2:35 AM
Police Diffuse Car Bomb In Times Square
Police are on the scene in Times Square this morning where authorities say they discovered and are in the process of dismantling a bomb inside an SUV.
The device, made of three propane tanks, fireworks, and two five-gallon full gasoline containers, had two clocks with batteries attached to it. There is no word how much time, if any, was left on the timer.
Police also recovered a black metal box resembling a gun locker
“We’re very lucky," said Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who rushed to the scene from the White House Correspondent's Dinner in Washington, D.C. "Thanks to alert New Yorkers and professional police officers, we avoided what could have been a very deadly event."
The car bomb was discovered in an idling Nissan Pathfinder with its hazard lights on by a street vendor, who then alerted a mounted New York City Police Department patrolman.
It was found at around 6:30 Saturday evening.
It was 15 minutes later when we boarded the downtown A train, with the thought to switch to the D to end up down at 35th and Broadway, where the @BigGayIceCream Truck (biggayicecreamtruck.com) had tweeted they would be. We hadn't thought to check the news or anything before leaving the apartment--I just wanted to get out of the apartment and down to the BGICT (BigGayIceCream Truck) before they moved to a different location.
Now, I'm a Newbie Yorker. I don't think about the subway much--I get on, I get off, better than any car I've ever owned. The NYC subway is that reliable. Sure, it's late sometimes, but I usually leave enough time so that it can be late and I won't be. But once I get to the platform I stop worrying about the time because I know there's nothing I can do about it. I just chill out and read a book, or work on one (I always have my netbook with me). In this case, @Siskita and I started talking over our future plans for Jay and Kay ThePal.
But when we got to the 145th street station, the A train didn't leave. It just sat there for a *while*. I don't know how long since I never pay attention, but finally I noticed people getting antsy and some actually raunning across to the other downtown A train that had rolled to a stop on the other side of the platform. Then I realized that we were going to swap over to the D, anyway, so I suggested we do it there rather than doing it at 125th st where we usually switch--it would be the same D, which we could catch downstairs from where we were. We decided we were waiting, why not wait on the train we'd be stuck on the longest? (If we only knew!)
Of course, the D, when it arrived, also sat there for a while. It was around then that the conductor told us there was excessive train traffic north of 59th. Was it because of the car bomb?
We had no way of knowing of the car bomb since we were underground and I don't think we'll ever know, but it's possible that was the reason we were being held at 145th. After a while we started rolling, only to stop several times before making it even as far as 125th.
All of this time the police were swarming Time Square--but we had no idea.
The next point I looked at the time, it was *8:09*--a full twenty-five minutes after we should have gotten to 34th and Broadway. We'd been underground for almost 90 minutes--hell, we could have gotten to Coney Island in 90 minutes.
We were so bored, I suggested we resurrect an old audio podcast Siskita and I used to do back in LA called "TheUsCast" where it's just she and I talking about stuff going on in our lives (inspired by the podcast from Hucklebug.com). As we recorded the first new episode in several years, the train started rolling...
...only to and stop and start again many more times. At some point, we were told by the subway conductor (when we could understand him) that there was an emergency on the tracks north of 59th. They might have been lying to keep us from panicking. 59th is the last train before 42nd for the downtown A. Thanks to the car bomb they found in Times Square (42nd and Broadway) I imagine they'd have to reroute the downtown A onto the D train tracks, which is where we were. The D hits 59th and then heads east, bypassing 42nd. So, if they were, in fact, rerouting the A to the D tracks, that would have held us up. This is just my best guess--I've read nothing in the news about this just yet.
When we finally did get above ground at around 8:45ish (!!) we came up at 34th and Broadway (as planned), only to discover that the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck had left the area!
A quick check of their Twitter feed told us: "I'm about to close up this spot and head towards the theaters. I'll let you know where when *I* know where!"
The theaters are off of Times Square--we were within eyeshot of Times Square and were about to head up there, but then Siskita checked Twitter one more time to read from @BigGayIceCream: "All of Times Square is chaos!! Trying something else...."
Yeah, that was the car bomb. The BGICT ended up settling waaaay the hell up at 83rd and Broadway--about fifty blocks from where we were and we had other errands to run before everything started closing.
Damn it! I wanted to get a choinkwich!! Thanks to the traffic madness in Times Square, I didn't get one!! GOD DAMN TERRORISTS!!
BUT check it out: we found out later that they didn't even have choinkwiches today but they will tomorrow, when they will be in Hell's Kitchen.
EAT IT TERRORISTS! I'M GETTING MY FRICKEN CHOINKWICH ANYWAY!! SUCK ON MY FREEDOM!!
Terrorism doesn't scare me--it just makes me want ice cream.
No comments:
Post a Comment