Juan Monroy

A year to the week after last year’s Halloween storm, we have ourselves a very serious weather event hitting the region. And this one appears to be much bigger than Hurricane Irene, which was our first real hurricane threat and a storm that stranded my mother here for several days. We managed the last two storms pretty well by sitting tight at home and even patronizing our local businesses. We were also very fortunate to not have any flooding, not losing power, and keeping our plumbing functioning normally. I hope that we have the same luck again.

By some measures, the storm has already been very disruptive, much more so than the previous two storms. All of my work sites are closed on Monday and on Tuesday, including New York University, Fordham University, Lincoln Center, CUNY, Queens College and Pratt Institute.

More local businesses around Long Island City are open now than were during Hurricane Irene. Based on a short walk around the neighborhood, I saw Cranky’s serving the rare Monday brunch, the local Korean-owned E & I Grocery was open, and we couldn’t resist the reasonably priced Sushi and Sashimi lunch special at BANY. We also noticed that
the Chinese take-out place was open, even if they had taped their windows shut.

However, the Vernon Wine and Liquor and the Cuban Madera had similarly boarded their windows, and the local laundry had been closed since Sunday evening, just before the subways stopped running.

So far, we’ve had only one storm-related mishap. The wind blew off the hatch leading to the roof of our apartment building. I was able to find the hatch cover just a few feet away. A neighbor and I removed the few remaining items on the roof and secured the hatch cover with some rope.

As the storm progresses, I’ll keep posting any updates for as long as it is possible… and worthwhile.