Well, it was a little big for me. There I was at 28th and Park, late for
dinner at mother in law’s, trying to get on the No. 6 uptown. Panting a
little after hustling down the stairs, oh good there stands the train,
if i hurry I might scurry on board. Swipe card, nothing. Curses. Swipe
again. Curses curses, I’ll miss it. Eye lands on little display window
on turnstile: “No cards or tokens.” Ack, broken turnstile! Dodge to next
turnstile, same display. Next one, same. The train is, in fact, standing
there without anyone on board, all doors gaping open. Reality sinks in -
this line is shut down.
Oh well, it happens, if rarely. Back on the street, I call to explain
lateness, will find an uptown bus. Enid says, hey, get a taxi. Ha, ha,
ha. With thousands of stranded subway riders running about in the street
waving briefcases? Ha. Here come not one but three empty cabs in a row.
69th and Lexington please. Cabbie says something about going through the
park, which cabbies prefer when the traffic is heavy, and says something
else I don’t catch. I say, whatever you think is best. But he swings on
to Madison instead and we start uptown. It is completely jammed, one
block per green light. Inch by inch we proceed. And then, crossing 41st
St, I happen to look over towards Park Ave on my right and see a
bleeding volcano! Steam is shooting up to the tops of the skyscrapers!
No wonder the No. 6 is shut down, it goes right through there!
My god, I say to the cabbie, that’s why the traffic is so bad. “What I
said,” he grunts in reply. “I tole ya.” Well, I guess he did.
This was at 7 pm, so I missed the fun by an hour, and half a block.
Apparently, during the monsoonal downpour that morning with 3.5 inches
on Central Park, it is speculated that some of the rainwater got into
the conduits, leaked through the heavy insulation and hit the 400-degree
steam pipe, which was not good.
New York is, as far as I know, the only major city with a centralized
steam system. It was installed in the 1880s to run the elevators in the
skyscrapers that were just starting to be built. (The first subway,
which ran for two blocks and was built in secret because Boss Gould had
a monopoly on public transport, i.e. the streetcar system, was also
pushed by steam pressure.) After the pneumatics were replaced with the
DC power provided by Thomas Edison, and which is still how elevators and
subway motors operate, the steam was diverted to heating and cooling the
major buildings in the city. It’s super cheap energy and beloved by all.
Except when it blows up and kills people - last one was about 20 years
ago I believe, down in Gramercy Park.
Everything is back to normal today, except for the poor people in hospital.