We’ve had our first blackout. Now we finally feel like native New Yorkers

One of the more annoying mythologies of New York, for anyone who has lived in the city for less than two decades, is the “what we did in the blackout” story. There was the famous one of 1977, when the lights went out for 24 hours, and the other famous one of 2003, which lasted for two days; to hear people go on about it you’d think they’d survived the London blitz. In those hours of darkness and no air conditioning, people talked to their neighbours and sang old-timey songs. Everyone came out of it better people.

Last Saturday night there was a pop in my apartment and the microwave went off. It was an hour before sunset. Outside, car horns blared and the scream of fire trucks rose upwards. My kids and I went on to our terrace and saw, 17 floors below, that the traffic lights were out. In fact, power had been cut off for 73,000 people. Most of Times Square was down, as was the Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center. For a moment, it was deeply thrilling.

We had an hour before sunset to figure out a strategy. The biggest problem with a power outage in New York is that it knocks out the elevators, effectively trapping those on high floors. I had always assumed that, in my own building, there was a generator to light the fire escape – but no. Gingerly opening the door in the communal hallway, the fire escape yawned before me, pitch black. I retreated to our apartment. The only torch I could find was in the shape of a ladybird with a beam that could barely reach my own feet, let alone guide me safely with two four-year-olds down 17 flights of stairs. “We should fill the bath with water so we can flush the toilet,” I said to my kids, who nodded sagely, before using the loo and discovering the flush worked just fine. It turns out I don’t understand electricity.

I had 2% battery on my phone and decided to use it to check Twitter. I needed information! Also, I was bored. I found out that in Madison Square Garden, the plug had been pulled on J-Lo mid-performance. Broadway was dark, but some of the performers – you could feel people working it up into a story to pass down to their grandchildren – had spilled out on to the sidewalk to entertain the crowds. Farther north, a choir performing at Carnegie Hall did the same.

It was dark by now and we went back on to the terrace. Below, a police officer had posted himself at the intersection. Incredibly, delivery guys on bikes were still weaving through the dark, and this seemed to me as conspicuous a symbol of New York as the plucky singers on Broadway. Seriously, who orders lo mein in a blackout?

The corner deli didn’t close. Neither did the pizza place on 72nd Street. The city’s ice-cream trucks stayed out too, confirming my hunch that, come the apocalypse, you will still be able to get a slice of pizza and pay $4 for a frozen Sponge Bob on a stick, even as the sea washes up the city from Wall Street.

When the lights came back on at 10.30pm, a huge cheer came up from the street. As disasters go, it wasn’t one of the epics. But after 11 years in the city, I finally had my war story.

• Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist