Two generators are humming at Pushcart Coffee in New York City’s Gramercy neighborhood. One is powering lights inside the unpretentious, pleasant, roughly 700-square-foot space, by which the shop’s counter persons are pouring and serving chai lattes and «pretty much anything we don’t need to heat,» said owner Jamie Clark.
The other, outside the Second Avenue shop, on the corner of 21st Street, is recharging nearby residents’ cell phones.
Pushcart is one of very few businesses open on this stretch of Second Avenue after Monday night’s storm surge knocked out power to Downtown and its denizens.
«We’re running it basically without power,» Clark said about Pushcart, which he opened three weeks ago.
Business today, he said, has been «crazy, absolutely insane.»
«I think people just want a place without chaos, and that’s mostly what we’re providing,» he said.
Robin Williams, who lives on 14th Street and First Avenue, had never stopped by before.
«I need to charge my phone,» Williams, 47, said. «If my family doesn’t hear from me, they worry to death,» she said. «I talk with my mother 10 times a day. She needs to hear my voice.»
The shop had long ago run out of baked goods made at its sister store on the Lower East Side — «we’re down to chips and raisins,» Clark said — but it had community aplenty.
A block south, inside Peters Field park, dozens of Con Edison service vehicles awaited dispatch.
Outside the park’s fence, a contractor repeated a simple phrase that carried so much meaning: «three to five days … three to five days.»
Source: nj.com/news/index.ssf/2012/10/nyc_coffee_shop_provides_break.html
NYC coffee shop provides break from Sandy chaos in Gramercy neighborhood
