A truly momentous event passed yesterday without my notice: the second anniversary of the Great Blackout of 2003.

I was in New York during the blackout, and it is one of my favorite events to reminisce about — the ultimate “I was there” moment for someone who really, really likes to be “there” when interesting things happen. :) Actually, the blackout is more than that: it’s one of my very favorite life experiences, period. That may seem odd, but I’d always thought that it would be really cool to be in New York City during a massive power outage like the one they had in 1965. And on August 14, 2003, I found out that I was right. It was really cool. :)

I blogged the whole thing, of course, starting with this proxy post typed out by my dad from unaffected Connecticut. Unfortunately, the chaotic state of the blog archives at the moment makes it a little difficult to navigate through everything, but if you start with the above-linked post and keep clicking the “next post” link, you can read (and see and hear) everything I posted. Like this Moblog post from Times Square, and much later, these cool satellite pics of the blackout’s effects, and this map of how I got home. And there’s lots more.

On the other hand, if you only have 15 minutes to kill rather than three hours :), you can go straight to my blackout story. Excerpt:

[I was working in a 13th-floor loft in Tribeca when the lights went out. Initially, I thought it was just my half of the loft that had lost power. I soon realized the other half was also in the dark. Then, one of my bosses] Richard proclaimed — I have no idea where he got his information — that the “whole building,” a 17-story structure that is also home to Mariah Carey, was out of power. … [I] started typing out a cell phone photo-post [to the blog] announcing that our office had lost power and we had reports that the whole building might be out.

In the midst of [my] typing this, [my other boss] Lyn came in and said that one of Richard’s employees had said the whole city, plus Long Island and New Jersey, was out. My immediate reaction was extreme skepticism: I asked who the employee had heard this from, and where that person had gotten his information. Lyn didn’t know, so I typed something into my cell phone that was extremely wishy-woshy on the point of whether [the] city was out of power … I had a better sense that something might really be wrong, though, when [my attempt at moblogging failed, as I was unable to get through on my cell phone.] It began to seem more and more plausible that the whole city was out of power — and that, like on 9/11, everyone was reaching for their cell phones at the same time, jamming the network.

We had no TV and no Internet, of course, and it took quite a long time before somebody got a battery-powered radio out — I didn’t even think of radio as a source of information, in fact, until someone mentioned it. :) Even so, it quickly became clear from the glut of traffic, the honking, and the sirens that were visible and/or audible outside our windows that something was happening beyond just our building. The extent became clear when I finally got through via phone to my dad: in what one of my co-workers later described as a “surreal moment,” I repeated aloud the names of affected cities that my dad was reading to me from a CNN article: Detroit, Cleveland, Boston, Albany, Toronto, Ottawa.

That really was a dramatic moment.

Here’s another excerpt, from several hours later:

Scott, Will and I sat around outside for a while, eventually concluding that we would head toward the Greenwich Village apartment of one of Scott’s friends. On the way there, though, we stopped at a grocery store where — as someone carrying a bag from the store informed us — they were giving away all sorts of perishables for free or very reduced prices. We got a ton of free milk, several salads, and a bunch of other stuff for a total of $1.90. …

Finally, as the sun began to set, we started walking in earnest toward the apartment in the Village where Scott and Will stayed over last night. But I decided I didn’t want to hole myself up inside just yet: this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I wanted to really experience it. I had always wondered, somewhat jealously, what it must have been like for New Yorkers in ‘65 and ‘77 to see this city in the dark, and now was my chance. So, without any clear idea where I would be sleeping or what I would do once it got fully dark, I started walking toward Times Square.

It goes on from there, of course. Read the whole thing. :)

Naturally, I took a lot of photos during the blackout. You can view them here. Unfortunately, only the thumbnails are visible — the links to the full-size versions are broken, as are many other links on that page. Again, archive problems… sorry. But the photos are still cool. Here are a few favorites:

Chaos in the streets.

Buses backed up all the way from Canal Street to Ground Zero!

Broadway in Lower Manhattan becomes a pedestrian mecca.

Selling food by candlelight in Tribeca.

In Greenwich Village, everybody went to the bars.

A generator-powered ice cream stand, with a darkened Madison Square Garden in the background.

The Times Square Jumbotron, in darkness.

And last, but not least…

The Empire State Building in the dark.

Many more photos here.