Circumnavigating the frozen zone               

Five fortnights walking the perimeter

Fortnight two

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25 September to 8 October

copyright © 2001-2005 Diane Fisher,
except photos copyright © 2001-2005 by the respective photographers.

If you stand in Sixth Avenue at Prince Street, the Millennium Hotel (whoops--the owner spells it Millenium) and 1 Liberty Plaza--to my surprise--are prominent in the view south <photo update, April 2002>. Like the Cortlandt Street side of the Century 21 building and others nearby, their WTC sides are draped from roof to street in protective international orange mesh--presumably steel, presumably confines falling glass and debris. The smoke from the fires at their bases has subsided noticeably, the mob has been accused of looting WTC dump sites, and con artists have started trying to scam victims' families; somehow the Internet has been implicated. Streets west of Broadway are scheduled to open down to Park Place.

The phone company building at Walker Street has interesting Buck Rogers-ish new antennae on the roof instead of the usual microwave dishes. But I see no signs my favorite FM station will ever be back on the air, and two network tv local affiliates still broadcast a signal that doesn't reach downtown Manhattan. I have yet to set up the new equipment I bought to compensate.

I feel somewhat reassured by signs that the administration seems to have caught on that leveling Kabul might not be the smartest way to prevent future variations on 11 September. Although alarm in other capitals at the initial war mongering must have had some effect, no heads have rolled in Washington, leaving me feeling as vulnerable as on the night of 11 September. Now, "House panel suggests revamping intelligence" ("House Panel Calls for 'Cultural Revolution' in F.B.I. and C.I.A.")? Now, "Pentagon says homeland defense is top priority"? Consider "Earlier Hijackings Offered Signals That Were Missed" (NYTimes, 3 October 2001):

"This is a whole new world for us," Jane F. Garvey, the administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, said in testimony before a House subcommittee on Sept. 20.

But the record shows that for her and others, there were numerous warnings. [... T]he 2000 edition of the F.A.A.'s annual report on Criminal Acts Against Aviation, published this year, said that although Osama bin Laden "is not known to have attacked civil aviation, he has both the motivation and the wherewithal to do so," adding, "Bin Laden's anti-Western and anti-American attitudes make him and his followers a significant threat to civil aviation, particularly to U.S. civil aviation." The previous year's edition of that report said that an exiled Islamic leader in Britain proclaimed in August 1998 that Mr. bin Laden would "bring down an airliner, or hijack an airliner to humiliate the United States."

But farmers' markets are operating and I, by nature a recluse, want to sit in sidewalk cafes and not cafe gardens all the time now with my few friends who haven't moved upstate or to the West Coast, or alone in proximity to strangers chatting with each other. I've never seen sidewalk cafes in my neighborhood busier. The friend who charmed that audience at 5WTC tells me that Jeannie's CNN interview of me, which I'd just assumed was scrapped, in fact aired; he saw it in California. Behold, I've achieved triple-A status. That's what Daily News reporters used to--maybe still do--call those assignments: ask any asshole. I never want to travel farther than Hoboken--and then briefly. But that's not for fear of hijackers; I was flying-phobic long before the KKK of Islam attacked America. I'm so glad I live in this city. If the new auto regulations continue, if we have a new mayor who endorses the Bill of Rights and dismantles the decency squad, and if the winter is mild I'll still feel the same way at the beginning of March.
 
Friday, 5 October: By announcing that he won't try to extend his term, in my view Rudy straightened the new halo he'd knocked askew. I'm even willing to entertain the possibility that his motives in raising the issue were unselfish and not about locking the city into contracts with his supporters. On the day after the attack, when I reluctantly said to a friend that Rudy was turning out to be terrific in a crisis, Rod said, "Maybe that's why he turns everything into a crisis." But for the City of New York the attack's fallout will be an open-ended crisis. I hope that one of the candidates who remain will discover a voice--none have so far--as reassuring as the transformed Rudy's.
 
Some sacrificial heads have rolled at the F.A.A., which doesn't come close to getting at the intelligence and oversight failures that let the attack happen. Well, at least the grownups seem to have taken charge: The uncertainty of what irrational thing Washington might do next no longer terrifies me.
 
The forecast suggests that climatically this is the last day of summer and I decide to retrace my steps of 11 September. When I reach Varick and Canal streets I realize that I must have been somewhat in shock from the moment I saw the first image on the tube. While I have no memory--either--of walking a block west from my muffin place, SoHoMade Soup on Varick, to Hudson Street, where the Canal Street Holland Tunnel entrance is, I must have done that right there at Charlton. My rush south--almost all of it--had to have been on Hudson, not Varick and West Broadway as I'd thought. As I walk down Hudson now, while I remember glancing eastward that morning at the loft building on North Moore Street where J.F.K. Jr. lived, and across Hudson at an old haunt, Puffy's, I still can't retrieve where I cut another block west, to Greenwich Street (like, it matters?). The "deli" where I momentarily considered stopping to pick up a container of coffee, I see now was in fact ... a supermarket? I'm not going to go back and edit those errors. I think it's useful to leave that evidence of the shaky reliability of eyewitness testimony.
 
Notices of neighborhood meetings on various recovery issues with various city officials are posted all over Tribeca. Residents can go home now on many if not most streets without showing IDs at checkpoints. Battery Park City is a different story. If I am sanguine about the ongoing travails there, blame the BPCAuthority, which abdicated its mission to build mixed-income housing; residents of those luxury buildings have the wherewithal to withstand hardship.
 
The phone company--whatever it calls itself these days--took an awful hit. Service at first varied by neighborhood. I didn't know anything was wrong with mine--I had no trouble with local or NY state calls coming or going--till Dick called from D.C. a week and a half after the attack and said he'd been unable to get through till then. Phones south of here still are out. I'd planned to get cash from a branch of my bank that's across the street from City Hall. It was not to be. Absent electronic services, bank branches south of the West Village are closed.
 
Although upscale restaurants that rely on uptown, Westchester, and tourist trade have been on the radio letting it be known that they're in a hurt, except in the frozen zone signs of ongoing commercial recovery are steady. The south side of Chambers and west side of Broadway now are open to foot traffic, the Tribeca farmers' market has moved to a different corner, stores are sponsoring special promotions. The new J&R Computer Outlet building has been vacuumed and the boarded-up door reglazed <photo update, June 2002>; boxes are stacked high in the audio/video outlet. Employees say J&R hopes to reopen by the end of next week.
 
The smoke is bad today and again I regret not bringing my mask. I heard later on the news that a big fire had flared in the wreckage. I stopped carrying my SW/FM/AM radio after the first week.
 
The writing on the walls has changed. Poetry is not uncommon. A well-chosen Walt Whitman verse is posted on the south side of Maiden Lane. Marc wrote a poignant, unabashed obit for his friend since they were five, Joey, and posted it on Broadway at Liberty Street. MISSING notices are mostly gone except for new notices for the M.D. Her practice was on Staten Island; she was last seen leaving Century 21 at 7.18 p.m., Monday, 10 September. Hmmm.
 
What you see everywhere now are messages from everywhere--thanks, tributes, and prayer support. On the north side of Canal between Varick and Hudson are a storefront relief station for rescue workers and supplies for passersby to write terse personal messages, which then are posted all along that block and around the corner. Of the hundreds of thoughts, one stands out, a message that says simply, "I'm so sorry." On the perimeter of the frozen zone are messages from schoolchildren nationwide. Cub Scout and Boy Scout Troop 330 in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, we hear you. Mr. Laraway's and Mrs. Phe's kids at Silver Oak Elementary School in San Jose, we hear you. Your sunny messages are posted on building after building on Broadway. We hear you, Long Island. Oak Hills Church in San Antonio, we hear you. Murals hang from the wrought iron fence around St. Paul's. A fire engine in front of St. Paul's was plastered with messages. Thank you, everybody, everywhere, thank you. You are heard. You are here.
 
My brother keeps insisting that the nation grieves with us. I can't seem to convince him that we fully understand that. We really do.
 
I'm across Broadway from St. Paul's having coffee and a chocolate chip cookie. Luisa sits down on the stool next to mine, plunks a pizza box on the counter, and asks me a question that suggests she doesn't know this part of town at all. Indeed, as it turns out, she's just arrived in town. Today is Friday; she's been carrying the pizza since Tuesday, via D.C., from home, Chicago: comfort food for an old friend who works on Maiden Lane, her next stop. Luisa faked a business trip to D.C. to get here. She doesn't know why. She just needed to be here, she says.
 
Dey Street at Broadway is hardly more than an alley, and I'd neglected to stop and look carefully before. Or maybe wreckage removal changed the perspective. The buildings on each side now isolate the frame of one distinctive structure <photo update, June 2002>. A woman standing next to me asks what it was. I answer sadly, the Winter Garden.