Monday, January 14, 2008

Live Blogging: Caddy Wompus

Okay, I am half kidding with the live blogging thing. And the five people who read this were promptly emailed when this incident happened. I work across the street (caddy corner if we’re getting specific, okay?) from this new Trump SoHo BS tower that is going up. It’s huge and being constructed at record pace and the neighborhood hates it. And I hate it! I walk by it every day on my way to and from work and the construction site freaks me out. They fill they huge metal buckets with cement and hoist them via crane to the top of the building, which is apparently 46 stories above me, little pedestrian, on the street. And I swear they fly up. I have wanted to write about this fact alone, because this alone freaks me out.

We moved into our new office space at the start of the year (caddy corner...ugh, worst phrase) and now I get a beautiful view of the building and the cement buckets right outside the window next to my desk. So today, there was a huge noise and my boss and co-workers and I clamor to the window to see an unsettling amount of debris fall from the building, and further see that a large chunk of the top floors are gone. Chaos ensued, FDNY showed up, EMTs, the news crews, the whole deal. Apparently, one person died immediately, which is horribly tragic. One of the construction workers was even trapped in a safety net and we saw them bring him down in his own metal bucket. He was promptly whisked away on a stretcher when he got to street level.

Needless to say (even though I already have 6 times in this post), shit like this really freaks me out! Most of you know I did a short film in college about a woman who wears a bicycle helmet all of the time. And while most of that stemmed from growing up in California with earthquakes and whatnot, living in New York City does not help calm my latent things-falling-down-on-my-head paranoia (I’m 90% sure that is an accurate, medical term.) You always hear about scaffolding coming down, or a crane load falling from a construction site (as exemplified by today’s incident.) So maybe there’s an actual reason for my paranoia. Maybe I’ll start wearing a helmet or maybe I just won’t leave my apartment. Okay, let’s be honest, if that happens it’s most likely because Ocean’s 11 is airing on TBS or something. You know I’m a sucker for a tv movie “event.”

Here are some photos:

They just pulled out another person on a stretcher. It’s been about 2 hours. Apparently he was trapped somehow. Here’s a link to some more accurate reporting on Gothamist.

Anyway, after all that, I am not really sure what my point is except to say that I am no longer walking along this stretch of Spring St. on my way to work. And I did a google search of caddy corner to make sure I had the correct spelling and I found out I could have also used: kitty corner (this is just straight up annoying) or caddy wompus! I really missed the boat on caddy wompus....there’s always next time I guess.

Okay enough about Trump. I have to get back to uploading a new facebook photo.

Ciao!
Bridge

4 comments:

Brian said...

can you load your new facebook picture as an addendum to this post. iwannaseeeeeeit

Anne said...

Dude, seriously Bridget. We were watching this all happen from my office yesterday. There were like 15 million police cars and firetrucks. Insane.

Jennifer G. Horn said...

I'm not so afraid of scaffolding and things falling down on me. I'm, however, definitely freaked out by the thought of falling through a metal subway grate. You know, the ones where you can actually see the 30 foot drop?

Rory Carroll said...

what about kelly maurer??? huh?

or mike parker?