On a cold Thursday night, my friend Kaylee lured me from my favorite pizza at Cafe Fiorello in Lincoln Center... all the way down to Lower Manhattan. I say lured, as it was during the recent blackout. Apparently, I had to-- if even for a few hours-- experience and see what it was like.
Kaylee was staying with a friend at the Bowery Hotel, which was operating with only one small generator, and thus, minimal lighting in the hallway sconces only. For the most part, stepping foot into the hotel felt not much different than stepping into the McKittrick Hotel that houses Sleep No More. Only this was real life.
After one Old Fashioned, two glasses of red wine, three new friends, and several attempts to play Bach on the hotel's broken piano, we found ourselves at Gemma for a complimentary dinner. With the restaurant's famous gigantic candles lit, a mere twenty people scattered throughout the restaurant, and the pure silence all around, one could mistake the normally buzzing restaurant for a big barn-turned-restaurant in the Catskills. The Chianti was poured, glass after glass, and we feasted on fresh tomato basil pasta, roasted veggies, bread, and salad.
By this point, our cellphones were dead (though I must note: due to the lack of cellphone service in all of downtown Manhattan, everyone in the room clearly forgot they existed to begin with).
And so we ended up outside. In the darkness. Kaylee ran into friends, and they were attempting a journey to The Smile.
Someone had sparklers. And somehow, we all took part in this impromptu video.
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