More Adventures With Con Ed

Sunday morning, about 2am, in a friend’s car coming home from a jam. We’re waiting at a red light on Broadway and Grand, and we start hearing what sounded like fireworks, only not quite. It didn’t sound loud enough or close enough to be worrisome, but then my friend pointed at a column of smoke pouring out of a manhole cover just north of Canal Street. The noises were explosions happening inside the manhole; the cover itself was jumping at each “bang.” We got out of there before the manhole cover decided to take off.