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I spent several hours the other night standing on the Jersey City waterfront telling a couple of camera crew from the WCBS promo department about the blackout of 2003. It's part of the station's "storytellers" campaign (watch on our Facebook page here), featuring those of us who've been around a few years. The promo is pretty good, I think, but it only tells part of the story. I thought you'd enjoy hearing the rest of it.
First, I was horrified when the story broke. I'd switched to a regular 9 a.m. shift that day specifically because I had something to do in the evening. The lights flickering at 4:10 p.m. meant I shouldn't have bothered. Whatever work I'd done up to that point was history: a full day of wasted effort. I knew I wasn't going home that night and I was very annoyed.
My irritation only intensified when we ran down to the street to find our live trucks trapped in the garage on West 57th on the wrong side of an electrically operated steel roll-up door. I took off my best blazer and got good and greasy, physically pulling a heavy chain on the door's manual override. It worked well enough, but two waiting reporter colleagues glommed the last of the live trucks as they rolled out and I was left wiping the grease from my hands. I can tell you now between the heat, the ruined evening plans, and the live truck "theft" I was livid.
Time to improvise. With no live truck, I opted to grab our newest photographer at the time and do "look-lives" instead of traditional "live shots." That meant we'd go to various parts of town, get out the camera and do a two to five minute report without editing or interruption as if it were live and ferry the tapes back to the station. It would, in fact, "look live" on the air. Hector Batista and I made three or four runs out into the city that night filing upwards of a dozen "look-live" reports which on reflection looked a heck of a lot better than the static "actual" live shots of the people who'd grabbed the trucks I'd helped liberate earlier.
Those "live" reporters were stuck wherever the trucks had parked in the first minutes after they rolled out of the garage. Cell phone service was erratic, so they had trouble hearing the control room. Being tied to the truck also limited what they could see, hear and talk about. In short, they "ran out of gas" while I had an entire blacked out city to explore and no restriction on my movements. Hector and I brought back images of people directing traffic on the corners near their apartments, shots of spontaneous carpools forming in Times Square, impromptu rest stops, and urban blackout picnics. Some people even opened their homes to stranded strangers so they could rest. It was quite an afternoon and evening, and the stories we filed contained some classic New York moments.
The last bit we did was around midnight in Central Park demonstrating how dark the city was by turning off the camera light during my standup, and letting the inky blackness sink in. The amazing thing is that people were actually roaming around the big park with flashlights that night enjoying the temporary loss of ambient light. I suppose we all should've been afraid, but I can tell you we weren't. It was 2003, and 9/11 was still a pretty fresh memory. The sense of community from that time was still fresh and I think we felt at ease with each other. The reporting reflected that. Looking back it really was terrific stuff, but the problem was that the people most interested in it didn't have electricity. They couldn't see what we were doing even if they wanted to!
The city was still blacked out, but we put on a hell of show for New Jersey that night.
Anyway, that's what really happened. It was exhausting but like my wife says, "That's why they call it work."
It's safe to say that most New Yorkers will be rooting for the Yankees in the upcoming World Series and will be deliriously happy if they win. It's also safe to say that a sizable minority of our neighbors will NOT be joining in either the rooting or the celebration (should the Bronx Bombers bring home another world title). Some New Yorkers have gone so far as to actively pray for Yankee humiliation at the hands of the Philadelphia Phillies.
It's OK. The Yankees are the most revered and despised sports franchise in human history, and they play in a city full of contrarians. It is very "New York," then, to allow the contrarians their say. Here. Now.
I asked the question on Twitter the other day when the Angels were still in the hunt. "Which team does a true Mets fan root for?" For many it is, in the absence of a Met presence, The Yankees. Such Met fans are simply able to transfer their loyalty from Queens to the Bronx once their favorite team's season is over. "You got to go with the home team," they remark.
Oh, if only it were that easy.
For Met fans who have suffered and bled over too many seasons enduring the insufferable Yankee boosters year after year, such transfer of affection is impossible. They are like a spurned lover who cannot bear their former mate's joy with their replacement. They are bitter. They want revenge.
"I would root for the Phillies," Ray Beckerman tells me. "I always root for any team playing against the Yankees." For him it's simple.
William McKinley feels the same way. "I've hated the Phillies for two years," he wrote me. "I've hated the Yankees for 32 years. Advantage Phillies."
But others can't forgive Philadelphia for being the National League New York nemesis. Tony Burrows says a Yankee win would at least be a victory for our town. "The Phillies," he explains, "are the Mets fans' 'Lex Luthor.'"
Alan Slutsky, though, says he cannot bring himself to root for the Yanks. "As a Met fan," he says, "all I can do it root for the rain."
Both the Phillies and the Yankees are so loathed for some of us that the Series itself has been damaged beyond redemption. One Met fan living in exile down in DC wrote that she would be concentrating, not on the series that starts Wednesday in New York, but the one that begins Saturday... in Japan.
The Yomiyuri Giants will face off against the Nippon Ham Fighters. At least it's baseball. Something about that, though, doesn't seem kosher.
The boss stopped at the door on his way out Friday and asked. "So who thinks it's a hoax?" He was talking about the Colorado balloon boy and the improbable story that popped onto the 24-hour cable "news" channels the day before and continued to command attention through successive news cycles. I did the story for our Thursday shows before moving on to….news on Friday.
We answered. I thought it was most likely a hoax from about thirty minutes into the manufactured "drama" on Thursday and so did more than a few fellow journalists in the room. One producer said as much out loud in the first moments after the balloon was sighted. Our opinions, of course, were submerged during the process of reporting what was KNOWN rather than what was suspected. In this business you struggle to keep an open mind even in the face of gnawing doubt. Plus, (this being TV) the strange video of the saucer-shaped balloon bobbing and soaring over the western plains proved irresistible. TV news people are more than a little like cats in that regard. Bright shiny things attract and hold our attention. We ran with the story because it was interesting and no one knew how it would end. By Friday, though, with the balloon down, the boy safe at home and the parents embarking on a cross-country media tour our enthusiasm was fully dissipated.
In retrospect you have to admit it never seemed probable. A helium filled Mylar balloon carrying a 6 year-old boy up and away from a home run by his reality show parents had "hoax" written all over it from the get-go. But the Sheriff's deputies in Colorado bought it and that gave us all collective license to jump in and join the party. And it WAS fascinating, wasn't it? How could we look away? What if our suspicions were wrong? We were covering a story that someone else had decided was news, and our own judgment took a backseat to others who were physically closer to the action. It's one of the reasons you shouldn't really cover news by sitting in a newsroom, although sometimes it's what we're forced to do.
We tried our best, of course, by calling aviation experts and drawing on our own past experiences, but this was a pretty unique spectacle. The news choppers sent back pictures Thursday and journalists on the cable news outlets, some of whom spend most of their time reading off a teleprompter, filled the passing moments as best they could while we waited for the story and the balloon to deflate, which it did over the weekend.
For CBS 2's newscasts on Thursday I played it as straight as I could: A Colorado boy missing following a balloon flying aloft from his backyard. I avoided dwelling on the reality TV background of the father since that was the publicity he would be seeking if it were a hoax. Once the balloon touched down and was found to be empty I also avoided using a blurry photo the purported to be something, possibly the child, falling to earth as the balloon went aloft. It seemed too speculative and I couldn't shake the feeling that we were being had. I stuck with the known facts for the missing child story and worked in some aviation opinion on the difficulties of mounting a rescue had the boy actually been in the balloon.
When Friday rolled around I was supremely grateful to have something else to do. How do YOU feel about how the media handled the story?
Wilson, Williams and West. They all thought they were right and all spoke their mind. Whatever they thought, they are wrong in their crude method of expression: embodiments of an America that has become self-absorbed, self-righteous and openly self-indulgent.
Kanye West is a talented recording artist who believes his tastes in musical excellence are beyond reproach. That he sauntered into the MTV awards swilling cognac out of an open bottle like a wino who'd won the lottery must've made it seem somehow appropriate for him to mount the stage and inject his personal opinion on the comparative excellence of Taylor Swift versus Beyonce Knowles. It was the wrong moment and clearly an insult not only to the young Ms. Swift, but also to the organization that had granted her the award.
Serena Williams is a wildly successful tennis professional, who deep into a semi-final match at the US Open allowed her righteous indignation over a questionable line call erupt into a visceral tirade against the line judge that cost her the point, game, match, and possibly the tournament. She had a right to be angry, but her disappointment is not license for abuse. She approached and threatened the line judge like a girl-gang member in a B-movie instead of the champion she aspires to be. That we seemingly tolerated previous outbursts from likes of Jimmy Conners, Andre Agassi, and John McEnroe years ago perhaps makes us culpable in the outburst, but the time has clearly come for us to say "enough." These lapses in public decency are becoming far too common.
Which brings us to Joe Wilson, an otherwise unremarkable Representative from South Carolina who, last week, undermined his own party's substantive differences with a sitting President by shouting from his seat like a hick spectator at a high school football game. "You Lie!" He screamed at the President of the United States in the US Capitol during a joint address to Congress. His half-baked apology was apparently written by the same PR flack who penned Serena's mediocre mea culpa only days later. It doesn't fly, and the President who accepted it is far more forgiving than we should be.
I say we punish them all in the court of public opinion. Kanye West deserves the scorn of his industry. Serena Williams richly deserves her US Open loss, and the loss of future endorsements. Rep. Joe Wilson should be penalized in any way that strikes Speaker Nancy Pelosi's fancy. I would call these three by the collective name they deserve, but it wouldn't be civil.
When you pull off the Henry Hudson Parkway at 125th Street you enter the beating heart of a vibrant community.
Descending the ramp to the river's edge, you pass the famous Fairway Market, trendy Dinousaur BBQ, and a number of other upscale bars and eateries before sliding onto what is clearly Harlem's Main St., thick with foot traffic and that distinct African-American vibe that makes it a nexus of our city's culture and a destination for every European tourist to land in our town. It's as New York as Sixth Avenue, Broadway, or Queens Boulevard, which is what drew my eye to the guy lying on the sidewalk.
Years ago, in rougher times, the sight might have been sad, but unremarkable: a junkie or drunk passed out on the sidewalk on a summer afternoon. But here in the fresh air of the 21st Century steps from a public library branch and and evangelical church, it was jarring, unreal, ominous. The man was in a blue hoodie, lying on his back, arms outstretched staring into space. He pants were down around his ankles exposing his boxer shorts, and more of his anatomy than is decent or legal on a city street. Another man walking along the sidewalk stepped over his legs and turned to speak to him. He was shouting. "Look at you. You're dead now. You're dead! You're dead!"
I reflexively stopped the car, opened the door and got out to look.
"What are you lookin' at?" the man demanded. He was young. As young or younger, perhaps, than the man in the sidewalk, and his eyes were wild with fear and rage. I jumped back into the car out fear he might have a gun and began fumbling with my phone. I'm not sure I ever want to hear the recording of my 9-1-1 call, but I tried to describe the scene to the dispatcher who quickly assured me she was sending police units to the scene: 125th Street west of Amsterdam Ave. I spent another long minute or so fumbling through my cavernous black work bag trying to dig out the flipcam our tech manager had given me months ago, praying it still had a charge. The last time I'd used it was at a family BBQ on Long Island more than a month ago, so when it fired up I was relieved. The shouting young man in the white t-shirt had now crossed the street and was pacing back and forth in front of a business called Blue Flame Restaurant Supply. I got out and went to the guy on the sidewalk. Someone else was standing over him on a cellphone, also talking to 9-1-1.
"Is he alive?" I asked
"He looks like he's having a hard time," came the answer.
I stared at the man's face and could see blood coming out of his mouth. His eyes were rolled up, lids fluttering. Small bubbles were forming in the blood. I remembered the combat reporter training I'd received before the Iraq War and the cardinal rule that if a victim is still breathing you must keep the airway open. I pinched the mans cheeks and turned his head slightly to allow air to pass the blood saying something like, "Stay with it, help is on the way." I had no idea where he'd been hit.
It was only then that I focused on the sound of arriving sirens, a squeak of tires and the man on the phone telling someone. "OK, I see the cops, they're here, don't worry, they're here."
The first arriving officer ran to the man on the sidewalk and looked down, portable radio in hand.
"This man needs help," I said underlining the obvious.
That's when I heard the shouting from across the street, where the angry man in the t-short had gone. Cops were swarming over the place. Some of what happened immediately after that didn't quite register in my mind, but was dutifully recorded by the flipcam running in my left hand. I was still holding my car keys in my right.
There's the angry man shouting at another prone figure on the sidewalk directly in front of the business. He is also on his back, but he seems like he's already dead which is what the angry man is telling him and cops.
"This m*********** hit me with a pistol and now he's dead!" He screamed, "Look at you, dead!"
It turns out the angry man was indeed pistol-whipped by one of four men intent on robbing Blue Flame Restaurant Supply and had come outside to see his attackers after the owner of the store shot each of them with a licensed pump-action shotgun. The shooting happened inside the store. A police source tells me the owner, 72-year-old Charles Augusto, was seated the entire time and warned the would-be robbers first that there was no cash on the premises and second that they should leave right away for their own good. When they didn't he fired and racked the weapon three times, fatally wounding two of the robbers and injuring the other two. All four ran from the store and dropped at various distances. One fell dead in front of the store, the second fell across the street where his loose hip-hop style pants had fallen around his ankles (he died later at the hospital). The third robber made it about block before falling, the fourth was picked up by police at 128th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue.
Charles Augusto had been robbed before and wasn't about to take his chances with gun-wielding criminals again. Detectives questioned him then let him head home. He'd done nothing wrong. Some passers-by saw the carnage on the street and were appalled at the scene. Others thought it was a well deserved turn of the tide. Neighbor Kirk Lyons stood at the police tape and couldn't quite go that far. "Deserved," he asked? "Who's to say? They certainly put themselves in a bad situation."
The shooting happened just about 3 o'clock in the afternoon. 125th Street was still closed as a crime scene when I headed home about 10:30 for a night of uneasy sleep.
