Village Tour: Taking Stock of Sleepy Hollow

Setting out the second leg of my tour of the villages – Sleepy Hollow edition – to hand out flyers for the shelter to residents without power, I was pleased to immediately realize the police were already at it.

No sooner had I turned one corner into the neighborhood surrounding Barnhart Park, did I come across Sleepy Hollow police officer Paul Giannetti knocking on doors, telling residents who answered about the amenities available to them at the and the YMCA (showers), and leaving informational letters from the Mayor for others.

Several residents were chatting outside the blue house on Lawrence Street, comparing their gas usage with their generators and how they are getting more conservative despite the cooler weather.

Gas lines have people nervous. Here’s the scene in Tarrytown; Sleepy Hollow gas situation is kaput.

Sleepy Hollow stations were all without electricity which disables the pumps, save for Mobil, which ran out of gas early Thursday afternoon. A line of cars waiting all the way to Beekman had to be turned away. Hess is the only game in the villages now, and one Irvington resident described how the scene was about to blow there.

15-year-old Daniel Nieves and his dog Ottis were eager to get of their house – no generator here – and onto the shelter and the showers. He said he’d spread the word.

Word from the shelter: his dog’s welcome there, too.

Though parks are officially closed, the mostly treeless part of Barnhardt was teeming with soccer players.

The Sleepy Hollow Ambulance Corps had a buzzing generator outside.

You can follow those pockets without power by the sound of the generators.

The Van Tassel Building is dark, with hundreds of tenants out of luck for days. Though Beekman businesses are fine on the rest of the street, this group of several storefronts has to operate on generators or not at all. Sleepy Hollow Pharmacy and the Gentlemen's Tailor had generators out front. The pharmacy was using as little power as possible – just three bulbs, said the pharmacist – and the tailor was closing early.

Police had distributed information about the shelters to the building’s management so people in there hopefully knew they could get out if they wanted to.

Officers — there were two of them now that and Sergeant Nick Bizzarro joined Giannetti — there was Con Edison up 448 on Tower Hill Road, but that was too far for me to go walk and see for myself.

Reports are coming in that we may have restoration on Nov. 10 or 11.

I went along Pocantico – downed wires dangling – along Philipse Manor’s new fence (and perfectly content cows) to see the Manor. DeVries Park was off-limits.

DPW crews were in the roadway bulldozing scoops of tree debris into orange dump trucks.

Dusk was coming; it was starting to get really cold. Still Officer Vince Lombardi, half of Sleepy Hollow's K-9 Unit (I assume his other half was in the car?) stood in the middle of the road at the base of Pocantico directing yet another dead light.

Another officer, Craig Kelly, told me at the crosswalk in front of Morse: it’s dangerous out there by day, it’s much worse by night. No one sees you, not even with your yellow vest.

Finally, I arrived at the Sleepy Hollow Police station; I wanted to thank them for doing what I set out to do.  

But they were too busy.

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