The Towering Inferno and I

I returned to my day job today, after a three-day weekend, only to be told the office was closed. It seems, last night, an electrical fire broke out that plunged the entire building into darkness.

The building I refer to is a midtown, NYC, Eastside, Bauhaus skyscraper that was the basis of the novel, The Tower, by Richard Martin Stern. Stern wrote the novel in light of the building of the World Trade Center, ironically. But it was based on a real-life incident at our own corporate building when, shortly after it opened in the 1960s, a fire broke out that forced workers to the roof to be taken off by helicopters. That novel was one of the two books used for the screenplay for the movie, The Towering Inferno.

The real-life "Tower" was built around the Prohibition-era speakeasy P.J. Clarke's. That establishment refused to be bought out and, consequently, owns the air-rights over their two-story brick bar-and-restaurant. They needn't sell a burger or even a stein of ale to rake in their money; but, of course, happily for all, they still do.

So, I look forward to what tomorrow brings. Obviously, my connection to management's emergency alert system didn't work, as I didn't receive an e-mail, text or phone message to not come in. But we'll deal with that issue some other day, when I return... to The Tower.