A Weary New York Regains Its Pulse

Lights flickered on, air conditioners droned back to life and a surge of neon jolted Times Square’s mammoth news tickers on Friday. But Manhattan’s electricity revived fitfully, leaving thousands of power-deprived residents still camping outdoors and bracing for a long, hot weekend.

After enduring a peaceful night, New York awoke as a city divided, checker-boarded between neighborhoods with restored utility lines and thus newly vibrant and still-darkened sections where basic city life remained stunted.

By day’s end, New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and other officials said that nearly 85% of the city was functioning again, but stretches of Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx were still coping without electricity. Most big stores in the city remained closed, but on Broadway, theaters went on with the show.

Power crews had worked all night to “bring back the system and are doing it carefully. Line by line, they are restoring the generating capacity,” said Bloomberg, who praised residents for not succumbing to the blackout-inspired looting that ravaged the city in 1977.

Crime was down, as police fielded a full emergency force of 9,800 officers. There was only one incident of looting, said Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. But police and firefighters stayed busy all night freeing people trapped in 800 jammed elevators. Burning candles caused as many as 60 fires overnight, Bloomberg reported.

Air carriers were still grounded, subways were idled and frozen electric locks forced some downtown hotels to set up makeshift beds on the street for exhausted guests. But by midday, large swaths of the city’s west side and northern neighborhoods were already exulting in their restored power, strolling to farmer’s markets and cafes and restocking refrigerators.

Soon after apartment and shop lights blinked on at 10 a.m. on First Avenue, Susan Maisy, a pediatrician, detected a cool stream of air wafting out from the open doors of a local eatery. It was the welcome blast of an air-conditioner.

“I knew it was going to happen in the next few hours,” Maisy said. “I’m glad it’s over.”

In Lower Manhattan, residents were foraging through hushed neighborhoods in search of food, water, newspapers -- anything to give their interrupted lives the feeling of normality.

“Don’t you wish we were back in the 1950s, when everything worked?” shop owner Bobby Mastronicola said with a sigh as he scouted the few stores open in TriBeCa, searching in vain for gas to power a generator.

For some New Yorkers, the simple ability to warm coffee was a prized feat. Suwei Chang became an instant neighborhood hero by appearing on the front steps of his apartment house with a portable burner, a pot of water and aromatic grounds. He dipped a porous bag of coffee into the boiling water and dispensed it to grateful neighbors.

“I go camping a lot,” he explained.

At La Guardia and Kennedy airports in the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn, respectively, unshaven, rumpled travelers racked out on floors and benches. Above them, flight-information screens were reduced to blank slates. Hundreds of flights were delayed or canceled again on Friday, and a large section of La Guardia was completely without power. Highways leading in and out of the city were still clotted with cars. And many vehicles remained stuck inside Manhattan parking garages where auto elevators failed to work.

Back in the borough of Manhattan, at restaurants still shuttered by lack of power, owners and cooks tried to save perishables and dispose of wares already spoiled. At Morgan’s, a TriBeCa grocery where owner Jeff Yi dispensed food on credit, the sour odor of bad milk and melted ice cream radiated from dark refrigerator shelves.

At Rocco’s restaurant on 22nd Street, workers filled dumpsters with 25 garbage bags stuffed with rotted food. Other restaurants tried to keep ahead of spoilage by selling what was still useable at rock-bottom prices. A Subway sandwich shop at 23rd and Madison held a “Blackout Blowout” sale, unloading hoagies at half price.

Bloomberg said he was “surprised the blackout has lasted so long.” He said he had awakened at 2 a.m., hoping the power was on. But “my little electric clock had nothing showing,” he said.

Consolidated Edison officials believed they would bring electricity online much faster, Bloomberg said. But the troubled electricity grid outside of the city was still too fragmented to be able to aid New York’s beleaguered power plants. “Getting help from them took a lot longer than Con Ed had thought,” the mayor said.

Gov. George E. Pataki said energy officials were cautious about moving too quickly in restoring power, fearing that a surge in demand could set off rolling blackouts.

Overnight, Pataki and other New York officials persuaded the federal Department of Energy to authorize the emergency allocation of 100 megawatts of electric power from Connecticut. The power was transferred Friday morning over the Crosstown Cable, a power-transmission line that runs from Connecticut under Long Island Sound.

“The system across the state is in good shape,” Pataki said. “But we cannot control what comes out of Canada or the Midwest,” he said, referring to reports that the blackout started during a mysterious surge in an Ohio power plant.

But if the system was in good shape, it responded in strange ways Friday. Manhattan was a patchwork of light and darkness. Blinking traffic lights again ruled some streets, but at other intersections, the signals were mere metallic ornaments.

Stefano Rego, an engineer, slouched in front of an office tower near the Empire State Building. He had work to do, but, without power, there was no elevator, computer or lights -- all of which he needed.

“We just wait,” he said. “We can’t do nothing. We can’t go anyplace.”

But while he waited, parts of the city were lurching back to life around him.

Parts of the Upper West Side had power restored as early as 6 a.m. By 8:30 a.m., a knot of local farmers were doing brisk business at the Friday morning Greenmarket on the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and 97th Street. When the region suffered its power meltdown Thursday, crews from Bialas Farm, outside suburban Goshen, N.Y., had already finished picking crops and were washing turnips.

At dawn Friday, they trucked their sweet corn, peppers, romaine lettuce, zucchini, carrots and artichokes into the city “because we figured everything would have gone bad anyway,” said owner Jeff Bialas. In case customers were unable to cook, they loaded up produce that could be consumed raw, he said.

By mid-afternoon, the city’s entrepreneurs were racing so quickly to return to normalcy that they were outrunning their utilities and even their customers. At the pricey Aix restaurant at 88th and Broadway, tables were set up with crisp linen cloths and spotless wine glasses. But the restaurant’s phone lines, dependent on electricity, were all dead -- thus, no reservations.

“We’re set to go,” said hostess Stephane Penn. “Enough of us are here, we think we can do this.” Only half the kitchen staff had made it in, but it was “the good half,” she said, laughing. “This is going to be fun.”

At Riverside Park, facing the stolid Hudson River, residents frolicked as if it was a heat-induced “snow day.” There were contingents of nannies and boisterous children, bikers and roller-bladers, even families picnicking.

Jennifer Franzese, 31, took in the sun wearing a black bikini and paging through Harper’s Bazaar. “I’m taking advantage of today because it’s gorgeous,” she said.

While smaller stores opened in the West 80s, big chains stayed shuttered. Mobs of people descended on the 42nd Street strip -- but for different reasons. Jittery crowds jammed the Port Authority bus terminal, hoping to find coveted seats on buses headed out of Manhattan. But a couple of blocks away, near Times Square, long lines of dedicated music fans waited at discount Broadway-stage ticket outlets, elated at news that all 23 Broadway productions would go on Friday night.

By 4 p.m., 24 hours after it went dead, Manhattan was a city transformed. Its skyscrapers winking again, its streets blaring with life, the island was pulsing with Friday Night Fever -- even if its energy was still slightly sapped.

After their long day’s adventure, tourists Jeff and Tracy Griot and their four young daughters were ready to return to Great Barrington, R.I.

But they they would never forget this trip.

“We were in New York,” Jeff Griot marveled, “at a historic time.”

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Times staff writers Stephen Braun and Susannah Rosenblatt in Washington contributed to this report.