story9400.xml

story9400.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2003-07-31

My bedroom window faced due east right over 2nd avenue. MY old apt. was right by NYU medical on 34th. It wasn't uncommon to hear ambulance sirens blaring early in the morning. At the time, I was between jobs, so I was just getting up. Some friends and I had been up late watching the Giant game on Monday night. I can still remember sitting around watching the game and eating wings. I woke up on the 11th to a continuous roar of sirens. Before I evern put the TV on, or spoke to anyone I sensed that something was wrong somewhere, because it was a continuous stream on ambulances and frie trucks shooting down 2nd avenue.

Then, about 5 minutes later, my girlfriend told me to put the news on because she had been on a bus going to work in midtown and had noticed groups of people starting to gather around TV's through store front windows. A woman on her bus started hysterically crying and carrying on because her husband worked in one of the towers. I remember getting dressed, and trying to call my dad on Long Island. I luckily got through, because by 9:30, it was almost impossible to get through to anyone on the phones. Cell phones didn't work either. As I was watching the Today show, I remember them saying that there were 2 ore hijacked planes, and that one of them was still coming to Manhattan. I didn't know what to do with myself. Should I stay in my apt. on the 29th floor of an unprotected building, or dhould I go downstairs where who knows what could be happening.

I walked out of my building and remember seeing peoples faces and body language. Everyone looked really confused. It was palpable in the air. Very tough to describe, but everyone was thinking the same thing, or was concentrating on the same event that was unfolding in real time. I noticed that people were already starting to walk uptown on 3rd avenue when someone on the street had mentioned that one of the towers had fallen. When I heard this I brushed it off as an impossibility. Could not be possible.

I then stopped into various restauranrs and bars that were for some reason open along 3rd avenue and kept watching a bt more. I decided to go get my girlfriend who was working on 47th and 5th at the time. When I got to her, it was bedlam on 5th avenue. People everywhere, people in mass exodus heading uptown. I remember a woman in a car heading uptown yelling at everyone in the street to go to the nearest hospital and give blood, cause "we're gonna need it"

I had a few interviews that summer in both towers. I don't remember the exct floors, but I do remember being above the sky lobby on 82. Crazy to think about that. I def. would have been up there had I taken on one of the positions, or offered the other.

My girlfriend and I walked all the way up to her place on 73rd street. I went to Duane Reade, wheich was packed with people stocking up on water and canned goods and we watched TV for the next 48 hours straight. That night, the only place open for dinner was this Chinese restaurant on 78th. As I walked up to pick up the food, the surreal part was how empty and quiet the city was. Not a single car on taxi on the road. A few people walking around, but it was just like one of those scenes in a movie when they clear a few city blocks for a dream sequence. Beyond imagination.