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UNFREEZING ZONE

By Nate Taplin

Twenty blocks down from the impromptu asphalt fireworks that shook my Murray Hill neighborhood last Wednesday night when a steam pipe burst, I stare uptown towards my apartment and wish I hadn’t left the windows open. Expensive suit to my left, Pakistani cabbie to my right, we all look north towards the plume of smoke billowing up from Lexington Ave. with identical expressions of stoic resignation.

Living in Midtown is usually a little embarrassing for the twentysomething pseudo-hip. The neighborhood has, however, stirred markedly in the last few years, thanks to Tokyo Restaurant (always packed with Japanese businessmen at lunchtime), Fagiolini Restaurant (where my neighbor works part time) and the Old Bridge Gourmet Deli (owned by an East Asian family whose beautiful daughter consistently ignores me).

Now we have all been gobbled up by the “frozen zone”—the cordoned off area between 42nd and 38th Streets. The steam in question has totally obscured the corner of Lexington and 41st several times in the last few months. Just six hours before the explosion, Con Edison conducted a “visual inspection.” The company has promised to reimburse businesses for repair costs; no word yet on whether it will provide recompense for lost revenue. Perhaps the proper solution would be a lighthouse.

Meanwhile, Pret a Manger—a salad and sandwich chain in the Chanin Building—is losing $10,000 a day in business. A lessee has heard rumors that air tests in the building have come back positive for asbestos, which leaves me none too optimistic about this weekend’s testing of my apartment. Across the street, Café Metro is inexplicably open for business.
All of us will be living in uncertainty for several weeks to come. In the meantime, I’m staying with my parents in Connecticut and wondering what it will feel like to sleep in my building with a gas mask. 
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