ANOTHER BITE AT A DIFFERENT APPLE

In Calm Blackout, Views of Remade City (MARTIN GOTTLIEB

When the lights went out on Thursday, Imani Kuumba was in an eyeglass shop on 116th Street in Harlem. She was also in a very different New York from the one she lived in when the last major blackout in 1977 turned her South Bronx neighborhood into a harrowing zone of plunder and mayhem.

In 1977, "it was complete chaos, just total chaos," Ms. Kuumba recalled. "They grabbed the flashlights and started looting." This time, the eyeglass-store owner and the other shopkeepers along 116th Street quickly ushered their customers onto the street and pulled down their iron gates.

The police showed up so fast, she said, "it was like they knew beforehand this was going to happen." And through the night, "the people took it in stride," she said. "They barbecued in the dark. They sang. They were listening to KISS and partying. I think they felt that this was just another event, something that occurs in New York, and it would be over soon."

Tall buildings have crumbled in New York since the last blackout. Drug scourges have come and gone. The economy has boomed and flattened and struggled to boom again. Millions of people have moved out and in and changed the face of the city forever.

Through it all, though, the blackout as metaphor for the civic psyche appears to have survived. And this time, Kenneth T. Jackson, the president of the New-York Historical Society, says he thinks it may be saying, "This is a city that seems to be under control."

In 1977, New York had reached an arson-scarred, drug-infested, economically challenged nadir. The blackout looting then was breathtakingly panoramic, often against a background of rock-throwing and flames. Today, the first snap of a blackout easily awakens fears of terrorist attacks. But this notwithstanding, Mr. Jackson said, "when we think of the city we think of the ordered city."

Much of the credit for this certainly goes to Rudy Guiliani, but it is also worth considering the possibility that 9-11 made New York a better, more cohesive, city and us a better people, at least for a while. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 17, 2003 6:59 PM