Well, that turned out to be nothing.

For me, at least. As far as I can tell.

Walgreens price-gouging bottled water in anticipation of Hurricane Irene

This afternoon, a Walgreens in Manhattan was selling small bottles of water for $5.49 each:



(Photo by me.)

IN THE COMMENTS: We discuss whether price-gouging is good or bad.

Keep an eye on Hurricane Irene with these web cams.

Times Square

Empire State Building

Charging Bull (near Wall Street)

Chelsea Piers (begins with ad)

Somewhere in Lower Manhattan

Grand Central Terminal before Hurricane Irene hits

(Photos by MTAPhotos.)

Going to Whole Foods in NYC last night while everyone is stocking up for Hurricane Irene

[UPDATE: Some of the photos were missing before. They're all here now.]

On the way there, you see the subway has been closed:



I went to Whole Foods at around 9 p.m. last night, and people had taken almost all the bottled water:



And bread:



And chips:



You can tell that blue corn is the least popular kind of chips. "We'll only eat them if we have to." If this is what it looks like when there's a mad rush for chips, how do blue corn chips ever sell under normal conditions?

We're From the Government and We're Here to Help — Hurricane Irene Edition

This is the New York City government's idea of how to protect me from Hurricane Irene, which is expected to move up here on Sunday or Monday:

I'm in a "hurricane evacuation zone" because I live on a certain street in Manhattan's Greenwich Village.

If I lived just 3 short blocks away (one-tenth of a mile, according to Google Maps), I wouldn't be in a "zone."

(If you live in NYC, you can look up whether you're in a zone here, though I ended up getting this information by calling 311 since that website is extremely slow.)

What does it mean for me to live in a "zone"? If the city issues a "hurricane evacuation order," the government will order me to leave my home "immediately" and either (a) stay in an area that's not in a "zone" (which, again, could be as close as 3 blocks away) or (b) go to a "hurricane center." Where's the closest "hurricane center"? Oh, between 192nd and 193rd St. In order to get there, I'd need to travel almost the whole length of Manhattan.

There are 8 million people in this city. Can you imagine what the stampede coming from Manhattan and the Bronx to converge on that hurricane center would be like if people took these rules seriously?

Now, possibly the biggest risk from the hurricane is flooding. Fortunately, I don't live on the basement or ground floor of my apartment building; I live on the 3rd floor. So I'm not very worried about my apartment getting flooded. But if there is a "hurricane evacuation order," and if I happen to have a friend who lives in a non-zone — even on the basement or ground floor — the government will tell me to stay at that apartment instead of my own.

[ADDED: Some people have suggested that the zones might make sense if there's a significant difference in elevation between the area in the zone and the area outside the zone. Well, I walk to and from those areas almost every day, and it's pretty much a flat expanse of land.]

What's really going on here is that the government is trying to signal that it is taking the hurricane very, very seriously — so seriously that it has a plan for evacuating a large portion of the city. The truth is, that's impossible. So the government makes up some arbitrary rules, as if the hurricane is going to carefully observe these neat distinctions between the various streets of Greenwich Village.

Why can't the government show that it cares by releasing general advisory guidelines, and then let individuals use their own judgment based on their specific circumstances?