Before heading off to a date, I suddenly heard and felt a loud BOOM. I asked my house mate who also heard it and we went out on our rooftop deck. There, we saw lots of people on their roofs and found out that something exploded under the street and sent a manhole cover shooting into the air. I could see it from my roof, it was on the same corner as my building.

Maybe one or two minutes after the explosion, fireman and police were on site. They didn’t seem too concerned. They went into some nearby basements. Walked around the manhole. Watched as it sent out green and yellow flames with like smoke. Eventually, they took some yellow tape and garbage cans and blocked off a small area around it. Meanwhile people and cars were free to go by.

I soon jetted off to a date. We met in the East Village and headed West towards the Hudson River. Took a couple of pictures along the way; beautiful tower on a public library that was a courthouse in the past, a real gas lamp outside a townhouse. Finally, we ended up on the pier at the end of Christopher Street and laid on the grass for a few hours. It was fun hanging out and, as he’s a modern dancer, we did some contact dance and weight transfer exercises while canoodling. (Ha! “Canoodling” is a great old-school word.) I dropped him off at the (1) subway about 10pm and I headed home.