Cristal Carrington

SAN JUAN, P.R. — On an island where 90 percent of the electric grid is down, water systems are compromised and soldiers were busy rushing food to hungry people in the mountains, David Diaz was taking a moment to clear his head by standing on it. Mr. Diaz, 37, a personal trainer, pulled off the yoga move with liquid confidence Tuesday morning on a patch of grass overlooking La Ocho, a well-known surf break near old San Juan. What else to do? His clients’ lives, like most lives here, were in disarray. No one wanted to pay for a workout now. At least, Mr. Diaz said, he could come here. “You can find your inner peace,” he said, and reflect on “the things you value the most — your friends, your family. No storm can take that away from you.” Two weeks after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, a measure of life has returned to its 494-year-old capital city. But it is a life far from normal. The eight-hour waits for gas in the days just after the storm are now typically just a few minutes. But business and commerce remain disrupted, many residents are still living without power or running water, and obtaining necessities often requires plugging into the ancient internet of “cuchicheo” — the buzz on the street. For those who know Havana, it feels Havana-esque. Word spreads of a strong Wi-Fi signal in the lobby of this-or-that hotel. Word spreads of a supermarket with ice. Word of a black-market hustler selling the precious diesel needed to run electric generators. Ask a chef how he obtained fresh vegetables, and he is likely to reply, “Connections.” Instant gratification, the norm in a city largely inured to mainland efficiency, has been replaced by the art of the wait. On Monday night, about two dozen people were camped out next to a SuperMax supermarket, their faces slicked with sweat. An ice machine there was producing two bags’ worth, every half-hour. Many in the line said they had been waiting three hours or more. An elderly man’s turn came, and he stood before the machine, swiveling his hips in celebration as the precious stuff cluttered into the bag in his outstretched arms. “You have to wait for everything,” said Andrews Szorenyi, 50, a videographer observing the proceedings who added that he grew up in communist Hungary. “I feel I am in the Budapest of that era.” Mr. Szorenyi said he had come to the supermarket, which was running on a generator, mostly to enjoy its air-conditioning for a while. Everyone here knows the situation is much worse in the countryside, where local governments have struggled to pick up food and water from federal distribution points and deliver the aid over blocked and muddy roads. Some rural mayors said this week that they were struggling to feed their people. But it is not surprising that some of the first semblances of normalcy have returned earliest to San Juan, a city of 395,000 and the island’s cultural, political and economic heart. After the storm, the commonwealth government imposed a dry law forbidding the sale of alcohol. It was lifted Friday to the great relief of many. A strict curfew has been creeping up in recent days, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., and then, on Wednesday, to midnight. In the capital, the lifting of the dry law, or “ley seca,” sparked the return of a time-honored tradition of hanging out, beer in hand, in front of the city’s 24-hour convenience stores. Ivan Pérez, 42, a chef, was finishing off a Heineken on a darker-than-normal street corner in the fashionable Condado neighborhood, surrounded by a young, hip casual crowd. Staying home was not a particularly pleasant option, he said: he had no electricity at his apartment, and no generator. Then again, curfew was approaching soon, and he would have no choice but to go home. Mr. Pérez, like others interviewed while socializing on the broken island, said he felt a certain guilt for enjoying a frivolous moment of leisure. But he, too, was a victim. His restaurant was among those finally up and running — with a limited menu — but he had gone over a week without a paycheck, and he was worried about his mortgage payment. “I would like to help everyone on the island if I could do it,” he said. “But I have to work.” Better to be outside than in a sweltering apartment. And so, the joggers returned to their morning runs along La Laguna Del Condado, and the surfers have returned to La Ocho — so named for the No. 8 bus stop nearby — to carve up its famous wave. All while other San Juaneros, in sections of neighborhoods like fashionable Ocean Park and working class Barriada Figueroa, were heaping soggy, ruined furniture into piles and pulling felled trees off roofs. Some private schools are already up and running, but Puerto Rico’s public schools are tentatively set to open on Oct. 16, leaving many who have work to return to scrambling for creative child care options. For now, broader concerns about earning a living extend across classes, from lawyers eager to bill hours to Josue Ruiz, 37, a hairstylist whose barbershop was destroyed in the storm. On Tuesday morning, Mr. Ruiz was at La Ocho, eating dried cornflakes for breakfast and letting his two little girls run within sight of the waves. To keep his business going, Mr. Ruiz said, he had posted a note on his Facebook page offering home visits, along with the message “Don’t be hairy.” His daily appointments began at 2 p.m. “You’ve got to live with it,” he said of his changed circumstances. For the time being, this spirit of improvisation — and the jarring juxtaposition of quasi-normalcy and anything but — are providing San Juan with a new post-storm flavor that will probably define it in the coming months. Next to the gleaming, elegant convention center — the nerve center of the recovery effort — the Sheraton Hotel casino is doing good business, full of gamblers, cocktail drinkers and warbling karaoke-style singing. The lobby is packed with locals who heard about the two hours of free internet. Their noses tend to be buried in their devices, as they go in search of crucial information — or a brief escape.

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Cristal Carrington

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