By Adrienne LaFrance
Digital First Media

NEW YORK — There were big, block-lettered instructions on the chalkboard in the window of Brooklyn’s Buschenschank bar this week: “Keep calm and drink on. We are open.”

Bottled water may be the official beverage on emergency grocery lists but many East Coasters were emphatic about ensuring an adequately stocked supply of beer and wine before the arrival of Hurricane Sandy.

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People shop for food piled into shopping carts Wednesday on Brighton Beach Avenue in the Brooklyn borough of New York. People in the coastal corridor battered by superstorm Sandy took the first cautious steps Wednesday to reclaim routines upended by the disaster, even as rescuers combed neighborhoods strewn with debris and scarred by floods and fire. (AP Photo/ John Minchillo)

By Adrienne LaFrance
Digital First Media

NEW YORK – The last flashlights on the shelves were pink and dotted with flowers. A trio of Disney princesses smiled up from the packaging.

“Literally the only flashlights left at Target,” a Washington, D.C., man posted to Twitter on Saturday with a photo. That was two days before monster storm Sandy made landfall, and he was lucky to have found any at the Columbia Heights store.

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