Ground Zero Visit

[redramdriver 0]

This past weekend my wife and I took a trip to NYC. We have family that live there. While there I wanted to go to Ground Zero, why? Patriotism, Honor, a feeling for lost Souls, but not forgotten. When we arrived at Ground Zero the feelings I had were of helplessness, then sadness, then anger. Then the tears, many many tears. We just stood there silently, at the large fences erected around the gaping pit where once stood 2 mighty giants amoung us, where so many perished, so many tried to help and gave the ultimate sacrafice of life,the Twin Towers, Ground Zero. Where many gave a helping hand, a shoulder to lean on, to cry on, to grieve. Always there will be a burden we ALL will carry in some small way. I have attached some pics that I took while there, the quality is not the greatest (shrink to fit). If there is anyone at all who would like a copy of any of the pictures please feel free to send me an private email at [email protected] and I will send them out to you as soon as I can. If you would like to learn more about St. Pauls Chapel please visit the web site at www.saintpaulschapel.org...Mark

So, you bring your beer?

Its 5 o'clock somewhere
POPS #9344

[redramdriver 0]

and more pics

So, you bring your beer?

Its 5 o'clock somewhere
POPS #9344

[FlyingJ 0]

I've never been down to the site. At first I just thought it was totally tasteless how it instantly became a tourist attraction, but then realized it wasn't that people wanted to see it that upset me, I can understand that, it was the people taking advantage of it that made me sick. My former kayak club is not far away so I spent a lot of time in the neighborhood and I was in total awe at the kind of things people had the balls to do. People selling shirts to commemorate their visit, reprints of photos of the event, etc. Just makes me sick.

Sorry...I didn't really plan on writing all of that, but it was something that really got to me. Like I mentioned, I can understand why people want to see the memorial and the site. The reason I hit reply in the first place was to say that anyone else going should make sure to stroll over to Battery Park. A memorial was constructed of the globe that used to sit in the middle of the WTC plaza, and an eternal flame sits in front of it. For a couple years I really felt that the only memorial I needed was my personal memory, but I was really affected the first time and everytime thereafter that I saw the globe.

Edited to add: just want to make sure it's clear that I wasn't bashing the visit. Just the people making money off of turning it into more of an attraction than a memorial.

Killing threads since 2004.

[gravityizsexy 0]

welcome to capitalism

"'Someday is not a day in my week'"

[DickMcMahon 0]

Mark:

For what it's worth, here's a picture taken from the
air the day of the attack.

Sorry, I forgot where this came from so I can't give
proper credit to the source.

Dick

[redramdriver 0]

Jason,
Yes, that too struck me as much more then I wanted or needed. There were/is an extrem amount of "vendors" if you will still there trying to sell, and successfully, copies of photos and books and such. Not my cup of tea either.

Mark

So, you bring your beer?

Its 5 o'clock somewhere
POPS #9344

[redramdriver 0]

Dick,
Thank You for the photo.
Mark

So, you bring your beer?

Its 5 o'clock somewhere
POPS #9344

[mjosparky 3]

Quote

Mark:

For what it's worth, here's a picture taken from the
air the day of the attack.

Sorry, I forgot where this came from so I can't give
proper credit to the source.

Dick

My idea of a fair fight is clubbing baby seals

[kingbunky 3]

my wife and i spent a few days in nyc last easter, and we stayed in the millenium hilton, which is directly across the street from the site. it was very surreal looking down 50 or so stories from our room, then imagining a building that was as far up from where we were as we were from the ground. on top of that, trying to imagine what it must have been like on that day.

very disturbing.

"Hang on a sec, the young'uns are throwin' beer cans at a golf cart."
MB4252 TDS699
killing threads since 2001

[weegegirl 2]

I had a chance to go by Ground Zero and I didn't. I couldn't. The thought disgusted me at the time. I think I'd like to go by there someday, but tha whole thing hit way too close to home for me. I grew up passing by the towers at least once a week or so. My Dad worked right by there. My brother worked next door. Many of my family members lost friends that day. Growing up in a suburb of NYC, almost everyone's Dad hopped on the train in the morning to head off for the city to work. Many of them in the Financial District or right down there.

I think I could go now. In fact, I'm taking a trip home to see my high school buddies pretty soon and I think I'll make a special trip by Ground Zero.

[funks 1]

I was there 1 week 1/2 after it happened. I had a meeting right there at world financial center. The dust was still in the air, people were still walking around holding up pictures of loved ones. It was the most unreal thing i have ever seen in my life.

One of my dickhead coworkers actually asked one of the guys that we were meeting with what they saw that day. Their response was "Do not ever ask me that question again, you will never know what I saw and experienced that day"

I remember walking by a clothing store that had all the windows blown out. There was police tape blocking it off but you could clearly look in. You could not see anything in the store because it was completely covered in 1-2 FEET of dust. Completely insane.

[LittleOne 0]

I watched the whole thing happen from my office. It was the single worst day of my life. I could not summon the courage to visit for two years. It is now one of the most popular tourist sites in NY.

On every anniversary, I watch the ceremony on TV. This year, I watched it until I heard the last of my perished friends' names. Then, I went skydiving. At the dropzone, it was just another lovely autumn day, as a September 11 in NY/NJ should always be. At first, I felt guilty for going skydiving but then I realized that time does heal wounds and "life goes on". We all have to cope in our own way and skydiving has helped me in that respect.

[Superman32 0]

I was on rescue/ems standby along with probably thousans more, and the worst feeling in the world was the fact that there was noone to rescue.

Afterwards I couldn't stand all the tourists and people taking pictures -- would you take pictures of a cemetery? -- I can now understand that it may be part of their coping mechanism.

But I still think that route of Path (NY/NJ train) to be of very poor taste. I feels like a Disney ride -- it goes from the darkness of the tunnel right into the pit

Inveniam Viam aut Faciam
I'm back biatches!

[FlyinNover 0]

Quote

This past weekend my wife and I took a trip to NYC. While there I wanted to go to Ground Zero, why? Patriotism, Honor, a feeling for lost Souls, but not forgotten.

I saw this on the web back in '01.

---
I was in Manhattan today. I crossed the Hudson River on the George
Washington Bridge just as Ari Fleischer came on the radio to confirm that
the US and Britain have begun retaliatory strikes against cities in
Afghanistan. The local New York radio host then informed us that Mayor
Guiliani had warned that when the attacks began, New Yorkers should be
prepared for the possibility of a lockdown of Manhattan.

In Midtown, around 35th and 9th, where I parked, you could have thought
that nothing had happened a month ago. Tourists craned their necks to take
pictures of the Empire State Building, sidewalk vendors hocked sabretts, two
homeless men played chess in Bryant Park. Another beautiful day
in New York City.

I rode my bike around midtown, taking pictures, just enjoying being in the city. Times Square was as loud as ever. The
cabbies blared on their horns, giving the other cars they're own sort of
"New York Hello". A police car sirened by.

I didn't plan on going downtown so early in the day, but I found myself
heading that way, watching the street signs count down until I was in
Greenwich Village, north of the WTC site. Then I went further south.

You can get surprisingly close to the site, even though the National Guard and NYPD
have sectioned it off as what it is: a disaster site, a clean-up, a crime
scene. I saw the walls of fliers posted with pleas for information about the
missing. I saw children's drawings, black outlines of two identical towers,
scratched over with red crayon fire. The wind whipped around corners, making
the fliers and police tape flap frantically near an almost
motionless group of people making their way to the site.

On some of the darker buildings, you could see the dust still clinging
to the side. On the streets, it looked like the floor of a bakery, a blanket
of fine white dust marked by footprints. I stayed to the back of the groups,
back from the amateur photographers crowding against the metal barriers set
up by the police. I let them take the pictures. I simply looked around,
taking it in, making it real. I thought of it not as a memorial or a tourist
attraction. This is a place where people *live*, where they *work*. This is
not a destination to them, it's a part of their daily lives that fades into
the background. Rather, it *was*.

What made it real to me wasn't the crushed hulls of the mammoth
buildings. It wasn't the steel girders hanging, precarious, from the roofs
of buildings. It wasn't looking up to the sky and not seeing the towers, a sight
like seeing your mother with her front teeth punched out. What made it real was the store awning still covered with dust and debris. What made it
real was the fire escape strewn with paper, dust, and a cracked flower pot.
What made it real is that someone lives on the other side of that broken
window. Someone will have to clean that awning. Someone works in that
windowless jewelry store with the mannequins fallen over. Someone planted
that flower. What made it real is that in that hulking pile of rubble,
underneath the steel and concrete of more than 200 stories, underneath the
remains of the buildings that fell on them from above, there are more than
5000 bodies. The bodies of people who can't plant flowers anymore, or wear
jewelry, or see the skyline of the city they were working to maintain.

On my way back I read a flyer posted on the fence at City Hall Park. It
admonished the "vultures" who came to see the latest New York attraction. It
said that we profaned the lives of the people who died by seeking pleasure
from the wreckage. We didn't show a sign of care for those people before
September 11th, it said, so what right did we have to trample over their
graves now?

We didn't go to seek pleasure.We didn't go to gawk. It wasn't just
another sight to see on a tour, like Times Square, the Empire State
Building, or the U.N. We went for the same reason you go to the Vietnam
Memorial, even though you're twenty-four and never knew anyone who died in
the war. For the same reason you go to the Holocaust Museum, even though
you're not Jewish and to you World War II is little more than a multiple-choice
test and a documentary on the History Channel. We went because it's our
experience, our way of life, *our* greatest city in *our* greatest country.
We went because it could have been us. We went to make it real.