Noah Shachtman has the tale of how the Victoria’s Secret lingerie company, on site for their annual fashion show at the National Guard’s historic Manhattan armoury when Sandy hit, provided generators, internet and a forklift to help the soldiers provide aid to New York. Kudos to them.
Meanwhile, the NYC Marathon media tent in Central Park has power provided by several diesel-powered generators while 600,000 New Yorkers do not. the race will suck up other much-needed resources – not least police and ambulance crews along the route – which New Yorkers also desperately need. Mayor Bloomberg is the guy with the emergency power to order that all of those resources should be committed to disaster relief, but he won’t.
A parable in contrasts.
Update: Without Electricity, New Yorkers on Food Stamps Can’t Pay for Food
Update 2: NY marathon cancelled.
Bloomberg:
“While holding the race would not require diverting resources from the recovery effort, it is clear that it has become the source of controversy and division. We would not want a cloud to hang over the race or its participants, and so we have decided to cancel it.
“We cannot allow a controversy over an athletic event – even one as meaningful as this – to distract attention away from all the critically important work that is being done to recover from the storm and get our city back on track.”
I’m pretty skeptical things are quite that high contrast. Sounds to me like the primary difference is that the VS people don’t have their show this weekend:
Additionally, if you look at it cynically, this move is good in that it ties them to the site until the show is done. A BCT CP normally runs on a pair of 60 kW generators – no way in hell they really need that much power generation capability on-site to to carry out their mission but, if you’re a smart producer, you grok that connecting the generator sets to the busbar means they don’t disappear before your show’s complete.
I am, BTW, terribly amused that the adserver is consistently dishing Victoria Secret ads in the Premium Advertising space now…
I’d rather look at this.
As one of the un-powered but certainly not homeless who recently became powered, I don’t think the Marathon would have been horrible to hold, per se.
However, the route in Manhattan is exclusively in areas
where there had been no loss of power, or really, of anything, during the storm
It could easily have been seen and elt as a race for Upper , entitled Manhattan rather than the many parts of the Greater New York area that will still be struggling for some time, and for small businesses now trying to restock and replenish what spoiled.
The real time-limited race is to get the polls to the people by Tuesday even if by truck so that the fewest number of people possible are disenfranchised.
New York State has been back in the dark ages for a long time on early voting or other alternatives.
NY Post makes Victoria’s Secret the bad guys:
Hurricane-relief Guardsmen tossed out of armory – for Victoria’s Secret show
The NY Post?
Wow! I can’t believe you read that Murdoch rag filled with celebrity gossip and sexist garbage.
It’s time for Tuesday Comic Relief.