You are currently viewing the stories for September, 2001
Scenes from Astoria
by Sam Lipsyte 09/30/2001Neighborhood: Astoria, Queens
Some people around here watched the towers collapse from their rooftops. I didn’t even think to go up to the roof. Like baseball, I preferred it on TV. Hell, I’m an American. When the second tower I fell I took a walk outside with my friend. We both live in Astoria and we both work […]
Memorial for a Fireman
by Fran Manushkin 09/30/2001Neighborhood: Midtown
On a cold and rainy and wintry Sunday in New York, I went to a memorial service for a fireman in Manhattan. (Schedules of funerals have begun appearing in the DAILY NEWS, with urgent appeals for people to attend. There will be over 300 of them. ) Today’s memorial service is the only one I […]
The Good Soldier
by Phillip Lopate 09/26/2001Neighborhood: World Trade Center
The World Trade Center had this fascinating opacity: two steel-grey slabs stopping thought. The more you looked at it, the less it gave you back. The Twin Towers came out of the minimalist aesthetic of the late 1960s, Donald Judd sculptures: their only decorative adornments were those aluminum Y’s, provoking you by their tight-lipped abstraction, […]
Life and Debt and Stephanie Black
by Thomas Beller 09/26/2001Neighborhood: All Over, Manhattan
Stephanie Black does not want to talk about the September 11th World Trade Center attack in the context of her movie, “Life and Debt.” “I’m still processing it, like everyone else,” she said on the phone the other day, speaking from her apartment in downtown Manhattan. But her film, which is currently playing at the […]
The View From Long Island
by Adam Baer 09/25/2001Neighborhood: Across the River, Letter From Abroad
I’ve disliked living on Long Island for about as long as I can remember. Now I hate it. It started as child, thrust into a culture that coddled me. My friends never understood why I, as a music student, craved visits to the city. To them, Long Island offered everything Manhattan did with added bonuses: […]
Before and After
by Rebecca Letz 09/25/2001Neighborhood: All Over, Manhattan
It is 8:30 p.m. on September 10th, the day before the World Trade Center attack. I am at therapy like I am every Monday night. “New York is killing me,” I complain to my therapist. “At every turn, I am filled with a new contempt for New York. A garbage truck passes me and spews […]
Taking Down The Wall
by Sami Plotkin 09/25/2001Neighborhood: World Trade Center
Late this afternoon I stood amongst a tightly packed crowd of onlookers at Broadway and John Street, watching from behind a barricade as engineers prepared to remove from the World Trade Center rubble the 500 foot wall that — for many of us — had somehow, over the past two weeks, come to symbolize our […]
The Unhinged
by Jen Trynin 09/23/2001Neighborhood: All Over, Letter From Abroad
My neighbors don’t have window shades. They are a man and woman in middle age, childless, quiet, and coping. At night, they shudder in the light of the TV which is always on in their bedroom, reruns of Kojak or The Lucy Show or Dick Van Dyke. Often, he’s sprawled in bed, surfing the channels, […]
The Grand Candelabra
by Elizabeth Seay 09/23/2001Neighborhood: Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights
The weekend after the World Trade Center collapsed, I went down toward the Promenade to see what was left of the skyline. The Promenade is a walkway at the edge of the Brooklyn Heights bluffs where you can see all the landmarks of the city at once, from the Statue of Liberty to the Empire […]
Sirens and Whispers on 9/11
by Tom Cushman 09/23/2001Neighborhood: All Over, Manhattan
9:30 AM It’s a slow morning like so many, in that I am running slow. I get into the bathtub, and turn on WCBS Newsradio. Downstairs I can hear my wife assuring our fifteenth month old that breakfast is fast approaching. And then I hear the unfamiliar sound of a plane about to fly into […]
The View From Silver Lake Park
by Gabrielle Walter 09/22/2001Neighborhood: Across the River, Letter From Abroad
I need to walk. I walk and walk and end up at Silver Lake Park and when I turn around to take in my favorite view of the skyline, up high on the hill looking straight down Victory Boulevard, I half expect the towers to be there. I swear I can still see a faint […]
Winged
by Anne Kovach 09/22/2001Neighborhood: World Trade Center
Last night, I attended a memorial service for an artist I knew, Michael Richards. He was fortunate to have been selected for the lower Manhattan cultural council’s program “world views’ (or something like that). He was unfortunate in that his studio was on the 92nd floor of Tower One. I met Michael two years ago […]