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ecstatic disaster tourism
Saturday, September 22 2001
Today Gretchen and I decided to tour lower Manhattan so she could get a sense of the World Trade Center disaster. On the way to Manhattan on the subway, I looked past Gretchen to the guy sitting on her other side and was somewhat alarmed to see him casually reading an Arabic language newspaper, all aswirl with incomprehensible curls, loops, and dashes. The guy wouldn't have even struck me as Middle Eastern without that clue.
Once we got down to Fulton Street we sat in a doorway and each took a hit of Igloo (or is that E-gloo?) brand MDMA, a form of the controversial serotonin-unleashing substance.
The scene along Broadway to the east of the World Trade Center was much the same as it had been yesterday afternoon, crowded with people and their fancy cameras, facing the wreckage across a police cordon guarded by a mix of conventional police and green-camouflage-clad National Guardsmen. There were somewhat more people than I'd seen during the workday yesterday, indicating others were doing as we were, coming here as a form of disaster tourism. In some places, particularly at intersections with good views of the wreckage, it was even difficult to move, so dense and stagnant was the crowd. This visit I noticed things I'd missed before, for example a store whose front window had been blown out and whose merchandise had been thoroughly blanched by a blizzard of World Trade Center dust.
We walked east down Fulton Street to the South Street Seaport, a square-shaped pier full of shops and restaurants in the East River. I'd been here once before back in 1989 and it was teeming with people, but not so today. Out in the middle of the wide expanse of wooden decking was a sad solitary mime with balloons and face paint. It was enough to give us an immediate sense that the recent attacks were having an economic ripple effect far beyond the buildings targeted.
From the third floor decking we had a commanding view of the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, as well as the south precipece of Manhattan's dissected glass plateau. We found some chaise lounges to relax in, although the only ones available were in the sun, which beat down somewhat excessively on this, the last day of summer. A couple of gangstas sat down next to us with a boom box playing a mix of current hip hop favorites. About this time the MDMA started to kick in pleasantly. The circumstances of our environment were already so strange that the effects of drugs were less noticeable. It had taken at least an hour for us to feel anything, and then it was that same old ecstasy thing: empathy for everyone, coupled with a feeling of being above it all. It's easy to feel above it all when people are being brutish me-too patriots about absolutely everything. Those with suffering and loss, they have my sincere sympathy. Those who say, "USA! USA! We're number one! We're number one! George W. Bush is a masterful orator!" - now they're part of the problem. They would think a Ficus tree was a masterful orator if he was president in these times.
Continuing westward along South Street, we passed lounging National Guardsmen and a crane loading huge bent pieces of I-beam into a barge. My photography effort was validated when one of the National Guardsmen told me not to be where I was being.
On a lark, we took the free ferry past the Statue of Liberty to Staten Island. The moment we landed we immediately turned around and rode it back to Manhattan, since there's little cause for staying in Staten Island unless you're a junkyard dog or run a crime syndicate.
Continuing our walk around the southernmost tip of Manhattan, we passed up the side of Battery Park. Memorials and makeshift monuments to the missing had dotted our trails, and here we only came upon one, but it was very different from all the others. Instead of being a spontaneous jumble of photographic flyers, it was a simple slab of dry-erase board bearing the names and locals of the union members from New Jersey expressing their solidarity with the people of New York. Beneath this listing of names was an open Bible, its pages turned by the unseen hand of God acting through the wind. When we came upon it, it was turned to the Book of Acts.
At the end of Battery Park we came to yet another police cordon associated with the World Trade Center disaster. We'd walked through all of southmost Manhattan now accessible to pedestrians.
In the evening we went out for pasta at a place on 7th Avenue in Park Slope called Sotto Voce. We brought Sally along and sat outside. We were looking scruffy after our chemically-enhanced day, but everyone else in Sotto Voce was looking clean cut and proper, right down to the regularly-spaced black dots of their closely-shaved beards and the subtle oils used to position the threads of their hair just so. After dinner Gretchen and I rented The House of Yes. Parker Posey always reminds me of Sara Poiron, but never more so than when she's playing the reality-challenged.
Broken-out windows to the west of the
World Trade Center site, viewed past its wreckage.
Dusty merchandise in a clothing store with a blown-out window.
Hold on, who's that sneaking past with a
styrofoam container full of anthrax?
Police and National Guard dudes.
Lower Manhattan as viewed from the South Street Seaport.
Brooklyn and the Brooklyn Bridge as viewed from the South Street Seaport.
Military trucks in the south end of Manhattan.
Large pieces of I-beams from the World Trade Center, loaded into a barge.
Various comments made by Americans
in the Staten Island Ferry landing in Manhattan.
The wake of the Staten Island Ferry, with the new Manhattan skyline in the background.
Gretchen frames Brooklyn and Governors Island on the Staten Island Ferry.
Me on the Staten Island Ferry with Governors Island in the background.
Me with that green chick.
On the edge of Battery Park, a Bible (currently at Acts) with pages being turned by the hand of God.
In the background is a list of union workers from New Jersey espressing solidarity with the people of New York.
Throng just east of the World Trade Center. Click for a much bigger picture.
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