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flags of ground zero
Friday, February 22 2002
In an effort to once again give Gretchen some alone time in our cramped brownstone, I went for another one of my solo jaunts around the city today. This time I took the subway to Park Place in Manhattan and went to look at the big hole in the ground that used to be the site of the World Trade Center (also known as Ground Zero).
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The World Trade Center is a fairly well-contained construction site now. Church Street, which borders the complex on the east, is open to traffic once again. All buildings that were damaged beyond repair have been razed down to their roots (well beneath street level). Indeed, there are only a few buildings left that show much damage, but all of these appear to be in the process of repair. The largest and worst-damaged of the buildings is the Banker's Trust Building, a dark skyscraper just south of the World Trade Center plaza. Its entire north side is shrouded behind dark translucent fabric featuring an enormous American flag suspended near the top. Interestingly, One Liberty Plaza, the tall dark building predicted to collapse during the evening of September 12th is now fully-restored and bustling with activity.
These flags are really most helpful, since otherwise
I'd occasionally forget what country I'm in.
Detail of the wall damage in the tall flag-bearing Banker's Trust Building shown above.
Corner damage being repaired on Three World Financial Center adjacent to Ground Zero.
A large fraction of the windows on the bottom have been boarded up.
For a map of the buildings damaged in the World Trade Center,
see this photograph (taken from this site).
Eventually I went into the East Village and had a Budweiser at the Holiday Cocktail lounge, sitting alone by myself in a booth in the murky light reading an article in the Village Voice about skyscrapers. There were a few people at the bar and a couple boothfuls of art fag types with me in the back and that was it.
In the evening, Colette, one of Gretchen's old high school friends, flew into town and became our house guest for the weekend. Simplifying logistics considerably, Gretchen borrowed our neighbor Ana's car to pick her up at La Guardia. When we went to take Ana's keys back, we found a couple of people hanging out so we stayed for awhile to drink cosmopolitans, watch the Olympics and play Pictionary®. I haven't played Pictionary® since I hung out with high school chums for New Years, but from the vantagepoint of genuine adulthood it seems like a much less intelligent game than, say, Boggle®.
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The most interesting bit of backstory Gretchen told me about Colette was that she has a ten year old daughter named "Britney Spear."
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For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?020222 feedback
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