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workday in the new skyline
Thursday, September 13 2001
Manhattan remains closed below 14th Street, but since I work on 19th Street, I thought I should find my way to work. My preferred subway option is the 2 and 3 IRT Red Line subways, but since they pass beneath the World Trade Center on their way to my workplace, they have remained closed since the towers were attacked. So this morning I went to try the Q from 7th Avenue and Flatbush in Park Slope. I waited around for a long time hoping a medical emergency in Union Square would pass and the Q would start up again, but the platform kept filling with people and the subway never came. This left me with only one more option, the F. I suppose I could have caught it down on Atlantic Avenue, but for some reason I decided to catch it at a more familiar station at 7th Avenue and 9th Street, which meant I walked about 15 blocks.
At lunch Dave, one of the guys in the New York office, ordered Chinese food and a few of us ate it in the kitchen. Among us was the front desk secretary. She didn't know much about the Arab-Isræli conflict, but with such crazy things happening in her city, she thought it was time to find out. So Dave gave her a brief and fairly accurate history of the founding of Isræl. It's something that's difficult to finesse; especially the part about Palestinians being kicked off their land for the crime of not being Jewish. "I'm sorry, but that's just racism!" exclaimed the secretary, who happens to be African American. She continued, "Now, I feel bad for the people missing in that building, but I can understand why those people are so mad. I'd be mad too!" She's right, of course. Things are always portrayed as simple in the media, but in the case of the Middle East, we're dealing with a lot of people who are justifiably pissed off about all sorts of things. Mix their rage with ample funding and religious zeal, and the mix is as dangerous as an atomic bomb.
I saw a sad sight as I walked to the subway as I returned from work tonight. A paper handwritten sign was on a door to a loft stairway urging people to be on the lookout for the pets of those who "have not yet returned." Later, while on the subway, I found myself looking at the advertising posters on the wall of the car. Most of them were for various educational programs. "Learn XML for Java!" exclaimed one. In the background behind smiling photogenic graduates loomed the skyline of New York, prominently featuring the twin towers of the World Trade Center. No one else seemed to be looking at them, but once I'd seen them, I had difficulty looking at anything else. Later, as the F train came out of the ground for a couple of stops, I turned to look out the window at the new skyline, as did others. New Yorkers seem compelled to stare at their new skyline at every opportunity, beholding it with the same morbid fascination as an amputee examining his stump.
The subways themselves are impossibly screwed up in the aftermath of the Tuesday's destruction. There's no telling what trains will come down which tracks and where those trains are actually going. You have to pay attention to the intercom, though it's often difficult to make out what the hell it's saying. For example, the "F" train I took home tonight, though it was running on the "F" track when I caught it, was labeled as an "E" train. Some distance down the track we were told that the train was now assuming the role of an "A" train, but that only lasted a few stops before it resumed its role as an "F."
In the evening, Gretchen and I dined together with Ray and Nancy and a bunch of their friends at a fun & funky Park Slope restaurant called Two Boots. At our end of the table we shared a pitcher of sangria. There was surprisingly little dinner conversation about current events.
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