Hey readers! It’s me, THE RIDE, here to tell you about some scary memories from the past. Hurricane Sandy hit us hard. Really hard. Like a New York Ranger checking a New Jersey Devil, hard. Although it was over two years ago, we still see some residual effects. To quote The Four Seasons, “Oh, what a night.” Actually, the one good thing that came from Hurricane Sandy was that it allowed the English majors at NYU to write personal essays starting with, “It was a dark and stormy night,” without the fear of the professor’s red pen forming the word, “cliché.” In fact, there really isn’t a more accurate description of how the night began.

It was a dark and stormy night, (oh that felt naughty) and the wind was whipping through the city faster than Willow Smith whips her hair back and forth. A crane toppled over from the hard gusts, which made even some of the hardened New Yorkers look up from their iPhone 4’s for only a moment before going back to their tweets about how this would just be another Hurricane Irene. Then, everything became real when the New York Stock Exchange closed down. This actually ended up being the only time the NYSE closed its doors due to inclement weather since 1888. Many of the low areas were evacuated, public transportation was suspended, and everyone had to suffer through the hurricane selfies dominating their Facebook feeds until the power finally went out. We hunkered down and made the best of it. The aftermath and cleanup was the most horrific part of the whole ordeal.

People were without power for weeks on end. The South Ferry Station, worth approximately $545 million, was completely destroyed. It’s still under construction and may not be complete until 2016! Everyone was taken aback by the sheer destruction of our property and loss of life. Even in the suburbs, people were left without power or without heat for weeks. People were selling generators for five times their worth on the streets and gas was being rationed based on even and odd license plate numbers just like during the Great Depression. It was a wild time that reminded all of us how fragile the city is, even though it may seem like such an expansive and tough place. I wanted to write about this hurricane to show you that New York City is a living being who still has to bend to Mother Nature, just like me, THE RIDE!