Anne Hull, Times Two

In the darkness, a New Yorker stands up for his neighborhood: NEW YORK — Before the storm, it would have been a familiar setting here in lower Manhattan: a man behind the counter, a row of lottery tickets above him and a wall of cigarettes behind him.

On Wednesday, nothing about it was familiar. Even in daylight, the store was dark. The milk was spoiled. The electric ham slicer was not slicing ham. The slight stink of rotting lettuce was coming up from the basement.

Crippled New Jersey city is frozen in Hurricane Sandy's aftermath: HOBOKEN, N.J. — Grace Rodriguez pulled her kitchen curtain back to observe the sea of black outside. There was still some leftover warmth in her apartment from boiling water on the gas stove. In the hallways beyond her door, residents were using their stoves to stay warm, blue flames going and oven doors open.

Rodriguez was afraid she would poison her 13-year-old daughter with carbon monoxide.

On the third day after Hurricane Sandy soaked Hoboken in several feet of water, leaving the city one of the most crippled in the region, those with the least found themselves suspended in the storm's cold, dark aftermath. Late this week, Hoboken started to hum with generators and a taco truck.