A Big Fat Waste of Time

Midtown New York Explodes While, Luckily, I'm In Canada

There was an explosion outside my office a couple of hours ago in midtown Manhattan. I'm in Vancouver on a shoot, so I missed all the excitement, but I heard from a co-worker it was terrifying. He said the building shook, the lights went out and smoke was rising up from the street. (And he's on the 26th floor!) They all ran out of the building leaving even their blackberries behind. (So you know it was an emergency situation.) The official report now is that a steampipe exploded and it wasn't an act of terrorism, though I've read many different reports about the exact location of the pipe. I have to say, this video looks like the panic could have caused a few heart attacks. Here's hoping everyone is okay. On the lighter side, a Gawker commenter reported this from the scene:

I was walking next to a young, fashionable woman who was simultaneously crying, smoking a cigarette and shouting into her cell phone, "No, no, you have to stay on the line with me and tell me what happened. If this is an act of terrorism, we are going to lose fucking MILLIONS!!"

Reported Steam Pipe Explosion Forces Evacuation On East Side [NY1]

The New Alt.Coffee Is So Not Punk Rock

This used to be Alt.Coffee, now it's a "kid-friendly" coffee house.

I took the above video at the former hole-in-the-wall coffee house Alt.Coffee, now called Hopscotch, a "kid friendly coffee house in the East Village. I don't know why Alt was one of my favorites because it was a real shit hole. The bathroom was easily the scariest in all of New York City (there's a picture after the jump) and the furniture made me fear bed bugs everytime I sat down. But I guess all the grunginess kind of evoked the creative spirit of the neighborhood and was great for sitting and writing, not to mention people watching. I wasn't the only one who felt that way, either. The place was perpetually packed and competition for seats was fierce. So when I read on Gawker several months ago that they were closing I couldn't believe it. In the comments section of that Gawker post, the owner (I guess) let us know that it was to remain a coffee house, but become more "kid friendly," and try to maintain the "Alt vibe" at night. I was skeptical, but when I wandered in there last week and saw how they'd cleaned up the place, (especially the new furniture), I thought, hmmm...maybe I'm not so punk rock after all. I kind of like it. But, after a while, a couple of two year-olds showed up and started squealing while they were playing. And then one of them fell off the Ms. Pac Man machine and started crying hysterically. This scared the other one and before we knew it, the place was a toddler melt-down. After the jump, a comparison between the old bathroom and the new one (complete with a diaper-changing station.)