Construction began on the WTC memorial yesterday. I was in downtown Manhattan last week for the first time since 1995. Obviously, eleven years later, things have changed. Most of the people visiting Ground Zero on this Saturday morning were tourists for sure and mainly from outside the U.S. It’s nice to see that the area hasn’t (at least yet) become an overly commercial or political place. There were a couple of vendors selling WTC replicas and books, but on West Broadway away from the main focal point (follow the link to get the perspective on where my pic was taken, facing west).
Like November 1963, September 2001 has shaped culture through tragedy. It’s the unfortunate modern moment of which we can ask someone "where were you when…" and even in that open-ended statement could get a response on 9/11 in the first few tries. I was with a friend Phoenix and we drove cross-country back to Philly. Took the train back to Boston and could see columns of smoke, five days after the fact.
So – where were you when…?
P.S. Some new pics in my flickr stream from MoMA and some other random NY places (check the sidebar at right).
Tags: wtc, ground zero