I’d returned to NYU from my parents’ home in St. Louis a few weeks earlier than usual in the late Summer of 1985 to produce and direct a play I’d written, PUCK: A Power Play — about two hockey players in the desert, naturally — so we’d be able to open during the first week of classes.
We were forced to postpone opening weekend thanks to Hurricane Gloria, the last hurricane, prior to this weekend’s Irene, to have drawn a bead on New York City.
“Play Canceled Due to Hurricane” seemed as unthinkably bizarre at the time, to someone like me from the Midwest, anyway, as “Play Canceled Due to Volcano” or “Play Canceled Due to Plague of Locusts.”
It was in the pre-Katrina, pre-Ike, pre-Tuscaloosa, pre-Joplin, pre-100 year flood, fire, and drought days, however. So while the city took things relatively seriously, I suspect its nothing like what’s going on there this weekend.
Gloria ended up taking a right turn at the last minute, and little more than the barest drizzle ended up hitting the empty streets of Manhattan that weekend, though I remember well the big white Xs taped across virtually every window in town — NYC’s version of “boarding” things up.
Here’s hoping Irene changes her mind as Gloria did 26 years ago(!), in the Summer of 1985. And here’s hoping our friends on the entire Eastern Seaboard stay safe, smart, and dry over the next few days.
You can always open the play next weekend instead. We did. And lived to tell the tale.
I was performing my Cabaret act at the old Jan Wallman’s on Cornelia Street the night before Gloria hit… remember watching the first gusts of wind and rain through the tiny club’s front window while I was onstage singing.
After the act, a bunch of us ran around taping Xs on our windows… then went to 14th and 5th and helped my musical director move his TV into the bathroom, and that was the first time I ever watched The Weather Channel. He lived on the 20th floor at 14th and 5th facing south, so we were kind of concerned that his living room windows could blow in.
This friend was playing a Saturday PM gig at the bar in Windows on the World at the time. A couple of his friends from work told us later that they snuck up to Windows to ride out the storm, even though the WTC was evacuated. They said the building was swaying up there; it was rocking like a boat.
In the early morning, when Gloria actually made landfall somewhere over Fire Island as I recall, I ran around the Village in my red rain poncho and hat, dodging flying garbage cans and taking tons of pictures of sideways rain. It really wasn’t all that bad.
Some of NYC’s windows had those Xs on for years. Maybe some of them are still there, LOL.
Interesting that you Brad, and I, were working on performances within a few blocks of each other back then. But it took a fouled-up election almost two decades later for us to meet. Ah, life. 😉
Marybeth
I thought that was you, Marybeth! I think I saw you scampering into the IRT, wearing your legwarmers and listening to Culture Club on your Sony Walkman! 😉
And yes, those Xs stayed on windows for months if not years! I remember it well! 🙂