Hurricane Sandy: I feel like I live in a different city

My street is strangely calm on the Upper East Side.  Apparently most of the power is out to lower Manhattan, but I am fortunate enough to still be in possession of my utilities.  I'm seeing photos of the flooding downtown and it's like I live in a different city.

This is a photo taken of my street taken at 10.30pm.  If you look closely you'll see there are a couple of people walking down the street just behind the silver colored car.  My fire escape blocks them, but you can sort of see their legs.  It's pretty windy out there though, I saw the wind catch a container and fling it down the street, so it's not the most sensible decision to head outside, but you can see there's no flooding.

In contrast here's a photo posted on Gothamist earlier today of 18th St and Ave C 

Crazy!!!

The Gothamist newsmap shows just how busy the emergency services are tonight across the city.