I was walking out of Qdoba (a fast-food Mexican restaurant on East 34th street) when I immediately noticed a strong smell of electrical smoke, followed by the sounds of "snap, krackle, pop", much like the Rice Krispies cereal. I looked across the street and immediately noticed thick, gray billowing smoke coming up from the street, in front of The Charlston, a new high-rise that just opened up. There were flashes of flames coming up in between blasts of smoke. I realized immediately that something wasn't right. I was going to call 9-1-1 to report what I saw, but I noticed that about ten other people were doing the same. So I elected to get the hell out of there.
As I crossed 34th Street, I walked right into the billowing smoke and it fucked me up. It wasn't that regular smoke that you see when Con-Ed is "working" on my street. It was that dark, thick, funky smoke that sits in your lungs for at least a month. When I got back to the bar, I found myself hacking a bit, which was disconcerting. I told the staff about what took place and kinda left it alone after that.
About 45 minutes later, we were sitting around the bar while I.T. GOD was working on my computer when all of a sudden:
BOOM!!!
There was a large explosion sound followed by a quick flash of light. Everyone in the bar heard the noise, and a number of us ran outside to see what happened (though I had a feeling I knew what it was). Sure enough, there was a commotion of sorts around East 34th street, near where I'd seen the smoking, flaming street. I didn't want to go down there to see what actually happened, though if I had to guess, a transformer blew up and there's probably a manhole cover sitting in some poor guy's windshield.
Never a dull moment in Murray Hill.
Nuff Said.
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