STRIKE! Day Two

There's a transit strike in the NYC and let me tell you -- IT SUCKS. You don't have to be a New Yorker or even know very much about New York to grasp how badly we need public transportation in this city. 7 million people a day use those trains and buses -- 7 MILLION. In a city of 18 million, that's a large part of the population. I drove MG and a couple of our other friends in to mid-town today so they could go to work. The Brooklyn Bridge was a sea of people -- people who were forced to walk because there weren't any trains. To drive into Manhattan between the hours of 5 a.m. and 11 a.m., there had to be a minimum of four people in the vehicle. We were lucky. I had the day off and didn't mind doing the driving (3 1/2 hours round-trip to go to midtown from where we live in Brooklyn), so it was easy for us. Not so for the thousands and thousands of people hoofing it across the bridges in the 15 degree weather. It's the week before Christmas, man. This is not right.

The Transport Workers Union and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority couldn't hammer out their differences in regard to the TWU contract (which expired last week) and when Monday rolled around, the talks ground to a halt. So, Tuesday at 12:01 a.m., the TWU struck and that was that. The pain to the city was immediate and severe. There are going to be people who lose their jobs (not counting the TWU employees themselves who are being hit with enormous fines and garnished wages), people who die because emergency services can't reach them through the traffic (the roads are a gridlocked nightmare -- I drove for almost 8 hours today in two trips to Manhattan), people whose holidays are going to blow because these assholes can't work it out. And don't even get me started on the mayor. We're all looking to him to be a voice of reason, a cooler head we can count on -- what does he do? Calls the TWU a bunch of thugs and criminals. Jesus, Mike, that's the best you can do? What the fuck? Now, everybody's feelings are hurt and we're not any closer to a settlement than we were this time last week. It could be days before this strike is over.

It's one of those historic NYC moments, like the 2003 Blackout, where you wish you weren't really there to witness the history. Or better, that the history had been different and you'd witnessed something else. Why can't we have something unbelievably good happen to us so we can say, "Remember when that happened? That was AWESOME!" instead of "God, I could not believe that happened. I hope nothing like that ever happens again." This town is hurting right now and there's nothing any of us can do about it. Held hostage by our own city. What a fucker.

So, who knows what tomorrow will bring... MG and I are leaving town tomorrow. Her mother's coming to get us and whisk us off to New Jersey for the holidays. I'm sure the strike will still be here when we get back and that the news will only get worse but at least we'll be okay. There's nothing we can do about it anyway.