You are currently viewing the stories for “October 2001.”
I was attending a company meeting on that Tuesday. We had started at 8:00, a presentation on the company values and mission statement to the staff. Even though I had been at the previous presentation, I had decided to attend, as a show of support and solidarity. At approximately 9:10, my cell phone began vibrating, the caller id showing my [...]
I'm on a jam-packed rush hour 4 train headed to Brooklyn and am lucky enough to get a seat. I'm reading my book and the guy next to me says, "Is that your bag?" and points under the seats. I look down and see a large, square-shaped canvas bag. "No," I say. So he asks the lady next to him, [...]
My first inkling of an attack on the Twin Towers came from the Fed Ex man delivering a packet. He rang the doorbell around 9:15, and when I started to sign for it, he said, shaken: "Did you hear what happened? A plane crashed into the World Trade Center. You can see the black smoke from here." Indeed, looking down [...]
My cousins grew up in New York. I met them once in California, where I lived until I was seven. But when we moved to a Oxen Hill, suburb of Washington, DC, we began regular visits. This was in the late sixties. Thanksgiving in Manhattan followed by Christmas in Oxen Hill, or vice versa. My aunt and uncle rented or [...]
The following was written before September 11th, 2001 Like most New Yorkers, I can't afford those restaurants that garner plaudits in Zagat's. I've made some peace with that. After all, I'm less a foodie than a chowhound, scouting outer-borough ethnic eats on the weekends. At lunch, I usually brown-bag it or grab a $2.25 rice and beans from the nearest [...]
She arrived in the city ahead of me to work as an assistant to the producer of a movie, a pretty girl's job, a blonde's job, and soon, very soon, while I was still talking to her by phone from Seattle, making arrangements for my move to NYC, she began sleeping with the director. In the business these blondes are [...]
Anton sells photographs on Fifth Avenue and 81st Street in front of the museum. He arrives at his spot at nine o'clock in the morning six days a week - the Metropolitan Museum of Art is closed on Mondays and so the sidewalks are just too empty for business. The photographs come from the eye, camera and studio of Alex [...]
On a lazy hot August afternoon my parents and I emerged from the coolness of the Walter Reade theatre at Lincoln Center after seeing a movie from the sixties. It might have been Italian, maybe something by Visconti - my memory of it has been erased by subsequent events. We ran into my co-worker Jim who had also been in [...]
Mr. Chancellor at the Algonquin bar in New York, before Amsterdam’s influence set in. I am much embarrassed to reveal that in 60 years I have never tried pot. I remember about 30 years ago being at a supper party in Rome when the person next to me at table passed me what I thought was a lit cigarette. I [...]
I am not an American citizen and my only knowledge of New York City had been through TV series and movies. But three years ago I decided to save a few bucks and visit. From the moment I took the cab from JFK airport, I felt like I was coming back home. It was strange: the landscape seemed familiar. Friends [...]
I like food, and I like books, but I'm not that into books about food. So when a friend of mine suggested we visit a great new store that sold old cookbooks, I was reluctant. Eventually, though, I got curious about the woman I saw sitting behind a busy desk in the window of Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks, and went in. [...]
Sandwiched into the fourteen blocks north of Houston Street and south of 14th, Greenwich Village and the campus of New York University have formed a sort of demilitarized zone, patrolled by both civilian and military police. Below, access is restricted to officials and rescue workers. Above, New Yorkers move freely, and the city returns to some semblance of normality. Between, [...]
It was supposed to start with a mandated early-morning appointment with an "employment specialist" from the New York Department of Labor and end with me shaking my ass to minimal techno at Centro-Fly. Between these, I was going to vote in the primaries, work at the international DJ academy, and see Matthew Herbert, on of this year's best musicians, perform [...]
It is Rosh Hashanah. Today I learned that my father was named for his grandfather, a pious Ocean Avenue Jew my father does not remember. Still, he carries the name: a mysterious, permanent burden attached to so many of the tribe. We are named only for the dead, never the living, so as not to risk confusing the angel of [...]
My grandfather, a Russian-Jewish émigré and New York painter named Raphael Soyer, used to say, in his wonderful old-world accent, “New York is my country.” The year 2001 finds me living in Boston in the eighteenth year of my self-imposed exile from the island of Manhattan, the village of my childhood. I am the only one in my family to [...]
Ten days had passed since 9/11 and I found myself heading toward the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights. This is where I watched events unfold on 9/11. It was a quiet Friday morning, a dozen or so people sat along the benches gazing out toward the strangely familiar yet suddenly unfamiliar skyline. To my surprise, numerous memorials had grown up along [...]
Recently, I was laid off from my job as a magazine editor. I cleared out my desk, carefully stashing pens and binder clips into a box. Anticipating having to write countless cover letters, I also took a ream of paper. I felt guilty about this and confided in a co-worker. "It’s okay, honey," she said, patting my shoulder. "When they [...]
I came from Chicago to do a reading on Thursday. The guy I was staying with, Bryan, couldn't make it, so I arranged to meet him at the World Trade Center the next day--he worked for Morgan Stanley on the 70th floor of the 2nd tower. At about 5:00 I waited for him with my friend Jay. We ate Krispy [...]
As the son of an Iranian father and a Jewish mother my sense of sorrow concerning the disaster of September 11 does not tend toward patriotism. In fact, I am repelled by it. I speak as a first-hand victim of American patriotism in 1979, the year 66 U.S. diplomats were taken hostage in Iran. The underbelly of American patriotism is [...]
There is the sense that we are doing something wrong, Diana Wall and I, as we walk south from Franklin Street toward what is arguably Manhattan’s most compelling dig site, the hill of rubble that was, until recently, the World Trade Center. Wall is a New York-based archaeologist, whose book, "Unearthing Gotham: The Archaeology of New York," co-authored with Anne-Marie [...]
All the days have been strange since. Though I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to leave my friend Luke’s apartment, where I spent that Tuesday night, I woke up determined to get to work Wednesday morning. Life needs to go on, I thought. I walked out of Luke’s apartment building. The sidewalks were lonely; instead of the usual morning [...]
On the first day of October, the Windows on the World community held a memorial service for those lost in the WTC tragedy. Held at the breathtaking and enormous Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the simple and touching service managed to make everyone feel as one in love, loss and sorrow. The renowned restaurant also had many fans who [...]
Since September 11, it's been especially surreal and sad to see our skyline. Though I was never particularly enamored of the Twin Towers - I prefer the Flat Iron and Chrysler Buildings - it's devastating to see that they're gone. Several times this summer, I hung out by Battery Park City, where they would loom over the landscape. My girlfriend, [...]
I’m not a PTA mom, and I’ve never hosted a parent potluck dinner. I’ve said no to volunteering at annual school galas and spring fairs so many times that, at this point, no one even bothers to ask me. I adore my two sons, but their time in school is precious. And since it seems as if school is closed [...]
In the silence, ash and smoke and dust snowing down, right before I felt and heard the second collapse, there was the teenage girl, with blond hair that should have been shining in the sun but for the pieces of the Towers in the air, and hiphuggers, and a boyfriend listening to her read from Revelations. I walked past them [...]
On Saturday, August 6, 1988, I was possibly even more abstracted than usual, because it was well nigh midnight before I realized that I had neglected to eat dinner, and that the refrigerator contained nothing but half a jar of horseradish. So I set out for a greasy spoon on Second Avenue, in the heart of the sidewalk market district [...]
For years I’ve been answering the questions: “You live in New York City? Like, right in New York City?” I live in Brooklyn Heights, but this is a distinction meaningful only to those with 100- zip code prefixes, so I would say yes and try to explain. It wasn’t what they thought, I would say, it’s not a swirling mass [...]
Israel, Jordan, and the Sinai Peninsula suffered through a heat-wave during the summer of 2000. In countries where July temperatures normally venture into the 100's, a heat-wave may seem like a redundancy, but nevertheless that summer even the hardiest residents were miserable. By the end of July, Eilat, the southernmost city in Israel, was regularly recording temperatures upwards of 110 [...]
I live in a medical ghetto. Within my zip code there are 12 hospitals, one famous medical school, one re-known cancer center, one biomedical research institution, 18 medical laboratories and 1,866 doctor‚s practices. Vamps, a shoe emporium two blocks away from my apartment, stocks Danish clogs popular with area nurses. The mission of the Roman Catholic parish around the corner [...]
A friend of mine in Seattle recently sent me an email, asking me how I was doing in these weeks after September 11th. She wrote me the following: "I imagine you’ve been dealing with the horrific events in NYC since the 11th -- I’ve been thinking about you. Where is the Comedy Central bldg in relation to ground zero (do [...]
I heard the shots that killed John Lennon. Did you hear that?" My sister asked as she burst into my room after the five quick popping sounds had just drifted into my room. "Did you hear those gunshots?" I gave her a look. I told her they were firecrackers. It was late and she was bothering me. I was sixteen, [...]
Several weeks have passed since I rushed around among cities on the West coast doing readings for the Salinger book, and still the event that stands out most vividly came from the end of the very first night, at the House of Nanking in San Francisco, one of my favorite restaurants anywhere and certainly one of the best Chinese food [...]
The Upper East and the Upper West sides distinguish themselves relative to each other--their identities are based on slandering the attitudes on the "other side" of the Park. Today, however, they were connected by a giant rainbow that stretched to the ground on both sides. A six-year-old boy stared intently up at the larger-than-life rainbow, his mouth dropped open like [...]
The Cosmetics Plus at 57th and Broadway is having a clearance sale. They’re going out of business. I buy two small white tubs of Cool Goo at 20% off. The woman behind the counter is carefully made-up, but her appearance she self-describes with blunt accuracy to no one in particular: “My bags are twice the size today.” “It’s been hard [...]
She tells me that Mary has burned out. I look at the girl, at her tatooed cheek, and I'm a little confused. She nods at the "Immaculate Heart of Mary" prayer candle I'm holding. "Oh," I say. "Thanks." She leans forward and relights my wick with the flame from her own perfect, white taper. I'm suddenly embarrassed. "This was all [...]
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