My building has been doing work on the facade, which for some reason meant no residents have been allowed on the roof.

The building management told us they projected it to be a five month job. Today marks one year. They didn’t warn as when the day we couldn’t access the roof would begin. They told us it would happen some time. Then one morning they emailed us that that day the prohibition would begin.

It would have been an easy excuse to view disconnecting my apartment from the electric grid as an experiment so I could pause it. While I started it as a thirty-day experiment, as it helped me see polluting as hurting other people (and wildlife), not some abstract goal or trend, I’ve come to consider the change to avoiding hurting people for a perk of being at the top of a dominance hierarchy permanent.

Unlike what I see of mainstream American culture regarding behavior that affects others mediated through the environment, sadly, I prefer to live by my deepest values, not to compromise them. So instead of viewing the lack of roof access as an excuse to pause or stop an experiment, I took up the challenge and started finding other places to charge. I mostly settled on Washington Square Park and took advantage of being in public to connect with neighbors. The New York Times, Village Sun, and other media published about me doing so. Lemonade from lemons.

I wrote about my first couple days without roof access in More solar challenges. Not giving up and Not giving up, day 2 without roof access. Others can give up; not yet me. Here I am on March 21, 2024, my first day without roof access at a park on Seventh Avenue.

Here are some pictures from the next couple days, when I thought I’d be able to access the roof again soon. I naively thought the building management would work with me.

After a few weeks or months, I came to terms with carrying my equipment to Washington Square Park two or three times a week and working there while charging. I also switched to eat more raw since cooking uses so much energy. Cooking one load of stew in the pressure cooker, good for three or four meals, required about three hours of charging in cloudless skies.

Here I am in Washington Square Park. I can tell it’s the first few days because the guy in red pants was another regular—a vendor. We met when he picked up I was becoming regular too.

Incidentally, I asked the building management when they expected roof access restored. They sent the same non-grammatical obfuscated type of response:

We have sent a memo since December and the project end date was updated to the end of March. 

Should anything change which is always a possibility a memo will be sent similar to the last. 

Thank you.

In other words, I don’t know when I’ll be able to use my roof again.

On the plus side, I’ve learned that charging from my window gives me more power than I expected. I’m not sure how long it will last as the sun’s path in the sky changes with the seasons.

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