Maria Aspan

Rise of the machines, downtown Manhattan

Taken outside my office building yesterday, five weeks post-Sandy. Related:

capitalnewyork:

NY TIMES: “There is now more deserted office space in Lower Manhattan because of Hurricane Sandy than there are offices in many cities. Mobile boilers line the streets. Portable generators are stacked to the curbs. Ventilation tubes coil around scaffolds, snake above sidewalks, quiver and pulse. It is as if bodies had been turned inside out, exposing the hearts, lungs and organs that are normally internal. Of course, these devices keep the buildings running in some limited ways. Still, 15 million to 18 million square feet of space is unusable, about as much as exists in any condition whatsoever in cities like Miami, Phoenix and San Diego.”

(Source: inothernews)

Boat Basin chaos post-Sandy, Upper West Side

I walked down the hill to Riverside Park this week kind of expecting worse, boats completely flipped over rather than merely unmoored from crinkled, accordioned boardwalks. The damage was hard to see at first, not as dramatic as some of the photos from the harder-hit areas of the city. But a year ago, a day after Hurricane Irene, this same area was barely touched, with light debris and muddy waters the only sign of disruption. These photos were taken Tuesday; the police haven’t let us back since.