In 1977 I was 12 years old and in love with New York City. From Lakewood New Jersey, where I spent adolescense, it was the epitomy of chic. It was the home of disco, the New York Yankees and the fabulous place my mom went to off to every morning to work at Montifere Hospital in the emergency room in the Bronx. I was also frightened of New York. Every night, I watched channel five’s 10 O’Clock News (back then it was WNEW), which was always headed by the message “It’s 10 O’clock. Do you know where your children are?” That message always bothered me as I wondered where kids I didn’t even know were. Back in those days there were always stories about kids running away to New York and getting involved in prostitution. I wondered about the couples who might be sitting in the mythical Central Park of my imagination (I had never been there), about to be murdered by the Son of Sam. I worried about my mom who went every day and if she weren’t home yet, I worried if she were going to be the Son of Sam’s next victim. And then the black out happened. My mom didn’t have to go to work that evening. She was safe from the Son of Sam and the Blackout.
I live in the very neighborhood that was hardest hit during the Blackout of 1977, right on the boarder of Brownsville and Bushwick. On Broadway where all the looting took place, many stores are still gated. I’ve lived here for a year and still walk past areas on Broadway that are still vacant. Ire.
