Big Bang Leaves Montana Avenue in the Dark : Power surge: After two days without electricity, northwest Santa Monica residents long for a shower.

Life is usually not too tough on Montana Avenue near the ocean, but when the power is out for almost two days and counting, residents were left to wonder where their next hot shower was coming from.

Not to mention worrying when they could crank up the cappuccino maker, clean their contact lenses or get back that blow-dried look.

What’s an electricity-dependent yuppie to do?

Flee to a hotel, the shower room at the health club or the in-laws.

“One cold-water shower is as much as I can take,” said a doctor on her way home from her in-laws’ house.

Others toughed it out with a steaming latte at a neighborhood hangout, Starbucks Coffee. It was thankfully spared most of the lengthy blackout, its power restored early enough Thursday morning to serve the bedraggled, caffeine-deprived locals.

“People came in with wet hair, saying, ‘I overslept and I need my coffee,’ ” Monika Lounsbury said. “We had a surge of business.”

That was pretty much the only surge around northwest Santa Monica that morning when more than 600 customers were left without electricity as a result of a massive power failure Wednesday night.

It started with a big bang and flash of light that brought to mind war--or at least Star Wars. Initially more than 10,000 customers were left in the dark, though many of them had power back within an hour or two.

“In my 15-year career, I’ve never seen an outage this extensive,” said Mark Olson, a district manager for Southern California Edison.

Olson said the problem began beneath Pacific Coast Highway near the California Incline when a high-voltage conductor blew up at a weak point.

Normally, such breakdowns are contained by a fail-safe system that this time did not live up to its name, Olson said. The problem spread, blowing out circuits all over. A set of power lines in an alley near Ocean Avenue and Montana burst into flames and fell to the ground.

A crew of more than 50 people working around the clock ultimately replaced more than 500 feet of underground cable, 67 underground connectors and thousands of feet of overhead wires.

As they dug, they kept finding more damage, Olson said. That may have accounted for all the false promises made to the last group of grumpy customers on the north side of Montana between the water and Seventh Street, and a few people who live on Pacific Coast Highway.

First the power was going to be back on by the middle of Wednesday night, then in the morning, then in the evening, then the next morning, then. . . . Finally, by midafternoon Friday, civilization as it is known on Montana was back.

“When the lights came on you could hear people clapping and cheering,” said workman Mark Howard, fixing, of all things, light fixtures in a Montana apartment building.

The building manager, Maria Jeason, recounted tales of the blackout: the neighbor who jumped under the bed thinking the explosion was a plane crash; the struggle to get the electric garage door open, and the need to hire a security guard to protect the cars. Once those electronic garage doors were pried open, they could not be closed until the power was back on.

Indeed, all along Montana, underground garage doors to the apartments and condominiums gaped open, while up toward 7th Street businesses were more or less open by late Friday afternoon.

At Odeon Breads and Pastries, the empty goody case was sad. But tantalizing smells from the kitchen held the promise that things would soon be back to normal.

Owner Jo-ANN McAulife said she was hanging around waiting for power when customers started knocking on the door asking, “Do you have this or that?” She opened up with a limited menu, while still unsure how much of her stock was spoiled.

A few doors away, Blockbuster Video had another problem--person-sized stacks of videos (about 400 of them) that had accumulated but couldn’t be checked in because the computers were down.

“It’s very risky when you’re doing business without a computer,” manager Michael McDermott said.

Next door, the manager of the Montana Wine Co. reported having to toss out $300 worth of rank caviar and smoked salmon.

Although that’s a real loss for the wine store, it does suggest a bright side to all this. The west end of Montana Avenue will soon boast the cleanest fridges in town as people are forced to finally confront those carbon-dated food packages in the freezer and give them the heave-ho.