The Night The Lights Went Out In Uptown

I was sitting at a barstool at the Bunker Club on 23rd street. Depending on where you stand, it's either a dive or a hipster bar. To me, it's my neighborhood joint that is the closest place I can walk to for a five dollar beer and a shot of rye whiskey.

It was a break between writing up all our 2019 Rewind posts where I needed to get out of the house and see the happy hour regulars. In between chatting with Kyle about horror films and Steve, the older guy who sits alone in the back and drinks his own whiskey and beer, the power blacked out.

And it stayed out. And stayed out. Right when the bar was starting to fill up. I walk outside, check on the neighboring spots, and the northside of 23rd street is blacked out as far as I can see in any direction. A woman in a van pulls up and tells us that somebody hit a pole. Next, a local bartender who lives down the street walked up and informed me a dude smashed his truck into a pole, knocked down a transformer, and ran off on foot.

The rumours spun faster than a certain Fleetwood Mac LP played at 45 RPM. Then the social media photos arrived...

Eventually TV news arrived on the scene. Here's the complete report from Peyton Yager:

It's kinda insane that in a densely populated areas that a single drunk can just knock out the power for thousands of residents and several small and big ass corporate businesses. I'm okay with an inland hurricane or the Russian government having that power, but not some drunk wearing camo.

Everybody that I talked to was keeping it cool, there were no riots (at the time of writing), and it felt like more of a weird anomaly. Surely, NextDoor was freaking out and worried about not capturing video footage of the impending terrorist invasion, but by the time this will be published, order should be restored.

Nobody died, at least. Your power may have gone out, but you could have been the 69 year-old man who was killed by not one, but TWO cars in Midwest City tonight. Stop driving like assholes.