Although a week hardly passes where I don’t give directions to some tourist to the site I haven’t been there. I’m not sure why I havn’t gone or really I just can’t express why I havn’t gone. It’s bad enough crossing the Manhattan Bridge or looking down 8th Ave and not seeing them, that I don’t feel the need to go see the bulldozers at work.
So have you been there?
When did you go?
What are your impressions?
Are you glad you went?
I’ve been back downtown a few times. I always stare at the gap when I walk down Broadway and pass by Liberty Square, but I’ve never been to the “official” viewing platforms, and don’t really plan to either.
I mean, once you’ve been in the middle of the actual occurrence, a memorial doesn’t exactly do much…at least, not for me.
I’ve been downtown exactly 3 times since 9/11. I took care of my business and went home. Honestly, I was shaken enough by the disorientation and the crowd by Trinity Church, no need to pick at scabs.
I haven’t been to the site, but on September 12th I did go downtown as far as I could before being stopped. I suppose if I could have gone to the site I would have.
Was down there a few days after the attack for the "rescue"effort. Have not been back since and have on interest in doing so-but will be out to see the lights come on tonight although from a distance
I’m not strictly NYC–I live in New Jersey–but I get into the city a lot.
I haven’t been down there. I looked at the site from the Liberty Science Center (across the Hudson) through those big binoculars that you have to put a quarter in. I couldn’t see much, but I saw more than enough, if you know what I mean.
I think probably if I could just walk down there and be there in solitude, neither getting underfoot and in the way of people doing work nor rubbing elbows with hordes of other people who came to See Ground Zero, and I could just be alone there, I would go.
I pass by there on the way to work, but I also took my parents when they came here to visit me (my mother was born and raised in NYC and wanted to see the wreckage as a sense of closure) and took my boyfriend this Saturday (he was morbidly curious.) If they hadn’t wanted to go and I didn’t have to walk by it on the way to work, I probably wouldn’t have visited.
I was just in NYC last weekend, and went to the site. It was enough to walk down the street. I had no desire to be on the platform or even to stop on the street to just look around. I guess I went to see it because it is history, but I felt awkward being there.
Thanks,
I was feeling weird (guilty?) about ‘not going’. It makes me feel less weird knowing that most (NYC area) people feel the same as I do.
Like I said I frequently give tourists direction to the site. Some of them are seem to be on some sort of spirtual quest and when they meet me they are almost at the end of that journey. Perhaps the fact that they are so close to something they have traveled thousands of miles to get to but sometimes them seem…excited(?) almost thrilled. Some seem very grave and serious about it. I’ve meet people for all over the country and from several European countries who were all ‘going there’. It seems strange that I live 15 mins away and have not gone and all these people were going.
Once about a week or so afterwards. Then I worked for a month at a building overlooking the site from the 30 somthingth floor.
-What are your impressions?
I found it really anoying to have to constantly push through hundreds of slack-jawed gawking tourists. Also, I found that TV doesn’t do the scope of the destruction justice. For example, that little piece of the facade the was sticking out of the ground is actually about 6-10 stories high and the rooftops of the 30-40 story buildings are also covered with dibris and shit. Basically it looks like the scenes in Hue in Full Metal Jacket surroundid by parks and delis and suck. Very weird.
-Are you glad you went?
Yes, however I am in no particular hurry to go back to work at the WFC.
I used to be able to see to see the towers from where I live in Brooklyn and where I work in Manhattan. That’s close enough for me.
I will also echo Cartooniverse and say that it became a tourist attraction far to quickly. I once gave directions to someone who asked for Rock Center, Radio City, and Ground Zero. In that order.
I’ve been down several times - the first about ten days after the attack, and then every few weeks thereafter. My only visit to the platform was in January with RT Firefly, whom I hosted for the Dopefest.
For me, watching the progress on the site is watching its renewal, and that’s vitally important. Those who want to turn the entire site into a memorial are, I think, missing a key point: Yes, it will always be the final resting place for some. But if we turned every place from which war dead couldn’t be retrieved into a graveyard, Dresden, Warsaw, Hiroshima, Berlin, Tokyo and Volgograd would today stand largely empty.
The “slack-jawed tourists” are also, in my book, entirely welcome. Indeed, implicit in that phrase (to me at least) is a nasty undercurrent of snobbery. It’s as if the intentions of outsiders who come to pay their respects can’t be as pure as our own, since for outsiders paying respect unavoidably means looking (voyeurism!) and recording (photographs! video!).
I find it much easier on my psyche to assume - I think correctly - that people are coming as a pilgrimmage. It’s not always fun to be around, but to cast aspersions is, I think, almost as ugly as what they’ve come to see.