A couple of weeks ago, prior to the more significant arrival of Hurricane Irene, NYC and other areas experienced a mild earthquake, one which rattled nerves more than anything else, but which caused genuine concern in the early moments following its arrival.

I feel a little left out of the incident. I felt nothing. No shaking. I was outside walking around, not even near any buildings to speak of, and this minor quake passed me by without notice.

Coincidentally I was out and about working on a new payphone-related project (I will explain why this is “coincidental” momentarily). This new project has chewed up tremendous amounts of my time these past weeks, but it has taken shape in ways I had not foreseen, making all kinds of sense to me now. I will demure from sharing any more details of the project — for all I know it will prove to be another large waste of time — but in the meantime I have what I would describe as a positive mental tic feeding this endeavor.

With payphones on my mind I headed toward Queens Plaza.

The first clue that something was going on should have come when I noticed a large number of people standing outside an apartment building. It was unusual to see but I thought it might be a house party or other type of gathering. It was, I thought, a beautiful day, so whose concern is it if everyone in the building wanted to stand outside and enjoy it?

A half a block later I spotted about a dozen people standing outside a corner convenience store, and dozens more standing outside the apartment building next door. In retrospect the first real clue that should have told me something big had happened was that someone was talking on the payphone outside of the store, and there were 3 or 4 people lined up behind him waiting to use it. People lined up to use a payphone is a signature of disaster. I did not, however, note the significance of that until later in the day. My only concern in seeing a line of people waiting to use the payphone was that I would not get a chance to use that payphone that day for my project — hardly a crisis, but that is where my mind was at.

I passed the crowd and heard people saying “earthquake” and “5.8” and “aftershocks”. It may seem hard to believe but after hearing these individual words flying sentencelessly through the air it did not enter my reasoning to think that an earthquake had hit here. I only remember mild puzzlement as to where an earthquake could realistically have hit and what resource it could have disrupted for there to be any impact in New York.

I walked to Crescent Street and 41st Avenue and, according to my project plan for the day, put a quarter into the payphone on the southwest corner and dialed a number. A few seconds later I was surprised to turn around and see that a line of 4 people had formed behind me, all of them waiting to use this payphone. I laughed a little, thinking “What year is this? What decade? What century?” The last time I saw lines of people waiting to use a payphone was August, 2003, when the blackout that darkened parts of the east coast rendered cell phones (and many land lines) useless. I captured this picture of what came to be known to me as the “blackout payphone”, a payphone which is now gone.

Needless to say, had I known what was happening around me I would have abandoned my pithy little payphone-related project for the day, ceding the resource to people who actually needed it. It was just coincidental that I happened to be the Payphone Hog at a time when payphones suddenly became valuable.

When I reached Queens Plaza I saw hundreds of people standing outside the office buildings. That is when I knew something big had happened. I attempted to make a project-related call from a payphone outside the Momento (sic) Diner, but that phone did not work. Complaints of non-working cell phones filled the air, and for the first time in years I heard people all around asking where they could find a payphone. I would have been happy to rise to the occasion and direct folks to nearby payphones, but there were none. The above-mentioned blackout payphone used to stand near where all of us gathered, but that phone is no more. Another phone used to be nearby, but it is also gone. The payphone outside the supper club doesn’t work, and the phone I had just tried to use outside the Momento Diner refused to allow me to make a call, returning instead an automated “Error 35” message (at least it returned my quarter). There are payphones in the subway station a few hundred feet away, and a few others on the other side of Queens Plaza, but none of the above ground phones worked and the underground subway station would not be safe if the earthquake’s predicted aftershocks arrived.

We know now, of course, that this little tremor was no catastrophe. But in those early moments it was impossible to know. The confusion and anxiety I felt among the crowds of people was both genuine and, I believe, warranted. In scenes reminiscent of the 2003 blackout I saw crowds of people gathered around cars with radios, listening for news on 1010 WINS. Nobody seemed to have a working cell phone. Nobody. And you know what? That was a pretty scary feeling. It really was. The area was in an information vacuum, and with 1010 WINS scrambling to get the story straight we were forced to rely on word of mouth for our news.

I asked a police officer what was going on. She said there had been an earthquake centered in Virginia, and it hit North Carolina and the whole east coast. She then added that it was a 5.8 quake, and that “It’s really bad in Manhattan.” I could not imagine what she meant by that but I turned toward Manhattan and saw the wedge-headed Citi building standing there, as straight as ever. The Empire State Building looked fine. If it was “really bad in Manhattan” I expected buildings to be turned 45 degrees, or flipped asunder, their underground plumbing and cement foundations forming the new Manhattan skyline. Instead I saw a peaceful looking Manhattan island. No smoke, no explosions, no fighter jets or black helicopters swarming. All the buildings I recognized were present and accounted for. Maybe the police officer meant that the streets of Manhattan had descended into apocalyptic orgies of rioting and looting, pillaging and fornication in the streets, all our society suddenly wrenched into chaos by this inestimable natural disaster which somehow nailed Manhattan but spared nearby Queens Plaza. Gold, I thought, might hit $3000 an ounce by the end of the day.

She was my only source of information, though. Regardless of what she meant by saying it was “really bad” over there, I was already headed that way, intending now to find out just how bad it was. She was not alone in spreading the word that Manhattan was under some kind of siege. A bus driver stopped his vehicle and opened the door, asking a group of people standing nearby “What’s going on?” One man responded “Earthquake!” and the others yelled “It’s bad in Manhattan! Don’t go. You’ll get stuck!”

For the humor and cynicism with which we may now regard the earthquake I don’t mind saying that during those early moments, when no one’s phones worked and few people knew what was going on — that was pretty scary. Pretty flippin’ scary. Cell phones are not to be relied on during even the most minor natural disaster, and the routing out of public pay telephones is but one of many trends in technology which could leave millions disconnected when the big one really does hit.

As I milled through the crowds of people and made my way toward the bridge to Manhattan I caught what was, to me, a quintessential moment of the day. A bicyclist came racing into Queens Plaza, spewing obscenities and ordering everyone out of his way. The people who evacuated the buildings were told to stand across the street and away from the taller structures. On account of this they found themselves standing, inevitably, in the bike lanes. “Get the *@#% outta the bike lane!” yelled the bicyclist. “It’s MY lane!” Everyone laughed at him, with one man replying “It’s an emergency.” The biker replied “No, it’s not, it’s a *!#%ing BIKE LANE!”

For all the appearance of needless bicyclist douchery I would cut the guy some slack. Wearing headphones (through which he was probably listening to something other than 1010 WINS) he had to be ignorant of the situation at hand, with no idea that an earthquake had forced all these people to take refuge in the bike lane. When a fellow told him “It’s an emergency” and he replied “No, it’s not!” then I have to assume he simply couldn’t understand what the man said since he was blasting music on his headphones while biking (that’s illegal, by the way).

The bicyclist got through the crowd of people who continued laughing at him as he peeled off. If I had had the presence of mind I would have yelled “Don’t go. It’s really bad in Manhattan!” at him.

I turned toward the Ed Koch/Queensboro Bridge and saw the same scene about to repeat itself: another bicyclist came racing down the lane, announcing to the crowds of people in her way that this was her lane. This altercation might have repeated itself several times that day.

While crossing the Ed Koch/Queensboro Bridge I thought, perhaps inevitably, about September 11, 2001. That was the first day I ever walked over this bridge. I remembered the beginning of the long walk from 34th street and 9th avenue in Manhattan to Queens. Walking along 35th Street in Manhattan I looked at the tall buildings in the garment district, anthropomorphizing them. The structures were tall and dark but seemingly human on that day. I thought the windows were eyes, and that on this day, for the first time ever, they blinked. I remember thinking “Is all this going to be gone soon?” At the time, with smoke rising from the Twin Towers and no sense of what would come next, it seemed like a reasonable question. The memory of that thought still pains me. It reminds me of the fear of the day, and the vulgar remonstrance that followed. A line from a poem by Andrei Codrescu expressed my feelings of dread and loathing of the future: “the moon has thrown us up in a sick night.”

On earthquake day I had similar thoughts of the planet’s eventual apocalypses, but from a more earthly and, dare I say, realistic perspective. Looking at the Manhattan skyline I thought holy crap, what if all this really was gone? What if an earthquake pulled the magic carpet from under Manhattan, sending towers and trillions of dollars of concentrated wealth into the waters of New York Harbor, the East River, and the Hudson. Mannahatta, the natural wonderland upon which the city was built, would rise again from beneath the architectural sticks of conspicuous wealth, the impacted nature stacked under the pavement like so many centuries of stale pancakes would replenish itself, triumphing over and proving feeble the seemingly invincible march of humanity. Some day it will happen. Some day all this really will be gone.

On reaching Manhattan I found no riots, no looting, no pandemonium or chaos. I don’t know what the police officer or the others meant by saying it was really bad in Manhattan, but it obviously made enough sense to her enough to share it with this passing stranger.

I resumed my payphone-related project, confident that I was not a Payphone Hog during a time of crisis, and just going about my business.