Blackout

You may have heard that Los Angeles was subjected to a blackout for a couple of hours today, apparently due to the bungling of a Department of Water & Power employee or two. Whoops! My bad!

While the event passed without a great deal of inconvenience, it is the thoughts that pop into your head that leave a lasting impression. I was in a restaurant in Studio City when the lights went out. Thanks to patrons' cell phones, we very quickly learned that downtown Los Angeles as well as the Valley where we were had gone dark. Power outages are not uncommon on extraordinarily hot days, but they are never as widespread as what happened today. Plus, the temperatures are in the mid-seventies, so it seemed unlikely that demand had caused brownouts.

When the power did not return quickly, the awful thoughts started. As much as you try to fight it, you cannot help but become slightly untethered from reality, wondering if, while you sit munching on Chinese chicken salad, a smoldering crater is all that remains of some major installation somewhere else in the region. After yesterday's new threat tape specifically naming Los Angeles as a terrorist (oops, sorry; insurgent) target, the thought that the outage was not accidental was unavoidable.

Thankfully, of course, nothing like that came to pass. Notably, nothing like that has come to pass in four years. Our cities may remain free from attack by lunatics, but for those of us who live in big cities and work in large office towers, our psyches may never enjoy that freedom again. As a friend said this weekend, until four years ago, the fear of flying did not usually include fear of the person sitting next to you on the airplane.