I was on my way to see The Grandmotherfucker herself when the power went out. Like about 50 million other folks last Thursday afternoon at 4:11 PM EDT, I began by thinking on a small, personal scale that gradually expanded.

I was walking down the hall here at t2k's executive suite to switch off a light before leaving when it went out for me. So did the clocks, the fridge and my bitchen Cool Breeze 3-speed oscillating fan I picked up at Duane Reade for $12.99, the one that Clyde likes to stare at from his perch atop the bookcase. I think it hypnotizes him.

Shocked, shocked that something like this could happen at the W. 109th St. chateau, I (literally) stumbled down the darkened staircase and out onto the street towards the "C" train station and, I thought, Pat Candaras' 5:15Pm show at the Ground Floor downtown.

The traffic light at Columbus was out. Maybe the whole block was down. Didn't matter much as crossing the street here is a matter of what's coming at you and can I get to the other side before it hits me, not the color of the light.

At Central Park West, a group milled about the entrance to the B/C, some staring blankly into their cell phones. I brushed past a woman on the stairs.

"Cell service is out everywhere," she was saying to the man next to her, an annoyed-looking guy in a suit clutching blueprints.

The platform beyond the stairs was pitch black. A homeless guy was changing clothes down at the bottom.

"Come on in," he laughed at me. "The water's fine."

I decided to pass on his invite and instead stepped into the horns and sirens of Central Park West. A couple of Postal Police cars woop-woop-wooped past, escorting a small convoy of mail trucks.

*******

The first thing you think of, of course, standing at the top edge of Central Park, is the image of two towering skyscrapers on fire and collapsing and might it be happening again. I decided to try out my cell phone, just for the hell of it. Sure enough, it wasn't working. I joined the ranks of those staring dumbly at their suddenly useless mobiles.

A very pretty Puerto Rican girl came up to me, clutching her own.

"Is yours working?" she asked.
"Nah."
"Good thing I got the one with the games," she said, walking away.

Slowly becoming aware that this was going to be a bigger situation than I had first thought, and that my evening of haphazard but hopefully-scheduled Fringe shows was rapidly disintegrating, I decided to take the long way home and see what was up around the neighborhood.

There's a street vendor who sets up shop every day at the corner of 112th and Broadway. A woman in her 60s, peddling a table's worth of costume jewelry and knickknacks. With her bleached-blonde hair and painted-on eyebrows, she looks like she should be pulling taps behind the bar at some place like the Tip-Top Lounge in Bellflower, CA or some other forgotten blue-collar town.

She sits in the same place every day, on the Amsterdam side of her table, in an aluminum lawn chair. Usually a friend or two sits with her. They listen to the Yankees on a portable radio. They wear really strong perfume. I pass them on my way to Labyrinth. They're usually talking about men, and what they're not good for. That one wasn't good for this, this one wasn't good for that.

Now a group of about two dozen passersby is clustered around her radio tuned to a news station. As I thread my way through the crowd, I hear "...all across the Northeast..." Same scene at the newsstand at 111th, where I hear "...Detroit...Ohio...Toronto..." At Rastaman's incense stand closer to 110th, I stop and listen for awhile, part of a group of strangers crowding around a radio, thinking, this is how it used to be. Before unlimited cell-to-cell minutes, before text messaging, before Blackberry, this is how it was. A shared interest forms a group of strangers. A group of strangers with shared interests forms a community.

*******

Much has been written in the past few days about how the vibe of the city has changed so since the last big blackout, in 1977. How the instant disintegration into looting and lawlessness then has been replaced with a sense of camaraderie. People talk of an increased investment of New Yorkers in their city and how, even in the current economic bleakness, the picture now is so much brighter here than it was back then.

All of which may be true, but what seems more important is this city's post-9/11 sensibility. No longer does New York feel invincible, untouchable, indestructible. Beneath the buzz of everything in everyday life here now is the unspoken sense that 9/11 could happen again, here, on any day, at any moment.

Because of this, New York -- and America -- has at long last joined most of the rest of the world. Because of this, there is a sense among strangers here that if you live in New York now, you're probably nuts. You're probably nuts like I am, we're nuts together, and so we have this bond, this camaraderie forged from shared nuttiness. And so you will talk to me. And I will talk to you.

On what passes for a normal day in New York City, a very pretty 19-year-old Puerto Rican woman is not going to accost me on the street and strike up a conversation. That wouldn't happen. Once, it would never happen. Ever. But now, under the amorphous threat of some unknown but possibly very real disaster, she can come up to me, a guy and a stranger on the street, and talk to me. And it's OK. And I can talk to her, without wondering if her three uncles and seven brothers are suddenly going to be chasing my white ass down the street.

And this is where -- if you're not careful -- communities come from.

*******

I had been thinking of the local theater community a lot this past week, pigging out as I have on the Fringe Fest. I have seen about 15 shows so far, and there have been moments nightly where I've been struck by these little vignettes of total strangers in the biggest, baddest city of them all spontaneously bonding with the knowledge that somehow, if you're here, if you're part of this community, this theater community, you must be OK: squished together under the overhang outside KGB before a show, seeking refuge from a sudden summer downpour, a woman I'd not seen before and haven't since grabs hold of my belt loop and hangs on, insurance against pitching down KGB's forbidding stairs.

Down the street at Cuppa Cuppa the woman behind the counter pours me a late-night iced coffee to go and asks me what I've seen that day; a waitress at Virage near Under St. Mark's spots a press kit I have out for a Fringe show and asks,

"So, is it any good?"

Coming from the West Coast, the sense of community in New York theater is extraordinary, a sense the Fringe Fest only heightens and magnifies. But even here, theater people tend to be outcasts, misfits, malcontents, freaks. Even here, where theater is inextricably woven throughout the fabric of the city, the theater community is still just a small part of a very large metropolis.

I thought of this late Thursday night, back up in the t2k executive suite, which now had more candles in it than a seance, a flashlight to catch up on back issues of the New Yorker, and my little Sony Walkman, last used exactly six months before during a freezing anti-war march midtown, and still tuned to WBAI.

I switched over to WNYC, where the Overnight Guy said it was 1AM and 87 degrees out. I believed him. Clyde believed him. With his Cool Breeze fan out of action, Clyde was stretched out on the floor near me, stretched out longer than I think I'd ever seen him, ears cocked back towards the open window and the street beyond.

There was a party going on. The street below danced with flashlights. Little kids ran about. A group of girls passed, singing. Down the street, salsa music played from parked cars. This wasn't a terrorist attack. Not this time. It was a power blackout. Fuck it. Let's party.

*******

I thought of that today, leaving Cherry Lane Studios after a show. What if this theater community of mostly white folks and this 109th Street community of mostly Dominican and Puerto Rican immigrants weren't necessarily separate and exclusive of one another but rather two parts of what this city is -- not an entirely cold and scary monster, but the sum of all its little communities?

What if the water really is fine?

This was a troubling and dangerously utopian concept for such an avowed nihilist/fatalist/cynic as myself (although I prefer to call it "postmodern pragmatism"), and I struggled with it as I struggled with my 4th-string umbrella, the recalcitrant and stridently bold magenta-and-gold Vassar College one that wants neither to open nor to close.

It was pouring outside Cherry Lane now and as I fought with my umbrella, a young couple swung past me and down Commerce Street. I remembered them from the ticket line earlier. I was behind them, passing the time wondering how much effort he must have put into making his hair look so perfectly mussed.

Now I was behind them again and the bedhead was getting flattened by the downpour, but he didn't care. He was in a t-shirt, she was in a tank top. They had no umbrella, nothing. Within half a block they were completely soaked, and they didn't care. They didn't even seem to notice.

I began to feel ridiculous, following behind with my luridly-colored, cheap little umbrella waving about in the gusts, so small I must each time decide which shoulder shall be spared and which sacrificed to the cruel elements.

At 7th Avenue S., we stopped for traffic. I was close enough to hear bits of their conversation over the swish and honks of the cabs rushing past. Talking about what they had seen. Talking about the show.

Other people began crowding up and around at the corner. Strangers, straining against the edge of the street like racehorses against the starting gate. I kept watching the couple, bedhead and his girl, even when I couldn't hear them anymore, even as their conversation became part of a dozen others, part of the rain and the traffic and the sirens and the car alarms. Roll of thunder in the distance.

I kept watching them as we all stood there in this furious downpour, waiting for a break in the traffic or the light to change.

Watching them as they, spontaneously or by some secret lovers' signal, embraced.

*******