The Plight of the West Village Blackout Victim: West Villagers Sound Off

Yesterday, we published an article about a support group that has been set up by a West Village resident who claims he suffered “acute stress disorder” after he was left helpless and without power for five whole days following Hurricane Sandy.

This West Village victim — who apparently called into NY1 at the height of his trauma — compares his struggle to cope with the horrors of having no electricity for nearly a week with what people went through after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He also thinks I’m an “asshole.”

Barry Drogin — whom I contacted yesterday to find out what, exactly, his support group entailed — never called me back. But he took to the comment section of the post we published yesterday to vent about his struggle with darkness. Some of his neighbors sounded off, too.

Drogin’s comment:

I was not traumatized by five whole days of no electricity, you assholes. If you know anything about real trauma, you know it is caused by a moment of supreme emotional distress caused by a single moment of witnessing or experiencing something traumatic. For me it occurred at around 10:30pm on Friday night, November 2, 6 hours before my neighborhood had power restored.

Your idiotic assumption, and the assumption of all the other assholes that have posted so far on your blog page, is that everyone in the Far West Village are rich Eurotrash or coop-owning hedge fund managers. Surprise, surprise, there are original tenants here who are not young, good-looking and rich, and who haven’t been pushed out yet.

After 9/11 I was mercilessly pilloried on-line by the “truth” movement.  I stood up to them and I’ll stand up to you.  Go ahead, tell me that the insomnia I have been experiencing for 10 days, the lack of appetite, the inability to remember what I was thinking 5 seconds ago, isn’t real. Call me a drama queen for seeking help for myself and others who have already contacted me. Tell me to see a psychiatrist as I wait for the $900 initial consultation that was “fit in” a week after I requested it.

Oh, and by the way, we don’t all own smartphones with data plans and instant messaging.

If you had one-tenth of the guts I had, you would publish your real names, telephone numbers, and e-mail addresses like I did. My life is an open book. Forfend you should actually visit my website and learn about who I am before posting your garbage. It is so easy to be hard.

As to James King, who is too incompetent to even set up his answering machine, I had to take two days off from work to deal with my exhaustion from sleeplessness. On Monday I returned to work – sorry that your imagined story was too tempting to write without confirmation, and thanks for not providing an evening phone number to reach you, but I’m sure you were just trolling for more tidbits to sprinkle into your little laughfest. I’ve been reading The Village Voice cover to cover since 1978. Apparently the new staff of the “village” voice assumes that everyone in the original village is gone and been replaced by yuppies.

So here’s the challenge, you social media whores and gutless wonders. Don’t respond without ending the way I am now.

Barry Drogin

212-243-8784

Another West Village victim — this one anonymous — also chimed in:

In printing this mierda, the Village Voice has made itself suitable only for making cat litter. And to the people who commented here who are without empathy for the residents of the West Village, congratulations. You have revealed yourselves as sociopaths. Now everybody knows who you are.

As did a former West Villager, who thankfully was spared the hardship of five entire days without electricity:

have not lived in NYC since 1989, was born and raised there, just tells me the west village has not changed, only concerned about themselves and their little village world. Too bad!

But Cynthia Diaz summed it up the best:

White people.

As we mentioned yesterday, people in Staten Island, the Rockaways, New Jersey, and Long Island are currently living in what resembles a war zone. But who cares about them — let’s get these West Village heroes the help they desperately need.

Visit Drogin’s website, on which he has dedicated an entire section to the trauma of living without electricity for five whole days.