New York Groove

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=90 BGCOLOR="#006699" TEXT="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="002285a1erlcgo.gif"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#FFCC66" FACE="Arial" ><B>www.chapmansfriend.com</B></FONT><B>     |     </B><A HREF="default.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="www.chapmansfriend.com"><U><B>home</B></U></A></div> <div>                                                   </div> <div> <A HREF="id2.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Music"><U><B>Music</B></U></A><B>   </B><A HREF="id4.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Television"><U><B>Television</B></U></A><B>   </B><A HREF="id5.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Movies"><U><B>Movies</B></U></A><B>   </B><A HREF="id6.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Traveling Man"><U><B>Traveling Man</B></U></A><B>   </B><A HREF="id7.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Our Game"><U><B>"Our Game"</B></U></A><B>   </B><A HREF="id8.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Books"><U><B>Books</B></U></A><B>   </B><A HREF="id9.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Links"><U><B>Links</B></U></A></div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=210 BGCOLOR="#FFCC66" TEXT="#080000" background="001d2c00dkelyh.gif"> <div> <A HREF="id6.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Traveling Man"><U>Traveling Man</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id15.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Top Ten List"><U>Top Ten List</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id16.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Journal"><U>Journal</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id17.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Pictures"><U>Pictures</U></A></div> </td> <td valign="top" height=390 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <B>New York Groove</B></div> <div>   On my first full day in New York this past July, I spent most of my day at the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, and got off the ferry in Lower Manhattan in mid-afternoon. I had a pretty good idea what my sightseeing itinerary would be for the rest of the day, but even without a plan my route would have seemed obvious. The ferry landing was fairly close to Wall Street, so I headed up to check out the Stock Exchange building and the nearby Federal Hall where Washington was sworn in as President. From there, almost perfectly framed between the buildings, Trinity Church was visible a block or two to the west. And from there, walking around the church's graveyard where Alexander Hamilton is buried, you could just glance up and see the towers of the World Trade Center.</div> <div>   There is no point pretending that, at the time, the Trade Center was a major point of interest for me. I had gone up to the observation deck on my last trip, so I could already say that I had done that. Besides, I had decided that I had only enough time budgeted for one visit to the top of a skyscraper, and the Empire State Building had been my choice. To be honest (and a lot of New Yorkers would have agreed), the twin towers didn't seem to be all that architecturally interesting. When in New York (and doesn't <I>that </I>sound pretentious) I love to look at the Empire State Building, or the Chrysler Building, or especially the Flatiron Building. The World Trade Center seemed to be just there.</div> <div>    But that was the point; they were so huge that they were <I>there</I>, impossible to ignore, practically making you come nearer and pay attention. So even though I had no plans to go up to the top, and frankly my viewing perspective was better from a distance than close by, I was almost inevitably drawn to the foot of the towers.</div> <div>    I stood directly below the south tower and looked straight up, trying to take it all in a single glance, also trying to not be such an obvious tourist so as to make the natives think to themselves, "Rube." I walked a few blocks away to get a picture of the street sign for Carlisle Street, and then walked back to the base of the south tower, standing next to the building and trying to comprehend that the building kept going up for a hundred floors. By this time it was 5 or 5:30 PM, and people were spilling out of the buildings, going out to sit in the plaza or get a hotdog and a Coke from one of the street vendors. There was a bar in the first floor of one of the towers that was starting to fill up, and I had a fleeting thought about going in and grabbing a beer or two among the happy hour crowd. But I decided that it was time to be moving on, so I took one last look around and up and headed off to my next stop.</div> <div>    A little while later, in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge, I stopped, looked back at the city, and took a picture. Downloading it later that night, I thought it was one of the best pictures I'd ever taken, the way the cables of the bridge and the twilight and the buildings fit together. Other than the bridge itself, the thing that jumps out of the picture<IMG SRC="15bad830.jpg" border=0 width="685" height="387" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"> </div> <div> are the twin towers; once again, they were so big and so much <I>there </I>as a focal point that they were an obvious backdrop for any picture, or sometimes just found their way into a shot whether you realized it or not. I have pictures taken from the top of the Empire State Building, from the Brooklyn Bridge, from the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, from Greenwich Village and the Staten Island Ferry, and they all have the World Trade Center in them.</div> <div>    After what happened, I never had the feeling "that could have been me" or anything like that. But having stood at the very base of the towers and thought "boy, isn't that huge", it's just eerie to think that they aren't standing anymore. That possibility couldn't have been more remote from my mind. If, on that day, somebody had asked me which was more likely, for me to run into Ashleigh Banfield on the streets of New York, or for the World Trade Center to collapse, I would have thought, I can theoretically imagine a string of <I>Magnolia</I>-like million-to-one circumstantial events which could lead me to Ms. Banfield, but how in the hell could 100 stories somehow vanish?</div> <div>    As I told my class the day after it happened, in a time of chaos you bring your thinking back to something which you can relate to on a personal level. So in my mind I keep remembering what it was like standing directly below the south tower, and I try to reconcile that scene with the fact that the spot where I was standing is now covered in hundreds of tons of rubble, and I wonder how many of the office workers who I almost shared happy hour with are dead now.</div> <div>    In the aftermath of what happened, there is a new sensitivity about things to do with New York and especially the World Trade Center. Movies are now being re-edited to remove as many images of the towers as possible. Pizza Hut is subtly trying to shift references from the "Big New Yorker" pizza to the "extra-large" pizza. On September 11, networks showed footage of jets colliding into buildings and buildings imploding roughly a dozen times an hour. Do they think that if the twin towers are never seen again in the background of a movie scene, nobody will think about what happened? Is the phrase "Big New Yorker" going to set off a wave of hysteria?</div> <div>    So I thought about not leaving up my New York vacation section, or re-editing it in the light of current events, but I have decided not to. Everything from here on in is as it was originally posted sometime in August, including the "lived to tell about it" quote on the opening page and the Beavis and Butt-head reference in the photo captions. I think it goes without saying that none of this was meant to be taken seriously, so all of the cheap jokes that I put in will stay. But in my own defense, there is also a comment near the end of my journal entries about how well the city worked and how relatively harmonious people seemed to be. I admit that I felt like I might have been overly naive when I originally wrote that, but considering what has happened I'll leave it to you to decide.</div> <div>    In the place of my "song of the day" feature I want to post the lyrics of a song I've been listening to a lot in the last few weeks. It's <I>Jesus, etc. </I>from Wilco's as yet unreleased new record. You might think that some of the imagery is jarring in this context, but it's actually somewhat soothing...</div> <bR> <div> <TABLE BORDER="2" CELLPADDING="1" CELLSPACING="1" WIDTH="608" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#C0C0C0" BORDERCOLORDARK="#808080" FRAME="BOX" RULES="COLS" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" > <tR> <tD VALIGN=CENTER HEIGHT= 560 ><NOBR><div> Jesus don't cry</div> <div> you can rely on me honey</div> <div> you can combine anything you want</div> <div> I'll be around</div> <div> you were right about the stars</div> <div> each one is a setting sun</div> <bR> <div> tall buildings shake</div> <div> voices escape</div> <div> singing sad sad songs</div> <div> tuned to chords</div> <div> strung down your cheeks</div> <div> bitter melodies</div> <div> turning your orbit around</div> <bR> <div> Don't cry</div> <div> you can rely on me honey</div> <div> you can come by any time you want</div> <div> I'll be around</div> <div> you were right about the stars</div> <div> each one is a setting sun</div> <bR> <div> Tall buildings shake</div> <div> voices escape</div> <div> singing sad sad songs</div> <div> tuned to chords</div> <div> strung down your cheeks</div> <div> bitter melodies</div> <div> turning your orbit around</div> </NOBR></tD> <tD VALIGN=CENTER><NOBR><div> Voices flying</div> <div> skyscrapers are scraping together</div> <div> your voice is smoking</div> <div> last cigarettes are all you can get</div> <div> turning your orbit around</div> <bR> <div> our love</div> <div> our love</div> <div> our love is all we have</div> <div> our love</div> <div> our love is all of God's money </div> <div> everyone is a burning sun</div> <bR> <div> tall buildings shake</div> <div> voices escape</div> <div> singing sad sad songs</div> <div> tuned to chords</div> <div> strung down your cheeks</div> <div> bitter melodies</div> <div> turning your orbit around</div> <bR> <div> voices flying</div> <div> skyscrapers are scraping together</div> <div> your voice is smoking</div> <div> last cigarettes are all you can get</div> <div> turning your orbit around</div> <div> last cigarettes are all you can get</div> <div> turning your orbit around</div> <div> last cigarettes are all you can get</div> <div> turning your orbit around</div> </NOBR></tD> </tR> </TABLE></div> <div> <IMG SRC="15c01010.gif" border=0 width="1" height="1" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <I>Now for the original introduction...</I></div> <bR> <div> Ace Frehley said it best: "I'm back/ Back in the New York Groove." </div> <div> After 18 years I decided to go back to the Big Apple, and I lived to tell about it.</div> <div> Originally, this was going to be an exercise similar to what I did last year on my trip to England-- a daily update that I'd post for anyone interested. But as you can see, this time I decided to indulge myself with a personal domain, and by the time of my trip in July I was having "issues" with my hosting company that prevented me from putting my updates online. But the journal entries (only mildly revised) are what I actually wrote at the time, and I've also got photos.</div> <div> This is the foundation for what will soon be a far more extensive and much more egotistical personal web site, but further construction will have to await minor repairs to my computer. Until then, here are artifacts of the New York trip....</div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>