WATCH: Steam Pipe Explosion Won't Stop This Guy Getting Breakfast

CHELSEA, NY — Nothing gets in the way of a New Yorker's morning coffee – not even an exploding street.

A steam pipe blast rocked the Flatiron District Thursday, sending scalding clouds and chunks of sidewalk across Fifth Avenue at East 21st Street. But that surreal carnage didn't faze one man who glanced at the hellish scene – then nonchalantly purchased breakfast from a food cart, video shows.

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"That's New York for you, as soon as they realize they're not in harm's way people just go about their business," Daniel Lizio-Katzen, 42, who was biking from Central Park back to his home in the West Village when he saw the blast erupt and took video, told Patch.

Lizio-Katzen and a friend paused to snap photos and shoot video of the explosion when they spotted the jaded New Yorker.

“I was biking down Fifth Avenue and the traffic just all the sudden stopped at 24th street and that’s when I saw a huge plume of steam exploding up into the air," said Lizio-Katzen, who works at a technology startup.

"It was crazy. This guy was half way through his transaction when it happened and since the wind was blowing the other way he just kept going. It's so funny."

More than two dozen buildings were evacuated as 138 firefighters and 33 firetrucks descended on the three-alarm explosion just after the 6:30 a.m. blast. Smoke was still sputtering out of the ground several hours after the explosion that evacuated at least 49 nearby buildings.

Photo used with permission of Daniel Lizio-Katzen