You are currently viewing the stories for “November 2001.”
On September 11th, I stood at Washington and North Moore for six or seven hours, near a triage center, waiting for all the lined-up ambulances and fire engines to be given the all-clear to go in. We waited for the injured to come for care and comfort. All the ripped-open bandages, makeshift guerneys, stacks of IV's and sterile dressings, every [...]
On Friday September 28th, just after the sun had gone down, the remaining glow of the day was fighting the oncoming storm clouds moving in from the southwest over Jersey. The day had been gloomy and the light had been pearly gray throughout the afternoon. The air was cool and summer was clearly over. Coming over the Williamsburg Bridge from [...]
"The Burning Wall" is playing at Film Forum This documentary film is worth seeing on the grounds that: a) It's an intense, enthralling movie and I think you'll enjoy it. b) The story of a state becoming obsessed with the enemy within has some resonance in our current political climate. c) The film maker is my mother. "In much the [...]
Some South Jersey friends and I have a Christmas evening tradition of ditching our families and meeting for drinks in a dive near Atlantic City. There was a time when most of us lived in New York, but we’ve since scattered, some further afield and others, like my friend Paul, back to NJ. This year talk turned inevitably to September [...]
I often walk down the asphalt path that runs the length of Manhattan, on the shore of the Hudson River, hoping to see Diana. When I was with her things were not so pleasant. She smelled awful, and she sapped my energy, working me all night long and half the day. For the fourteen weeks we were together, I had [...]
Williamsburg residents Will Becton and Stephen Hoban spent much of November, 2001, riding the New York City subway system, recording the many ways in which other New Yorkers have chosen to deface the Britney Spears posters that for nearly a month were ubiquitous on subway platforms. In their first five outings, Stephen and Will collected numerous examples of defaced posters. [...]
Lately when I go for a walk I make a vow not to walk under any scaffolding, in protest of there being so much of it these days. Two minutes later I realize I'm walking under scaffolding. One day I stopped and looked at the scaffolding around the NYU tower at East 8th Street and Mercer and realized it had [...]
Part V. After I made a sandwich at my desk, Richie Boy grabbed a slice of salami. Our sharing more than food throughout our twenty-year friendship didn’t deter my protests against his poaching. "I see you have no shame in being a schnorrer!” "Only cause I learn from the best.” Richie Boy popped the peppery slice in his mouth and [...]
First dates are about inventing a new language, minute by minute. Smoking is the first level of communication. The realm of intergender semaphore is entirely bottlenecked through nicotine. If there's no smoking then the glances, brushed hair, knuckle touching can reach comedy. Push the date even further and meet in a restaraunt in Nolita, the effective dmz for the new [...]
I was in Sister Mary Evangelista's fourth grade class when Mother John entered the room during our math lesson. We stood and were about to greet her with our usual, "Good morning, Mother," when with her Irish brogue, she abruptly instructed us to sit down. She whispered in our teacher's ear. Sister Mary Evangelista's eyes welled up and she told [...]
Paul Williams considers it is a blessing that he was once a squeegee man. Not because he enjoyed the work -- he didn't -- but because it was only through being a squeegee man that he became a cardboard man, and on that he has built a life. Ten years ago, Paul was that familiar, slightly menacing fixture of the [...]
Brisbane. I was back. I had enjoyed three eventful years in downtown Manhattan before deciding to spend the last months of 2001 on hiatus with my parents in Brisbane, Australia. Since moving to New York in 1998, I'd joked with friends at home that it was the Island of Dog Years -- every four weeks seemed stuffed to capacity with [...]
On September 12, I went back to work at Men’s Journal because the issue was gutted and redone for a tribute to the FDNY. The streets were empty, not only of people, but also of noise. There were no street peddlers, few taxis, no music, no screaming, and no horns honking, only the non-stop blare of sirens. The standard intrusion [...]
M. Gordon Novelty, Inc., at 933 Broadway, just south of 23rd Street, is a very tight operation. When things get really busy -- like during the last days before Halloween -- customers enter the showroom by twos or threes as other shoppers leave. The subsequent waiting period encourages customers to determine costume possibilities before they enter, transforming the shopping experience [...]
I saw summer turn to fall on the median of the West Side Highway where I stood waving my American flag, holding up hand made thank you signs, saluting the rescue and recovery workers. The crews, coming from long shifts, appreciate the support. When they pass in their various vehicles, (fire engines, police cars, ambulances, motorcycles, army trucks, heavy rigs, [...]
It was with a sense of being robbed that I watched, from a television set on Staten Island, the events that unfolded on September 11th. The smoke emanating from the two buildings as if they'd been sliced by some reckless cosmic lawnmower gone berserk, and the camera angle that made the bodies falling look like drifting pieces of paper, large [...]
Two weeks after the shock of September 11th, I was sent to "ground zero" by the Parks Department Commissioner to make a quick evaluation of the damage to the plant life in the area. The Commissioner wanted to know what had survived, what plants would need to be replaced, how much it would all cost. He was eager to help [...]
Interviews and introduction by EDWARD HELMORE Fire Department of New York Firehouse 16-7. 234 East 29th Street, Manhattan. September 11, 2001. On the riding list of Engine 16 were Lieutenant Mickey Kross and firefighters Tim Marmion, Paul Lee, Pete Fallucca, and trainee firefighter Sean Brown. On the riding list of Tower Ladder 7: Lt. Vernon Richard, firefighters George Cain, Vincent [...]
Paul Lee I came in about 8:30 that morning, changed into my uniform, and then a few minutes later they announced plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I was thinking to myself, is this real or is it just a fake or is it an accident, whatever it was. Just a few minutes later it was on the [...]
It is a month after 9/11 when I first hear about Dags in the Palestinian grocery store, on Columbia Street, next to the Red Hook housing projects. I am on my way tenants' patrol - a group of five of us (on a good day) that wears orange NYCHA jakces and is supposedly keeping out the drug dealers. Mostly, we [...]
A favorite phrase of my mother’s, those early days in Brooklyn, was “See you later, Alligator.” She would send my brother Wally to play with his friend next door. And she would leave me with Fanny, the so-called cleaning lady, a monolithic black woman who took perverse pleasure in threatening to scrub my mouth with Joy. When I complained about [...]
First came the hugging and the crying and the storytelling. We're all alive and it's groovy. Long live the marketing department! Long live the company! We'll rebuild! Then came the fatness. Working in an office, in a cubicle, is the surest way to obesity. You scorch your eyes looking at the Internet all day, sipping a mocha with whipped cream. [...]
I haven't dressed up in several Halloweens. I've been reluctant to do so since third grade when I came to school as Diane Keaton in "Annie Hall." I blew my wad that year. This year would see no disguise. The better part of the day would be spent with my friend Sabine killing time before our respective Halloween parties by [...]
In 1956, at the age of nineteen, Rosa Morrone was almost past the prime marrying age in her native town, Polla, south of Naples, Italy. Her father was beginning to seriously worry that she wouldn’t marry. At the same time, Gabriele Morrone, who had left Polla for New York City when he was 14, returned home to marry. But when [...]
The family practice doctor I go to probably would not want to be in this piece, so let’s just say that his last name sounds like a company that makes really good frozen blintzes, or soup that, when you stick the plastic bag in boiling water and cut it open, the pearl barley and mushrooms taste as rich as a [...]
Growing up, there were certain inarguable rules Mom set forth to ensure her kids' safety: don't take candy from strangers, power tools are off-limits unless your Father is present, avoid the yellow snow, and never, under any circumstance, spend the night in Central Park. But over Labor Day weekend, my girlfriend, Kim, and I threw caution to the Ramble and [...]
For more than 100 days members of New York's Fire Department, along with thousands of contractors, have been working in 12 hour shifts in the recovery effort at World Trade Center. With the subterranean fires finally extinguished and the last skeletal wall bought down last week, the work has taken on a new complexion. About half of the twisted steel [...]
“Spirit is Life. It flows thru the death of me endlessly like a river unafraid of becoming the sea”--Gregory Corso I ate my breakfast at a leisurely pace, mopping up the last traces of ketchup on the plate with my muffin. Glancing at the clock on the wall, I saw that it was eight forty five. A moment or two [...]
