Manhattan's Impending Uptown-Downtown Civil War: Who Will Win?

Manhattan’s Impending Uptown-Downtown Civil War: Who Will Win?

Tonight I met my Downtown friend, a New Yorker born and bred. She was one of the first people who texted me during Hurricane Sandy to find out if I was okay perched on my high and dry rock in Morningside Heights. “I’m sorry for New York treating you so badly. I promise this will get better.”

But I wasn’t the person she had to worry about. Living in one of the areas hardest hit by Hurricane Sandy, Monday night was “scary living alone” as she was without power as winds and water rammed her apartment. Late Tuesday she managed to get out of her apartment and, together with hundreds of other Downtowners, she took 10th Avenue all the way up to the Upper West Side where her family lives. There wasn’t a single soul walking downtown, the only people in the streets were walking up desperate to either connect with someone they knew or simply to find an open shop.

Back Uptown, most of us came out of our apartments like raccoons after a long sleep. The rain and incredibly strong winds have died down and the one or two shops open over a stretch of 6 blocks had people lining outside for a taste of someone else’s coffee, food, anything. We didn’t bother going Downtown, why would we. We were just glad we were safe and wondering whether Sandy really was such a big deal to start with. Like the Berlin Wall that divided a city, Manhattan has been divided between the haves and the have-nots.

After only 2 nights with her family (which includes a baby, four adults, two strangers) my friend has grown restless in Uptown: dreading not being on her own; not knowing what the situation with her fridge is; not accepting the offer from her boss to stay with her where half of her colleagues are now.

New York, she says, is not the center of the world. It is however the epicenter of insanity.

gawkercom:

Manhattan is a city divided by power: uptown thrives and strengthens on electricity and wifi and artisanal cheese, while downtown grows meaner and leaner with each passing day in the dark. There are 1.6 million coexisting on 23 square miles with a clear, dangerous divide between them, and power likely won’t return until the weekend. The center cannot hold. Chaos is imminent. And so we ask: Who will win the inevitable Uptown-Down Civil War of 2012?

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