September 15, 2001

8:27 PM

Interactive map of New York Citycompliments of FoxNews. This is great for people like me who have no idea how NYC is laid out. Wow. Can't believe how much of the city doesn't have lights or phones.
posted by ColdChef (3 comments total)

Agreed - thanks for the link. Although I have visited NYC several times and have family there (all OK, thankfully), the mental image that I (and probably many others) have is that everything we know and think about NYC -- towers, Empire State Building, Times Square, Chinatown, Saks, etc -- is all crowded together in a matter of only a few blocks.
posted by davidmsc at 8:53 PM on September 15, 2001

The Empire State Building is at 34th Street, nowhere near the disaster. Times Square is at 42nd Street, nowhere near the disaster. The main Saks is on Fifth Avenue near 50th Street, nowhere near the disaster. Chinatown, spreading out from The Bowery on a north-south axis and Canal Street on an east-west axis, is nearer the disaster, but not close enough to be threatened by falling debris or fires.

At most, one-eighth of the island of Manhattan is affected by power and phone outages, if that much. That, in turn, is about a half-percent of the total acreage of New York City. And since lower Manhattan (say, below City Hall) is mostly zoned commercial (with obvious exceptions such as Battery Park City), relatively few homes and apartments were affected. So the truth is, the city *as a whole* is largely unaffected by power and phone outages.

In addition, this map has several glaring errors. First, "Broadway Street"? Second, "Bowery Street"? Are you kidding me? It's plain old "Broadway" and "The Bowery." Chinatown is nowhere near the area they put it on the map, but rather, it should be right below Little Italy, to the right of Tribeca and to the left of The Bowery. The Bowery is a street, not really a neighborhood (though some say it is a state of mind). So The Bowery should not be labeled where it is, but up, to the left, and vertically, just to the right of Little Italy. The Lower East Side is nowhere near where they have it labelled; they'd be better served putting it where the Bowey is marked, but up a little bit. Brooklyn and Manhattan are not that close, though I'll forgive them that, even though there's no reason to show Brooklyn at all on this map.

Also, finally, this map does not jibe at all with what I know to be true: telephone service is more widespread below the yellow line than the map would indicate. I know this to be true because I have spoken with businesses within that zone, and it is also contradicted by a map published by the New York Times two days ago.
posted by Mo Nickels at 6:55 AM on September 16, 2001

Thanks for the corrections.
posted by ColdChef at 7:08 AM on September 16, 2001