Then Tuesday???s financial downgrading of California???s two utilities and the loss of hydroelectric resources Wednesday morning pushed us over the edge. Out of 14 million Pacific Gas and Electric customers in hundreds of cities, my power block, with its 200,000 customers, was the first to go dark.
It???s not as if we weren???t warned. But after so many ???Stage Three Alerts,??? which conjured images of Batman pounding his gloved fist in Commissioner Gordon???s office, it was hard to take the threats seriously. Nobody really thought the power would really be cut off. And then it was.
Blackouts are nothing new for me. I make my living as a travel writer, and I have just returned from Nicaragua, the second-poorest country in Central America. The lights went out there, too. They also go out on schedule in India, a country notoriously deficient in distributing power among its 1 billion residents. In ???Titanic???-like scenes, bands in the country???s finest hotels keep playing while elegant dining rooms fall dark on cue. These blackouts are part of the adventure of Third World travel; it???s what flavors a trip overseas. It???s hard to imagine, then, why the first nation in the First World can???t keep the lights on.
Yesterday, at 11:50 a.m., I sit down at the laptop only to notice my battery???s anemic life draining. In less than an hour, I???m cut off from e-mail and news. I pick up the Panasonic portable phone and press ???talk.??? I can???t. The phone is dead. I am trapped, information-starved in the Information Age???s epicenter.
When the warnings scrolled across the television Tuesday morning, I had dutifully switched off everything: computer, telephone and fax. So why, today, was I being punished and not the dot-coms whose empty buildings glow all night like spaceships landing along Highway 101?
At 12:15 a lightbulb goes off, over my head, that is. I???ll listen to the car radio for information and escape to a powered-up neighborhood. I tramp downstairs, start the car. Click. Click. I can???t raise the electric garage door. So I walk down the block for a fresh radio battery and a nonfat latte instead.
On a typical day, Haight Street???s sidewalks are littered with dazed strollers. Today, the wanderers are literally in the dark. A block away from the corner of Haight and Ashbury, cops are consumed with traffic???cars, not drugs.
Roberts Hardware is ringing up sales–batteries and candles–on calculators; their computer registers are down. Next door I order a latte, but the electric-powered espresso machine is not working. I can probably froth milk on my own pent-up steam. Across town, Fisherman’s Wharf souvenir shops lend flashlights to tourists and Barnes & Noble closes its doors. “We knew why the lights were going off,” a well-read employee says.
In sleepy Cole Valley, Tully???s Coffee was not hit. ???I wish,??? whines the young woman behind the counter, ???that we could go home early.??? If this continues she might get her wish: the power outage is California???s answer to that East Coast institution, the snow day.
