I have. A bunch of times. The first time was when I was 18, me and Ronnie, and we found out they serve beer at the observation deck refreshment stand. Of course they shouldn’t have served it to us, but it was lovely .
The last time was a couple years ago when I went up there to find out what was on the roof for a detail in a story I was writing (there is- I mean was- was,was,was, not is anymore, damnit- a heliocopter pad on the top of the Observation Deck tower of the WTC).
Although more than any time I was there, it’s just the realization, I’m not there now but I’ve spent most of my adult life living within site of those damned things. And when I go back, they won’t be there. I was there the first time they tryed to blow them up, working at a magazine in a building within site of the towers. We watched the coverage on television in the office, while looking at the building outside the window. We made jokes about how if it fell over it would fall on us. That’s how ridiculous it being destroyed seemed then.
I’m also thinking about those people there the last time I went. Teenagers, working at the stands on the obsevation deck, who were so sweet and helpful and who were so impressed I was an “author” just because I was talking about writing a story. I don’t think any of them were still there, but I think there were people just like them.
Anybody else with a personal connection to those stupid fucking buildings?
I visited a customer there and worked in it for about a week about 10 years ago.
A couple of memories:
It was the first time I had been in a building tall enough that your ears popped when you went up in the elevator.
I stood in the lobby and just watched as people streamed by in every direction. So many people, all rushing about.
I went on the roof with one of the guys I worked with. He showed me a doodle that someone had drawn of a tightrope walker. Apparently, some guy had gone to the top with a crossbow or something, and managed to shoot a rope to an accomplice on the other building, and walked between the two. But first he drew the cartoon. When I was on the roof, it was pretty windy and (obviously) extremely high, so this seemed lunatic, but very New York.
This is really unrelated to anything, but during that trip, I worked on a box from some company I had never heard of, Cisco.
I went there once as an interpreter. I was all over Manhattan in different places as an interpreter. I was there every day for a week with someone who was job-training, and then never went back. I didn’t think of it as a tourist attraction. It was just the biggest building in the Financial District, and I guess I knew it was the tallest building in the world, because I’d seen the '76 King Kong. Every day I went there, I kept thinking I should go all the way to the top just to say I’d been to the top of the tallest building, but at the end of the day, I was always tired, and I figured if I really cared, I could go back someday.
I was in Manhattan when the planes hit, but nowhere near the Financial District. We found out by watching on TV, just like most people in the US. I felt really detached from the whole thing. I didn’t feel sad until a week later, when you’d go walking in the area where the rubble was, and there’d be all the family members with fliers, asking you if you’d seen this person.
The Zombie Invasion is upon us; 4 for 4 by our new friend. ::loads shotgun with Z-max rounds::
Yes, I was in the original observation deck & to see the memorial waterfall.
…To the underground “mall” that even had a few restaurants and bars? Many times. I even remember b-tching when they re-did the streets and put up concrete barricades after 1992. Never made it to the top; the lines were too long, wrapped around the elevators, every time I thought of it.
Same thing here, except it was school band and it was May 2001. Three and a half months later, well. . .
Pretty much every time I’ve driven through NYC since then, I see the city skyline on approach and think, “Wait, this is New York, yeah? Where are the. . .oh, right. Shit.” I was 13 on 9/11 and I’m 27 now, so there have been no towers for longer in my life than they were standing, but it still looks wrong.
I’ve been to see the waterfalls (which are actually quite a beautiful memorial, kind of a mix between the idea of the endless nature of life and a Vietnam Wall-style list of names) but I’m too young to have ever seen the towers.
I went during a class trip my senior year of high school (1995) so we could look out on the city from the observation deck. None of us had any idea what the building was at the time, and we were told they did a lot of international banking in there.
I visited NYC, and took the elevator to the top of the WTC back in '89. I remember looking down to the street and finally realizing how far up we were.
It’s jarring to watch footage of old shows and seeing the towers. In the last week, I’ve seen them both in the opening credits of The Sopranos and in the NYC scenes of Crocodile Dundee. (My husband and I watched the latter because it was the movie we saw on our first date. It hasn’t aged well. Sue’s Jane Fonda wardrobe is an even odder choice for the outback now than it was then. And Mick Dundee is sooo politically incorrect. He’s the anti-Steve Irwin.)
Joining in only after checking the dates on the earlier posts (“I was there ten years ago”???)
My wife and I were there November 1982 on a bright clear day. I even took some 3D pictures with my then-new Nimslo camera from the top decks; every so often I get them out and look at them. We were there the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and a great memory was all of the people picking up pumpkin pies and pecan pies from a stand in the lobby and taking them home on the subway.
I was there many times. I was at a reception at Windows on the World, and also worked on a design project for a lady at Cantor Fitzgerald. She didn’t make it out; neither did two former coworkers of mine.
I have so many photos of the towers. The first was from 1970, when they were still under construction. My favorite was when I stood on the ground, exactly between them, looking straight up.
(For whatever reason, Flickr has lost all my photos; I’ll have to reload them when I have time.)
.