Flash flooding from a torrential rain caused a few hours of shock and frustration across New York City Saturday.
Numerous videos from across the city popped up in social media, one showing Soho streets looking like shallow lakes while in another vid from somewhere in Manhattan shows customers in a shop that starts to flood as they watch garbage containers float by on the sidewalk outside.
Another reveals six lanes of traffic backed up on a major thoroughfare as a person with an umbrella and riding some sort of submerged vehicle tries to cross what looks like a lake as observers who shot the footage say, “No way.”
Some took the opportunity to blast New York leaders.
“This looks like a river. Infrastructure is absolute shit here — they take our money, spend it on illegals & pet projects, but can’t fix basic drainage,” wrote a “father” posting as Floridap8triot. “Mayor Mamdani & Gov. Hochul: do your damn jobs. Enough is enough.”
In Soho, Taylor Prokes, 35, who lives above Felix Bar & Restaurant. posted the video of the flooded intersection of West Borad and Grand Street from footage taken by her roommate.
“I’ve never seen anything like it. It was madness,” Prokes told the New York Post. “People started walking out of the pancake shop with garbage bags over their legs because the pancake shop started flooding.”
The manager of the restaurant who asked to be identified only as Tringa H., 32, agreed, noting she’d spent her entire life in the Big Apple.
“Never, ever in my life…I mean, besides Hurricane Sandy, have I seen a flood like this before in Soho, ever,” Trigna told the Post.
Despite the chaos, Tringa some intrepid New Yorkers soldiered on, still showing up at the restaurant to eat.
“They were pulling their pants up, pulling their skirts up, and walking in filthy water to come in. It was amazing,” the 32-year-old said of Felix’s loyal customer base.
The city issued flash flooding warnings were issued across all five boroughs Saturday as the heavy downpour “forced ground stops at the city’s busiest airports and shut down major expressways,” the Post also reported.
Lower Manhattan and western Brooklyn and Queens got the worst of it, according to the city’s Office of Emergency Management.
In Soho, flood waters started to rise in its upscale shopping and dining district around 12:15 p.m. Saturday and stopped by 2 p.m.
By 2:30 p.m. the water had completely drained, according to the tabloid.
Breitbart contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
