The NYC Blackout Of 1977
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A hot summer night in July of 1977, I was sitting in the living room of my parent's Mitchell-Lama coop in the west 90's of Manhattan. Suddenly the lights flickered, once, twice, a minute later everything went dead. My parents were veterans of the 1965 blackout and assumed this was a repeat of that occasion, which it was---and it wasn't.
New York City in 1977 was a hellhole. The streets were filthy and extraordinarily dangerous, the subways were filled with the stench of urine and the stains of grafitti over almost every surface. Trains were so crowded  that on my way to high-school (this was '79) I would have to slip in between the cars along with many other people and ride to my stop hanging on to metal barriers that were there to prevent just that behavior, there was no way you could actually get into the train itself for the mass of humanity packed in there. Riding outside the trains, exposed to the tunnels, the roar, the smells, and the strange sights of the underground spaces that we careened through (those old trains rocked and shook like a carnival ride) was my morning rush hour routine 5 days a week, for all 4 years of high school.Â
Being stalked by pedophile homosexuals and small gangs of savage blacks and puerto-ricans was a daily fact of life on the upper westside then, and dodging past the dangerous corners and evading the gay child stalkers ( one followed me all the way up to my parent's apt. once when I was just 11 years old, the NYPD was very understanding later on.... after my father came out and introduced himself... repeatedly).
This was the cultural mileu of late 1970's NYC. The economic situation was worse. The U.S. had just pulled out of Viet Nam in 1973 and inflation was hitting it's stride. I remember my mother spending $10 a week to feed a family of 5, and feed us well. The next week it was $20. Every week she spent more for the same amount of food until, a few months later it cost $110 every week. My father's paycheck did not increase at the same rate that prices rose, nobody's did. Life was rough for quite a while, there were alot of angry people.
Back to that apartment all those years ago, several stories above the city streets overlooking a broad swath of neighborhood. Within the first 5 minutes the first garbage can was lit up, showing the shadowy figures of the gangs of people who were gathering in the gloom. 10 minutes after that the first sounds of breaking glass reached us, and the gun shots. A clothing store located in my building's street level retail area was ablaze, we could see the fire and smoke streaming out. Then a store across the street went up, and the one just down from it. You could see the crowds running around carrying all kinds of furniture, radios and TV's, we heard wild screams and people shouting at each other. Rarely a squad car would come cruising slowly down the street and the crowd would fly apart, everyone scurrying for a hidey hole with their loot.
The festivities continued on until about 3 a.m., then it was just small groups moving up and down the streets in an eerie sort of half light, which had been apparent all night long, but became more noticeable with the fires finally out. I and my brother who had been watching this non-stop all night from the window finally turned in.
Walking the streets the very next day, was like surveying the remains of a war zone. Broken glass and destroyed, burned out shops. Hulks of ruined cars. The stench was sickening; human feces and urine, spilled booze, burned cloth and paper.
It was a couple of years before the scars were healed up.  I never forgot though. Even when I served in the military, stationed in the mideast during another forgotten war, there was little there to surprise me. I was a veteran of NYC, a child of an urban war zone, in an officially unrecognized, and undeclared conflict.Â
