it, but I think John Ashcroft would take our website down for breaking decency codes. "You broke my lil' piggy toe!" he said to me.

"I'm sorry, man. I'm sorry!" I said. I was exhausted, and indeed sorry, but this guy was being a drama queen.

"What's your name?" he asked.

Oh, great, I was gonna get sued, to wrap the night up. I sighed and looked him in the face. "What?" I asked.

Umberto's friend then grabbed him by the arm. "Umberto, he looks pissed. Don't fuck with him."

I was actually scared, but if they thought I looked pissed, I'd play that to the hilt. "Are you alright or not, man."

"I'm alright," Umberto said, adding, "You big fat fuck," as he stepped up to me.

"Yo, Bert," said his friend. "Don't."

"What's your name?" he asked again, cracking a smile.

"Tyler," I said.

"Johnny?" he asked. He slurred it. He was drunk. Great, trapped on a bus to Bed Stuy with a drunk, angry gang banger.

"You can call me whatever you want, man."

He laughed and clapped me on the shoulder. "Oh, man. My toe, my toe." He laughed again. "You know which one you got?"

"The lil' one?" I asked, trying to smile.

"Yeah, man. The one that goes wiggity wiggity wiggity all the way home."

"I'm sorry, dude," I said, trying to sound genuine.

"It's okay," he said, and nodded. "So," he continued, "You Jewish?"

I wasn't sure where he was going with that one, and was afraid to find out. It was thankfully at just this moment that the terrified lady said, "You might want to get off here. Catch the connection. That can take you where you're going." I nodded, hit the tape to call for a stop, and dashed to the door. Umberto actually waved.

As the bus pulled away, and I was plunged into darkness I looked around. Oh, man, where was the connection? At least I wasn't alone at the bus stop. There were four, no, five gentlemen standing there, a few drinking out of paperbags. Worrying about the open container law on a night like this struck me as silly. I was almost ready to tell them about Mark Hugo's anti-container-law platform, when one said, "Whatcha got in your bag?"

A mugging? A mugging? Even a half-assed drunken one, but, in the midst of a disaster, a mugging? Animal instinct kicked in and I ran like hell. I was not followed. I probably ran two blocks, skirting a corner, before I stopped. I saw some folks standing at a bus stop. At this point, I figured it was best just to get to Jamaica, and see where I could go from there. "This bus go to Jamaica?" I asked. No response. "This bus..." I looked into the face and realized I was not being understood at all. "Ah, well," I said to myself, "It's gotta beat here."

Half an hour later, I arrived in East New York. "Oh, boy," I said to myself. In the interim, a Ukrainian immigrant woman had latched on to me for guidance. For some reason she thought I knew where I was going. "Where you going?" she asked.

"Anywhere, the Rockaways, Nassau, Jackson Heights... Anywhere I've got family."

"Me, too," she said.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

"Same place," she said.

"Same place? Where?"

"Forest Hills," she said.

"Forest Hills? That's not the same place. Yeah, it's Queens, but..."

"Queens?" she asked. "Yes, that's where I go."

Ten minutes later, I lost her as I got onto a bus to Jamaica. I couldn't keep track of her. I guess that's why I didn't get that job transporting prisoners for the state...

My ego gone, I began asking everyone on the bus how to get to anywhere I had ever heard of. "Where are you going?" asked a small man sitting at my feet.

"Well, I'd really like to get to Nassau, like Valley Stream or anything just over the border would be great, but any where in Eastern Queens would be a start."

"I live in Valley Stream," he said. "I'll show you where to go."

"Want some Pringles, pops? I'm sticking with you."

His name was Jean Marie, and he was a linesman for Verizon. He was quick to point out that my Sprint cellphone was getting no reception at all, but his was crystal clear, in the midst of the jammed phone systems. Corporate pride trumps all, even in disaster, I guess. He was a nice fella, talkative and helpful. After hours dealing with assholes who had nothing but wrong answers, this guy was Aces.

Two hours later, I found myself walking up the block to my parents' house, as there was no bus heading towards my home town. Mom looked up and said, "Oh, I thought we'd be seeing you. Want some fish? Your father caught it today." I stuffed myself on unrefrigerated, fried goodness for an hour, and then my old man insisted on driving me home. "Christ!" he said, "It's almost one! You've been on the for nine hours!"

"Yeah, and four of those were on my feet," I said. "I don't know, the lights are still out, Dad. You could get into an accident."

"Son," my old man said, "I live for this kind of shit. Now put your safety belt on."

Through darkness, we rode. As we got to my hometown though, I heard my father mutter something. I blearily looked up. "What?"

"The power's on in your town, Son."

"That's great. What's wrong with that?"

"I dunno. It's just kind of funny. Seems there's a little bit of selective power restoration, huh?"

"There's a retired U.S. Senator who just moved here." I shrugged. "Built a big house out by the shore, I think. Maybe there's some connection."

"That might go to explaining things a bit." He laughed.

"Ya think?" I winked at him, in the dark.

"Sure, I'm sure, Son. It's the American way."