Notes on a blackout

On Saturday morning the lights started going out in San Francisco. It started on the west side and gradually migrated east. It hit our house around maybe 3 pm just as my Philadelphia Eagles-obsessed wife was deeply engaged in their game against the Washington Commanders.

[BRIEF DIGRESSION: How, you may ask, did a woman who was born and raised in Ireland and showed no prior interest in American football become a diehard Eagles fan? No one knows. I think it started with Mare of Easttown, a wonderful limited series on HBO set largely in the Philadelphia suburbs. What we do know is that she became a ride or die conveniently the year the Eagles won the Super Bowl. Last year. Now anything else will be a crushing disappointment to her. She finally made it to Philly this year and I for one am surprised we haven’t moved yet.]

She swung into action immediately and made her phone a hotspot so we could stream the rest of the game on her laptop or some other IT shit I didn’t understand. The Eagles won, if you even care.

But that was just the first problem. We have gas heat so that was ok, but no hot water and no ability to cook anything because our stove depends on electricity. PG&E kept pushing the time back when we would have power - 6:15! NO WHOOPS 8:15! - and it soon became clear we would have to forage our own meals in the wild. We consulted the PG&E outage map and couldn’t help but notice the denizens of the Mission were happily feasting on OUR ELECTRICITY.

Oh I guess the Marina too but we were just hungry, not desperate.

So we all got in the car and drove to the Mission. It was FUCKING EERIE. No stoplights, no streetlights, treat everything as a 4-way stop EXCEPT not everyone got that question right on the DMV test and some assholes just sailed through intersections like it was Talladega and they were trying to get past Bubba Wallace. Most people were chill though and I only almost killed one guy in a Tesla - OF COURSE IT WAS A TESLA - who cruised through like the King of France without stopping.

The other weird thing is that apparently Waymos don’t work if the power is out and so at a ton of intersections there were a bunch of stranded Waymos sadly blinking.

@brahmsstan

#sanfrancisco #waymo #city #california #empath

Eventually we figured out you just had to drive around them, they weren’t going anywhere. Poor buddy!

We made it to the Mission and after marvelling at the lights - OOOOO THEY GOT E-LEC-TRICITY HERE MA! - we got fed and then had to head back. Another harrowing journey into the Blackout Zone and back to our darkened house where we cracked a bunch of glowsticks left over from, I don’t know, a rave? Why do I have a box of 10 glowsticks?

Around 8:30 the power was on around the corner. “I bet they’re living it up over there” I seethed looking into my neighbors’ brightly lit windows from my dark hovel. I think our lights came on around 9:00. Or 9:30?

So what happened? NOBODY KNOWS. Or at least PG&E won’t tell us. Apparently there was a fire, but that wasn’t the whole story:

“At least some of the blackouts,” did you catch that? WHAT ABOUT THE REST OF THE BLACKOUTS PEGGY? WHAT CAUSED THOSE??

In conclusion, PG&E sucks ass and we’ll never be a real city until we have a municipal power situation.