Metro

The fight for food — and taxicabs

The candlelit charm is over.

Nearly a quarter-million Lower Manhattanites today begin a third day with no power — another day of vying for cabs, buses and even a loaf of bread.

“This is about money. If you flash cash, you get a cab,” James Alamo, 36, said at Essex and Grand streets after the 10th cab passed him by — only to pick up a cash-flashing older guy just up the street from him.

A livery cab driver sped off after Alamo refused his extortionate request for $50 to take him to 34th Street. “They are really gouging us,” the hapless traveler said.

“My son is so cold,” Michelle Rios, 21, said of her 2-year-old as they waited for the M15 bus at Allen and Grand streets yesterday afternoon. “I’ve been waiting here over an hour and a half, and I’ve seen four buses pass by” — each too full to board, she said.

John Pascale, 56, spent yesterday trying to board a bus out of his blacked-out neighborhood near the state and federal courts in a quest for cellphone reception. “The buses were so crowded, I had to get on the third one that came,” he said.

“I got off at 38th Street, and then I had to find a place to charge my phone,” he said. A generous pizza proprietor in the East 30s let customers charge their phones, Pascale said. “There were four, five people ahead of me, waiting to use their chargers,” he said.

“We have absolutely no bread — not a loaf,” said a manager at the Gristedes at South End Avenue in Battery Park City.

“It’s strange,” noted resident Sergei Artemov, 60, as he waited on a long line there. “Overnight, things you take for granted, like milk and bread, become hot commodities.”

Additional reporting by Amber Sutherland and Rebecca Rosenberg