Irene Saturday

This is Market Street in Philadelphia, which normally is overflowing with people on a Saturday afternoon, even when rain falls. But today nothing is happening except for people getting ready for the coming hurricane. As I write, the advance edge of the storm is steadily drenching the city, the "hurricane parties" have begun, and everything that can be shut down is either closed already or is battening down its hatches. I made a sortie into town to buy food at the indoor Reading Terminal Market, which is very blippable in itself, so stay tuned for some of that. Usually I'll wait on lines and bump a lot of elbows there on a Saturday, but today's visit was replete with chit-chatting and vacant seats at the diners. I took a lot of pictures there and had a terrible time choosing my blip. This means that it's a good blip-day.

In the foreground is a subway vent, covered (for the first time in the 28 years I've been here) with plywood and wrapped in flood-preventing sandbags. Tomorrow the entire transit system will be closed, which is also a first, I think. Even in major blizzards they try to keep it moving.

The scandal of the hour, though, is that the city of New York will not be evacuating the prison at Rikers Island. Even though the thing was built on a former landfill (making the ground less satble), and is smack-dab in the middle of the flood zone, and everybody else nearby is on emergency status, AND the prisoners' horrible time during Hurricane Katrina is not nearly forgotten, Mayor Michael Bloomberg was very annoyed when questioned about it in a Press conference yesterday, and is not planning to evacuate the inmates. Let's just wait and see if a few thousand of them drown in the coming hours.

That's the news from Soggy Philly! Stay safe & dry, all.