By Amy Zimmer
DNAinfo News Editor
UPPER EAST SIDE — As many New Yorkers attempted to return to their routine schedules Tuesday following the weekend's blizzard, more than a dozen buildings on the Upper East Side grappled with a power outage.
There were 282 customers in 16 buildings affected, Con Edison officials said. It was the largest outage in Manhattan, the other affecting eight customers in Chinatown.
After a day of much darkness, 14 of the buildings saw their power restored around 5 p.m., except for a movie theater and one other customer.
Much of the power went out at City Cinemas on Third Avenue between 60th and 59th streets just after midnight Tuesday, a staffer said, disappointing movie-goers hoping to get a good seat at the morning showings of "Black Swan" and "The King's Speech."
"This is worse than the Lindsay administration," said thwarted movie-goer Susan Knopf, who trekked from downtown to the Upper East Side theater. "It's a mess. I'm shocked."
Besides the movie theater on Third Avenue, the other buildings affected were on the south side of East 60th Street between Second and Third avenues.
The building's businesses were outraged and already calculating lost income from the problem.
But Magda Zoto, the manager of the Patsy's Pizzeria outpost on East 60th Street, was most concerned about a 96-year-old tenant who lives in the walk-up above the restaurant.
"She needs electricity," said Zoto, who was infuriated it took crews more than three hours to show up after her 9 a.m. call to Con Edison.
The resident turned out to be fine, Zoto said, but the restaurant was operating on a limited basis, only able to serve pizza from it's wood-burning oven rather than its usual pastas and soups.
"We can't use our computers to place orders. It's like we traveled back 20 years," said Zoto, who rigged a power cord to a building next door to provide lighting.
"We have no lights and only one hair-drying station is working," said Junko Maeda, of Michi Beauty and Hair Salon on East 60th Street, adding the place had to cancel on nearly 10 customers.
"Who's going to pay for the money we're losing?"
Brad Kozera, manager of Canaletto Restaurant on the same block, already canceled lunch for the day.
"We have half our power," he said. "No lights in the bathroom. Our refrigerators are out. The exhaust is out."
Meanwhile, Brasserie 360 remained open for lunch, but without heat and lights no customers cared to dine there.
"We have emergency crews in the area trying to do an investigation," Con Edison spokesman Alan Drury said. "The heavy snow in the area makes it a little hard to get access to where the problems may be."
No strangers to snowstorms, Rosemary Kelly and Wendy Edmon, both 60 and visiting New York from Lake Placid, laughed when they saw the movie theater was closed.
"Yesterday Lord & Taylor was closed all day because nobody came to work," Edmon said. "This is not a lot of snow."
Maxine Scheinert, 70, visiting from Florida, took it in stride that she'd have to see "Black Swan" another day.
"I'll just have lunch and go shopping at Bloomingdales," she said.
