It\u2019s now day 54 without cooking gas in my Queens apartment. I have hot water and electricity. Life\u2019s most important in-house tasks aren\u2019t affected. It\u2019s only the kitchen stove\/oven that doesn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n
Early in the outage, I viewed the inability to properly cook a meal as an excuse to eat more takeout. That was fun for a while but at about the thirty day mark my budget was noticeably strained and my waistline started to stretch.<\/p>\n
I went on a salad-eating spree but ran out of ways to keep the greens interesting. Now, I\u2019m solidly back in takeout mode and the women at the Chinese joint down the street recite my order to me as I walk in the door.<\/p>\n
The cooking gas was shut off to some 40 units on my half of the building in mid-May after somebody caught a whiff of a leak in the basement (according to the building superintendent). That set in motion a procedural process that\u2019s been mired in bureaucratic dragging of the feet.<\/p>\n
Most frustrating to me as the shut-off continued beyond the 30-day mark was a lack of information about a solution \u2013 or even word on a rough timetable on the fix. All of the people responsible for the building\u2019s day-to-day operation have either faded from view \u2013 or claim not to know why it\u2019s taking so long. The building\u2019s manager is a prickly character. He works for an outside real estate management company that specializes in \u201coperation and maintenance\u201d issues. This guy\u2019s blaming the long delay on the city\u2019s Department of Buildings. I called him at the thirty day mark and implored him to post whatever relevant information he had on our first floor bulletin board so residents had some idea what was going on.<\/p>\n
I also asked the building manager (he works off-site – residents I speak with don\u2019t know what he looks like) to lift the prohibition on use of the laundry room during the gas outage. The loss of gas has rendered the dryers inoperative but the washers still work. So, I said, please, let us at least use the washers. His response was comical, nonsensical. He said he believed users of the laundry room would expect to use dryers if the washers worked and didn\u2019t want there to be any confusion about what worked and what didn\u2019t. I said: \u201cJust put up a sign that says: \u2018Washers work. Dryers don\u2019t.\u2019\u201d His response basically was that residents could not be trusted to make such a distinction and so the entire laundry facility would be shut. \u00a0End of discussion.<\/p>\n
My final question to the building manager. \u201cAs somebody who manages properties and sees these types of situations routinely, what\u2019s your gut feeling on when we get the gas back?\u201d<\/p>\n
Said the manager: \u201cI can\u2019t say. It could be months. It could be more. I know of a building in the city that didn\u2019t have gas for five years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thanks for that, I said, before telling him his laundry room thinking was absurd.<\/p>\n
I feel bad for our building super. We have this great, new, young super who came on the scene like a ball of fire. He replaced an old dud of a grump who grumbled and grunted about everything. The new guy started less than a year ago. He\u2019s personable, helpful, handy and omnipresent. But since he\u2019s the only public face of the building, he\u2019s been getting bombarded by daily queries about the long delay between thinly-worded and noncommittal updates from the building\u2019s management. I think the super has grown tired of becoming the spokesman (so to speak) of the building and so it seems like he\u2019s gone underground for the time being.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s the board. These guys are similar in approach to your high school class president – and my current union bosses. They love getting elected and being big shots in good times. They enjoy power. But when there\u2019s a crisis, they don\u2019t know what to do. \u00a0They disappear and fail to step up.<\/p>\n
The only activists who exist in my building seem more interested in grousing about airplane noise. \u00a0They love to plant American flags all over the place for the 4th, too.<\/p>\n
Beyond my one call to the building manager, the extent of my response to all this was a note to my landlord with the July rent check. I told her the gas outage was adversely impacting my life and I\u2019d appreciate any substantive information she might have about the fix. She left me a voicemail offering a microwave oven (which I already have) and went with the blame-it-on-the-city-line.<\/p>\n
I called 311 and that was a dead end.<\/p>\n
I feel personally like I need to avoid making waves during all this both with the building and the landlord. The board has already tried to oust us renters (non-owners) and I don\u2019t want to go too crazy with the landlord because I want to keep living here. Rents are exploding in these parts and too big of an increase on my place would probably squeeze me out.<\/p>\n
All I know is I never really thought I cooked much until I couldn\u2019t. I miss it. When it comes back, I vow to take greater advantage and get more creative. I think I\u2019m gonna make a really nice fruit pie of some sort when it gets turned back on. I\u2019m definitely gonna broil a nice filet of fresh fish.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, it\u2019s beef and broccoli from New Peking Kitchen, the flounder sandwich from Jose\u2019s and the grandma squares from Louie\u2019s. All are in heavy rotation.<\/p>\n
-I saw The Wolfpack at Film Society of Lincoln Center on Monday afternoon and came away most impressed by how the filmmaker Crystal Moselle was able to pull off capturing this amazing and unusual story. Set almost entirely in a cramped apartment on the lower East side of Manhattan, the film documents the real-life story of six boys who were not allowed to go outside for any reason for almost their entire youth – not even for school. Moselle wouldn\u2019t have been able to make a compelling finished product without the archival stuff provided by the family but she put together something that will really make you think. I found myself asking all sorts of questions about how a family\u2019s near-total isolation from the world could possibly play out in madcap Manhattan but it\u2019s all right there in front of you. I couldn\u2019t decide whether to like or dislike the Mom. The construction of costumes by the boys using discarded scraps is explained in compelling detail during one sequence. I was so up and down emotionally throughout the movie in a way I don\u2019t remember feeling during a film in a long time. There\u2019s a great dancing sequence in the apartment near the end. Some of the boys participated in a public Q and A on the film\u2019s opening weekend which I would have loved to be witness to. And I\u2019d love to know more of the back story on how Moselle made the movie. It\u2019s really incredible. I saw it in the Center\u2019s small Gilman theater. Admission was 14 bucks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s now day 54 without cooking gas in my Queens apartment. I have hot water and electricity. Life\u2019s most important in-house tasks aren\u2019t affected. It\u2019s only the kitchen stove\/oven that doesn\u2019t work. Early in the outage, I viewed the inability … Continue reading