Lest we forget, here is the widow and son of the first officer of the first plane to hit the WTC:
Posted on 10/23/2001 7:17:37 PM PDT by ELS
CITY officials are faced with an awkward question: what to do with the tourists who want to see the most famous sight in New York?
It is awkward because no one wants to think of the World Trade Center ruins as a tourist attraction. The site is still a crime scene under investigation, and no one wants to seem ghoulish. There are still human remains there, and no one wants to desecrate the most hallowed ground in America.
But people still want to go there. They want to visit for the same historic reasons they want to visit the battlefields of Normandy or the crematoriums of Nazi Germany. And while the notion of turning it into a tourist attraction might sound offensive, in fact the place has already become one — for certain tourists.
The police barricades around the site have become the most exclusive velvet rope in town. On the outside are tourists without connections, whose first question in New York is now, "How can I see it?" They've been snapping photographs of the south tower's rubble from two blocks away, at Broadway and Liberty Street.
Inside the barricades are other tourists, the V.I.T.'s ranging from Don King to President Jacques Chirac of France. On Sunday, Oprah Winfrey got a personal tour from Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, joining Larry King on a list of prominent journalists who visited. Prominence alone was enough to admit Muhammad Ali. Lance Armstrong went on a mayoral helicopter tour with President Clinton.
Power is the surest ticket for a visit, to gauge from the many politicians who have visited, including a 100-member tour group from Congress. Money can also make you a V.I.T., as a Saudi prince demonstrated by showing up with a $10 million check (the one that was indignantly returned by Mr. Giuliani after the visit).
At some dinner parties in New York and Washington, "Have you been down there?" has become the question most likely to inspire one-upmanship. The more competitive visitors will duel over who got closer and who breathed worse air. Most of those who have visited try not to sound too proud of their feat — they know this is far different from getting into the club or restaurant of the moment. But they cannot resist telling the uninitiated what they saw and felt, because the scale of devastation is too large to be captured in television images or photographs.
Mr. Giuliani says that he wants the V.I.T.'s to see the destruction first hand so that they're inspired to use their influence to help the city. By that logic, it makes sense to let the masses get a look, too, because they're potential donors and supporters, too. In fact, they could offer direct support by paying fees dedicated to the victims' families and to the recovery effort and memorial.
It's not safe, of course, for tourists to be wandering around a smoking pile of debris. It's possible for some groups to go there on escorted visits, but arrangements would be tricky, and the numbers would have to be limited. It's not a place where hordes of tour buses belong at the moment.
BUT tourists wouldn't be in anyone's way if they were inside one of the buildings overlooking the site. There's been preliminary talk among city officials of allowing some kind of observatory to be established next to the ruins. Doing it tastefully would be a challenge, but curators have managed to do so at the sites of other disasters and atrocities.
Providing an observatory would do more than just satisfy people's curiosity. It would give them an outlet for the emotions they've been expressing at the informal shrines all over New York. It would be a place to satisfy visitors like the prayer group from Roanoke, Va., that arrived downtown one evening and walked into a restaurant called City Hall, on Duane Street.
"They came all the way from Roanoke to New York just to show their support, but they didn't know where to go once they got here," said Henry Meer, the chef and owner of the restaurant. "They came in here and asked me, `Where can we go to pray?' " The best he could do was direct them to the shrines at Union Square.
Similar queries have come into NYC & Company, the city's convention and visitors bureau. "A lot of groups from around the world want to come here and pay their respects," said Cristyne L. Nicholas, president of NYC & Company. "We've tried to advise them to visit firehouses and places around the city, but some of them won't come unless they can visit the World Trade Center." They want to see history with their own eyes, just like Oprah Winfrey and the other V.I.T.'s.
Everything is corrupted by the "elites".
They really should. Some of them are like little shrines already. I hope a photo essay is eventually published. Have you seen the station across the street from St. Francis Church on 31st St? I believe it is the one with which Fr. Mychal Judge was affiliated.
Lest we forget, here is the widow and son of the first officer of the first plane to hit the WTC:
I want to go "because the scale of devastation is too large to be captured in television images or photographs." I want to take in the full scale of the devastation and have it seared into my memory. The idea that certain people who neither live nor work in NYC can get a personal tour from the mayor makes me sick. I don't want to get that close. I just want a clear view of the entire area, which the public doesn't currently have.
Firefighter Message Is Loud and Clear
...[Mike] Moran shared the stage with such superstars as David Bowie, Mick Jagger and Billy Joel. His connection to the terror attacks was very personal.
His older brother, Battalion Chief John Moran [Freeper BCM], 42, was killed in the Twin Towers collapse. Twelve of his fellow firefighters at Ladder 3 in lower Manhattan were also killed...
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Good article by Bryan Virasami, Newsday staff writer.
You'll just see what I did, a bunch of cops chasing a bunch of A-holes trying to get a picture of something that shouldn't be photographed, at least like that!!
On my hard drive at work I have pics that a coworker took from inside our office building while it was happening. I can't show them to anyone over the internet because the men pictured do not want to be seen in public with expressions of abject terror on their faces. I'll burn them soon and print them- I can show them one on one.
I'm trying to get a hold of a digital camera with a zoom lens for better shots from my office roof.
I want to remember this, damnit, long after the scent of rotting flesh leaves our workplace!
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