Back Bay Blackout

Thursday, March 15, 2012

In case you were wondering where I've been over the last couple of days, these pictures, taken around seven in the morning yesterday in the Prudential/Copley Square area of Back Bay Boston, where I live, should offer a clue.


Here's another clue: Some buildings had backup generators, and some didn't. A huge electrical fire in our neighborhood knocked out the substation that provides electrical power to a large swath of Boston around 7:00 Tuesday evening -- just as I was about to post the answer to a comment, and we didn't get power back until this afternoon. I see that I have some email and a few comments awaiting moderation. I probably won't get to any of that until tomorrow morning.

Wednesday in our neighborhood was bizarre, with many businesses, including all stores and kiosks in both malls closed. Fortunately, the grocery store across the street and the subways were open. I bought supplies for life without a fridge later that morning and we had dinner in Cambridge last night. Later today, I'll be throwing out practically everything that had been in the fridge and having to replace it. Aside from that annoying task, I'm relieved and thrilled to have power back.

In the meantime, the curious can find some good blackout pictures at the City Desk blog of The Boston Herald.

-- CAV

2 comments:

Dismuke said...

Gee whiz. A blackout in Boston. You could have started a protest. You could have gathered up a mob and screamed and yelled and demanded that the electric company NOT restore power. You see, to a very sizable portion of the population in that city, electricity is EVIL. It is generated from evil fossil fuels such as oil and gas and coal. It is also generated by nuclear power plants. Nuclear is evil too - unless of course it is used for peaceful and benevolent purposes in places such as Iran and Venezuela.

Think of how much carbon would not be spewed into the atmosphere if the power in that part of Boston was not restored. I guarantee you that most of the people in that neighborhood have said reducing carbon is a necessary and virtuous thing and that those who dare to disagree are a bunch of boorish rubes who drink the sort of coffee served in truck stops and gas stations.

No electricity means no stoplights which means no evil automobiles. And no energy consuming elevators. Ugly fat Americans will have to walk up multiple flights of stairs to get to the top floors of the Pru and the John Hanckock tower - which they deserve to do as a result of being part of such a blighted country.

And just think of how many businesses in the neighborhood would go out of business. That would be a good thing as they would not longer be exploiting people.

Instead, you could agitate that the neighborhood be given a multi billion dollar Green Energy grant to be used to find ways to use wind, solar and pixie dust to replace the evil electricity.

A freak accident brings about the sort of low carbon/green energy utopia that Bostonians have been preaching and endorsing for years. And the evil electric company RESTORES power?

You could bring in Cindy Sheehan to join you in the protest. I am sure she is eager to find a way to get another 15 minutes of fame ever since her Walter Duranty Media handlers demoted her from being a Useful Idiot into just an ordinary run of the mill idiot. She can yell. She can scream. And she has kissed Hugo Chavez. You all could pitch tents and occupy Copley Plaza - and in a big rally, Cindy can remove her Che tee shirt and set her bra on fire in protest.

People deserve the sort of world they have been demanding - and all the Green Lefties in that neighborhood ought to be allowed to live the sort of life they preach to everybody else.

And, if you led such a protest you could have been on television! Not that you would have been able to tune in and watch yourself, of course, without power.

Gus Van Horn said...

Hah!

I thought more than once during my ordeal -- which is really nothing compared to the kind of world these idiots will achieve if they succeed -- that anyone who celebrates "Earth Day" deserves to do so this way: caught almost completely off-guard at a time definitely NOT of their own choosing, and for an indeterminate amount of time.

Thanks for the laugh.