It's been a week and a half since Hurricane Sandy ravaged New York and New Jersey and the cities and beach communities there are still working to recover from the storm. To top it all off, they have just been hit with a snowfall and many homes that just had their power restored are back without electricity. A group of Los Angeles residents have formed a collaborative to help grassroots organizations in New York with their relief efforts.

LA Hearts NY is throwing an emergency benefit this Sunday, November 11 at Space 15Twenty in Hollywood (right across from Amoeba). The event runs 2-6pm and will feature DJs from KCRW (Chris Douridas), Cat Power (Gregg Foreman and Nico Turner) & others, along with a silent auction, bake sale, Intelligentsia coffee and more. They still need help too so if you want to donate anything (including auction items) please email them at laheartsny@gmail.com.

 

Compared to this time last week when the New York State of Mind Post-Hurricane Sandy Blues was posted to the Amoeblog in the devastating couple of days following the unprecedented impact of the storm that hit the region with a vengeance and brought the city that never sleeps to a standstill, things are looking a lot better in New York City (albeit far from back-to-normal in all places, most notably in the hard hit Staten Island and the Rockaways section of Queens).

Now the majority of power has been restored in most parts of NYC and a large percentage of public transit service (about 85%) is back up and running. In most places, NYC is getting back on track as fast as it can. However, the fallout of Sandy will still be felt here for a quite some time, especially in places that need to rebuild and/or tackle the daunting task of major flood damage repair. Plus, there's the nor'easter / second storm coming this week. Despite all of this, New Yorkers have worked together and around the fallout of Sandy to get things running despite the obstacles presented to them.

New York City, Monday, October 29th 3:45pm: Here in New York City and other parts of the Northeast Coast including New Jersey and Rhode Island we are already feeling the strong winds and rain but are still awaiting the brunt of Hurricane Sandy to hit sometime later today. The massive storm with such a friendly name is expected to wreak havoc here on the Northeast over the next day or more with the worst of it hitting later tonight/early tomorrow morning, according the National Weather Service. Already winds are up near 100 MPH on the Jersey Shore and here in Queens, where I am, some trees have been blown down. Hurricane Sandy, which is arriving  in conjunction with a separate severe cold weather system a couple of days shy of Halloween, has  been dubbed "Frankenstorm" by the media who are always, it appears, delighted to have some potential apocalyptic disaster to report upon. Most folks here in New York and New Jersey that I know are hoping for the best but preparing for the worst. NYC buses and subways have been out of service since last (Sunday) evening and both JFK and La Guardia airports are shut down with flights cancelled through tomorrow (Tuesday) evening. For up to the minute news on the storm YouTube is live streaming The Weather Channel,  while Weather.Com is doing live updates online that you can get on your mobile devices.