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It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

themetfairy Sep 11 2012 05:54 AM

I missed the first hour of 9/11; I was at the supermarket, I listened to a CD in my car, and when I got home I turned on a rerun of This Week in Baseball. But I eventually got on my computer, and the AOL screen was talking about the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. I didn't understand why they were talking about an eight year old event, and besides, the picture was wrong - February 26, 1993 was a grey day and they were showing a bright, sunny picture. It took me a while to process the fact that this was a breaking story and that both towers had been struck. I was getting the news as it broke hanging out with a lot of you guys on the MOFO. I was in instant message with a friend. At one point I went to the television and turned away from MK's kiddie show to see the towers on fire (MK had just started afternoon kindergarten the previous week); when he asked me whether that was our friends' apartment, I told him no, turned the TV back to his show, and immediately called our friends to make sure they were alright. My township lost seven people that day. That's not huge as compared to a lot of places, but it was still seven people too many. I'm still processing this attack. It still doesn't seem real to me.

metirish Sep 11 2012 07:08 AM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

We visited the 9/11 Memorial a few weeks back when my family were out here. It is incredibly beautiful and quite emotional , I think I had forgotten just how huge a space that area was/is......the waterfall footprints really are I think perfect, the museum isn't open yet and from what I have read won't be anytime soon... One thing about the Memorial, the security getting in was very, very tight....tickets should be gotten online and have ID with you...I think as we walked in through our tickets were checked at least 4 times.......but it moved fast and was worth it.

MFS62 Sep 11 2012 07:15 AM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

I was at a State Government building. We were told a "plane had flown into the World Trade Center", and we were sent home with no further details. So my first thoughts were just a bunch of unanswered questions. It wasn't until I got home did I learn the enormity of what had happened. My youngest daughter was scheduled to fly to California that day on business. And my wife had not written down her flight number. We were frantic. She later called from a pay phone around 11:30 to say that she was on the bridge when the planes hit, and saw it happen. Traffic was stopped and cell service was unavailable. The airport was closed, no flights leaving. She couldn't get back to Connecticut because the bridges were closed, but she would go to the house of a family member of one of her travelling companions. It was around 5 PM that she would call us from that house to say she had finally made it there. Later

Centerfield Sep 11 2012 07:39 AM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

I was due in Court in Bowling Green that day, and just by dumb luck, the Judge moved her calendar from the regular 9:30 to 11:30 a.m., I was told, to accommodate an dentist appointment. So instead of being downtown I was safely at my office. I feel like it was yesterday. I checked in on loved ones to make sure they were ok, still I couldn't help but wonder who was in those towers. When they fell I had a sick feeling that someone I knew or a loved one of someone I knew was gone. I was lucky. The tragedy didn't take any loved ones of mine. My friend's mother worked in the WTC and climbed down more stairs than one can imagine to escape. She made it to the lobby before she passed out. A stranger carried her unconscious body to safety. When she woke up the stranger headed back into the building, presumably to look for more that needed help. She never saw him again and doesn't know if he made it out.

metirish Sep 11 2012 07:44 AM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

I am still drawn to the various documentaries, even though I have seen them before.......Falling Man is haunting..... I remember getting to work a little after 8:30........a few minutes later one of the doctor's came to my office and remarked that a plane had hot one of the towers, then his throwaway comment was " probably some clown from Jersey".... I also remember that one patient showed up that day.....and the guy was frantic.....

John Cougar Lunchbucket Sep 11 2012 07:51 AM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

I was enjoying my first week of involuntary freelance (was laid off the previous week), having coffee, reading the MOFO. I found out when Gary told Howard.

Vic Sage Sep 11 2012 08:40 AM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

I was commuting to work on Metro North, and the train just stopped on the tracks, announcing an "emergency' in nyc. eventually, we got into grand central but the shuttle wasn't running so i walked across town to Times Square. As i crossed 5th Ave, i looked downtown and saw a plume of smoke arising from lower manhattan. "Must be some fire" i thought. By the time i got to TSq, it was eerily quiet. People were just standing around looking at the Jumbotron, like a Ridley Scott commercial. I looked up at the screen and saw the plane hit the tower... over and over again. I walked into my office, in a daze, didn't get much done, and then they announced the building was to be closed. I walked up to a friend's apartment in the city and hung out til things calmed down, then took a late train back home. I don't know anyone who died or was injured in the attack. But it still felt, and feels, like a very personal assault. I was born here. I grew up here. I work here. I'm raising a family here. I'm planning to retire here. With any luck, I'll die here and they can spread my ashes on Broadway. When they destroyed the towers, it felt like a cruel dismemberment. And i still get an ache, a phantom pain, every year on this day.

metsmarathon Sep 11 2012 08:48 AM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

i was at work. i think in the morning i may have remarked to myself how beautiful a day it was. in truth i can't recall if i overheard other conversation about it, or heard on the radio, that a small plane, like a cessna perhaps, had hit one of the towers. i thought to myself, small plane, big tower. shouldn't be more than a scratch on the thing. at the time, i paid it only a litte attention. slowly, around the office there grew to be something of a murmur or a buzz and everybody talking about it, and that everybody was turning on the news. and all around me were the voices of reporters relaying the scene as smoke poured out of the one tower. i launched the iptv viewer and tuned in to one of the news services - msnbc, cnn, fox, who knows, and followed along. that was no small plane, i thought. but how did it hit the tower? how could it? i was watching as the second plane hit, and i couldn't fathom it at first - why had it flown into the tower? why was it so far astray? in my mind i immediately flashed on the plot of die hard 2, that somehow the planes were tricked into flying so close over the city. i wondered aloud how the planes were being controlled to fly into the buildings? i felt a fool when the obvious was stated, "this is an attack. those planes were flown into the buildings," or words to that effect. i sat transfixed by my computer screen for the remainder of the morning. totally skipped my morning team meeting - it never occurred to me that the meeting was still on. as the towers fell, i couldn't help but think of a recent fire on rte 80 where a tanker truck has collided with a mattress truck earier in the summer. the heat from the fire weakened a bridge over the rockaway river. if that could damage a highway bridge, then surely a planefull of jet fuel could bring down a tower. i reamin transfixed by the documentaries, thouh i have to turn it off when they focus on the falling. my then girlfriend now wife was in college just across hte river from the attacks, and watched some of the aftermath. she went back to her room before htey fell. i don't thik she likes the documentaries.

Edgy MD Sep 11 2012 08:51 AM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

What sticks with me is the amount of denial I practiced that day, that week. I kept wondering why people were repeating terribly irresponsible things. Except half of them were true. The worst half. Like if I didn't have a TV showing the things everybody else was watching, the things that were true for them didn't have to be true for me. And then I spent a week referring strangely to my friend Terry. He "didn't come home." He was "missing." He had been, of course, crushed to atoms. But like everybody running around putting up posters, we digested it at the pace we could, so as not to choke on it.

MFS62 Sep 11 2012 09:02 AM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Sep 11 2012 09:46 AM

Vic Sage wrote: I don't know anyone who died or was injured in the attack. I don't either, but it was close. Very close. I used to ride Metro North into the city. One of the guys on the train for many years was named Walter Ditmar. We became friendly when I asked if he was related to the old Yankee pitcher. He said he didn't think so. He had been a German soldier in WW II and was captured by the Canadians and taken to a POW camp up there. After the war, he stayed in Canada and earned an engineering degree. He moved to NY and got a job with the Port Authority. His office was on the floor of the towers right at the impact site. After the attack, the local paper listed all the local residents who had died or were injured, His name wasn't on the list. So I called him at his home. He told me that he had an old pair of shoes (IIRC they were Gucci loafers). He had taken them to be re-soled and decided to pick them up that morning. And, as he said, "I took the subway to the WTC and went to the elevator. When the doors opened up, I saw smoke pouring out, and got the fuck out of there". Imagine, his life was saved by a pair of shoes. Everyone he worked with perished. Later

John Cougar Lunchbucket Sep 11 2012 09:08 AM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

I know every person is different but I've never had even the slightest desire to go visit the hole in the ground, or to watch a film on it, and I could do without all the NEVER FORGET reminders you see today.

metirish Sep 11 2012 09:11 AM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: I know every person is different but I've never had even the slightest desire to go visit the hole in the ground, or to watch a film on it, and I could do without all the NEVER FORGET reminders you see today. You just keep scrolling eh? I would never have gone to the Memorial but for my family....in general the area is over crowded....even the day we went , a Wednesday, it was packed.

seawolf17 Sep 11 2012 09:37 AM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: I know every person is different but I've never had even the slightest desire to go visit the hole in the ground, or to watch a film on it, and I could do without all the NEVER FORGET reminders you see today. I'm with you. I was in a training class, in a room with no windows. Our internet went down (it was somehow routed through the WTC), and in retrospect I don't know why anyone didn't get a phone call, although I guess it was probably because cell service sucked on campus. But regardless -- we opened the door for our first break at 10:30 into a very different world; people crying in the hallway, yelling, trying to get home. The closest TV to us was in the health center; we went over there and the towers were already down. We were all sure that tens of thousands of people had died; it's a testament to our emergency services personnel that they saved as many lives as they did. I didn't know anyone who died either, and for the longest time, I felt like I was the only one. We ran into my old drummer at a restaurant a few years later; turns out he worked in one of the towers and was able to get out. (Obviously.) But I'm with JCL here in a lot of ways. Of course I won't "forget" it. But I also want to turn the page.

TransMonk Sep 11 2012 09:52 AM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

I'm not a New Yorker and wasn't in New York that day. I was unemployed for about four weeks in 2001 and September 11th occurred right in the middle of my lay off. I got a wake up call from a friend telling me that a plane had hit the WTC. In my groggy mind, I pictured a Corey Lidle situation (even though Lilde was later). I turned on the TV just in time to see the second plane hit. I spent the rest of the day in a dazed mess. The CPF was a great resource back then. I didn't have a job to turn to, so I pretty much watched the TV coverage all day every day. Horrible.

soupcan Sep 11 2012 09:54 AM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

For the past 20 years I've worked 4 blocks from the WTC. I was here that morning as well. I was freaked out for a long time and I hate this day because it brings me right back. I knew a couple of people that were in the towers - not friends, just people I knew. I'm also one of those people that hasn't - and has no plans to - visit the memorial and/or watch any of the films that have been made about it. Like JCL said - I could do without the 'Never Forget' stuff because I never will forget and I don't want to be reminded. Maybe that's selfish or callous as it relates to those that did lose loved ones but its simply how I feel. And I'll tell you one more thing - all these people saying that today the weather is exactly like it was on 9/11/01 - they are mistaken. It was a completely cloudless day with gorgeous blue skies. One of the most beautiful days you could have. I know that too because every time we have a day like that, 9/11 is the first thing I think about.

Ashie62 Sep 11 2012 09:55 AM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

I have one friend who left Manhattan shoeless.. He did not recover mentally and is divorced.

metirish Sep 11 2012 10:01 AM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

Ashie62 wrote: I have one friend who left Manhattan shoeless.. He did not recover mentally and is divorced. sorry for the guy, I wonder how many others have ended up utterly ruined.

Centerfield Sep 11 2012 10:13 AM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

It's interesting how much has changed. The bus stopped this morning to observe a moment of silence. It was one minute, but I saw a lot of people sighing and checking their watches as we pulled over. Two hispanic women, who seemingly did not understand the announcement and most likely did not realize what they were doing, chatted loudly during the moment of silence, getting dirty looks from many on the bus. Others had their eyes closed in obvious prayer. I don't know what's right or what's wrong. I know I can't bring myself to watch any documentaries on this. Or any of the movies made about the passengers of the planes and what not. The pain of it is still very fresh. I can't listen to stories about children growing up without their fathers. But I like the "Never Forget" signs. It makes me think that it's possible the city never will.

soupcan Sep 11 2012 10:19 AM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

Centerfield wrote: I can't listen to stories about children growing up without their fathers. This. Always this.

Edgy MD Sep 11 2012 10:32 AM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

Yeah, I'm OK with the Never Forget. Beyond never forgetting, of course, is remembering. Phrasing it as "Never Forget" almost seems to say "hang onto your grudges,' which is a perfectly legitimate response. But remembering not only means remembering the folks we lost, but remembering how folks paid tribute to them in the weeks that followed. For a week, two weeks, maybe longer, people were overwhelmingly and heart-achingly kind to one another. So much so, that when somebody publicly expressed anger, screaming in traffic or something, folks just grew embarrassed for them, and rather than responding in kind, typically responded with sad and gentle pleading. It was like being on another planet for a while there. I have little interest in visiting memorials, but I imagine they are largely for those that weren't there, to bear witness in a small way what New York overwhelmingly was forced to bear witness to. That's OK. I live in a city of memorials and none of us ever visit them except when we have out-of-town guests. I guess it's also important for families to see their loved ones immortalized. My friend Julia was on a team that submitted a proposal for a September 11 memorial. I loved it in concept. But again, I don't know that I'd visit it.

Fman99 Sep 11 2012 11:20 AM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

I was working in customer service for an ISP and we found out something was going on right when it happened as we lost connectivity to much of our stuff in the greater NYC area. One of my coworkers' wives called him to let us know what had happened to the first tower and we saw the second one get hit on television as it happened. I was asked to communicate this news to our management who were in a conference room for a meeting of some kind. I am still struck dumb by the emotions I felt that day.

Edgy MD Sep 11 2012 11:23 AM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

I actually never saw footage of the second plane hitting until this morning.

seawolf17 Sep 11 2012 11:35 AM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

I don't know what's right or what's wrong. There's no such animal, either way. You feel the way you feel. Phrasing it as "Never Forget" almost seems to say "hang onto your grudges,' which is a perfectly legitimate response. But remembering not only means remembering the folks we lost, but remembering how folks paid tribute to them in the weeks that followed. For a week, two weeks, maybe longer, people were overwhelmingly and heart-achingly kind to one another. So much so, that when somebody publicly expressed anger, screaming in traffic or something, folks just grew embarrassed for them, and rather than responding in kind, typically responded with sad and gentle pleading. That's what I remember. The amazing friendliness that grew out of this. The unearthly silence that followed when there were no planes overhead for a few days. Driving west on the LIE that week and seeing the INFORM boards: "ALL BRIDGES AND TUNNELS TO MANHATTAN CLOSED." The tribute concerts on TV and at MSG. What I don't like is the anger and polemic that came out of this. The "terrorist hunter" stickers on the back of cars, the war, the attack on Islam as a faith. Stories like this do, admittedly, still get me: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/1 ... 72023.html

themetfairy Sep 11 2012 11:48 AM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

soupcan wrote: And I'll tell you one more thing - all these people saying that today the weather is exactly like it was on 9/11/01 - they are mistaken. It was a completely cloudless day with gorgeous blue skies. One of the most beautiful days you could have. I know that too because every time we have a day like that, 9/11 is the first thing I think about. And it was a little warmer as well - it was more comfortable being outside without a sweater. Heartbreakingly beautiful - IIRC, the whole week was like that.

metirish Sep 11 2012 12:02 PM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

Yeah, I remember it being a beautiful day, and it was....also a lot of clips on that day feature the weather guy from 1010 WINS saying how beautiful it is for primary day in NYC....his voice is seared in my brain.

soupcan Sep 11 2012 12:28 PM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

That's right - it was primary day. I wound up walking from my office near the WTC all the way up to Grand Central, only to find that the station was closed. I had a brother-in-law who had an office near GCT. Fortunately he was still in his office (I would have called ahead but, you know - no cell service either that day) and for whatever reason had chosen to drive in that morning rather than take MetroNorth from CT. We got in his car and drove north through east Harlem. There were these elderly black women sitting with tables and chairs on the sidewalks outside the polling places we passed, selling homemade food - they were of course expecting lots of voters to buy their food. But the voting was suspended that day so they weren't selling much at all. Lost in my awful memories of that day is that I had some of the best fried chicken I've ever eaten.

John Cougar Lunchbucket Sep 11 2012 12:34 PM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

Yeah, I spent much of that morning worried that (future) Wifey's last words were to remind me to vote. She left early for work that day so she could do so on her way in and was downtown when all the shizz went down.

metirish Sep 11 2012 12:39 PM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

I remember too that public transport was free after the attack......just for that day IIRC.

sharpie Sep 11 2012 01:16 PM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

I was at work. My kids were in school. My daughter's friend's mother called my wife to say that she would take our daughter to her house. They announced that the schools were "in lockdown." I worked a few blocks from my son's school. So, I figured I would wait til school lets out to pick him up. Around 1 his teacher calls saying that pretty much everyone had left. So, I went to pick him up, he was in 4th grade. This was maybe the second or third day of the school year. A kid went up to the teacher and said "I usually walk home from school, I live on the next block." The teacher said that today he wasn't going to walk home. On the way out of the classroom I asked my son who that kid was. He told me his name was Mohammed. Yeah, I thought, Mohammed probably should have an escort home that day. We caught the first subway back to Brooklyn.

Chad Ochoseis Sep 11 2012 02:06 PM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

Long, long post here. I hopped on the PATH train at Exchange Place in Jersey City at 8:45 that morning and everything was cool. I got off at the WTC at 8:50, and the first weird thing I noticed was that the platform was empty. The WTC platform is never empty at ten to nine on a weekday morning. Then I noticed this gas smell. Not fuel, gas, like a main had broken somewhere. They hustled everyone the hell out of the WTC and I looked back and saw a big hole on one side of the building at about the 80th floor. I'd just moved back to the NYC area after living in the midwest for 14 years, so I was somewhat conscious of trying to act like a Real New Yorker and not join the gaping crowd, so I hoped for the best, put my head down, figured that if I kept moving, that would be one less person getting in the way of the professionals, and headed off to work at 40 Wall. I almost got there when the ground started shaking, earthquake-like, and I turned around and saw a blast of light flash across 2 WTC, what looked like about halfway up. Four thoughts: (a) I know a few people who work on the 55th floor of 2 WTC...hope they're OK (they were), (b) holy shit, get me out of lower Manhattan, (c) what's today's date, anyway? People are going to be remembering this for a while, and (d) they'll never play I Blew Up the United States by Was (not Was) on the radio ever again (I haven't heard it since). I headed towards the FDR Drive bike path - it's the most building-free area in lower Manhattan - and started walking north. Had no clue what was going on until about 9:30, when I managed to get through to my mother in Arizona, who was watching it on TV. She was the one who told me that the explosions were airplanes, not bombs. Left the path at 14th Street, ran into some lady who said that she'd heard that the building collapsed. I'm like, naah, it didn't look bad enough to take down the whole building. A few minutes later, I walked by an electronics place on 3rd and 18th. They had a TV outside that was showing the news, and I got there just in time to hear Bryant Gumbel, of all people, screaming "The World Trade Center is no more!" Kept walking north...wound up at Times Square and watched the headlines until it occured to me that maybe Times Square was a stupid place to stand around if terrorists are attacking New York. Walked to Central Park, which I figured would be safe. Still carrying a briefcase. I finally got on a bus that was heading north (yes, it was free, also not following any route in particular) and took it up to 178th St., mostly to get as far away as I possibly could. I've got a cousin who lives up in Washington Heights, and I just crashed on her couch that night. Aftermath - I'd always had some fear of heights, and it came back big time. For a couple of years, I couldn't even go to the upper level of a shopping mall without freaking out. Also, I was renting in Hudson County back then, and it was a pain to get into and out of that area for a few days after 9/11. So I stayed at my then-girlfriend's place in Morristown for a few days once I could get back to Jersey. And she started putting the marriage pressure on ("You stayed over here when the kids were home!"). Seven months later, we were married. Two years after that, we were divorced. Now, 11 years later? Back in Hudson County in my own condo. With a better woman and no marriage pressure. And I'm getting better about heights. A couple of years back, I won tickets to a Met-MFY game in Kase's raffle at a CPF get together. Promenade seats. I freaked out for about the first hour, but got used to it. I'm good with the 400 seats now. So, thanks, Kase.

Frayed Knot Sep 11 2012 02:43 PM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

I was very slow, despite being semi-close to the action, to realize the magnitude of what was happening. I was walking downtown from Penn Sta to SoHo, basically just enjoying the weather, when a heard a couple of sirens from what turned out to be a police car, a fire truck, and a rescue van. And I know this doesn’t make any sense, but for whatever reason those sirens just sounded more urgent than usual, and I remember saying to myself that wherever they were headed must really be a doozy - not realizing that my definition of ‘doozy’ was about to change. I had been listening to Imus on my earphones when Warner Wolf - who worked on the show although not that day - called in to say that he had been shaken out of bed in his apartment right near the WTC by a huge noise and opened his curtains to see the smoking tower. Essentially this was among the first eye-witness accounts of what was going on. So I altered my path - from Broadway over to West Broadway - and, looking from the north, I could see the hole in the north side of the north tower. But, even that close, I was still far enough away (maybe 1-1/2 miles horizontally plus nearly a 1/4 mile vertically) that I couldn’t guage the size of the hole, and anyway the north wind that morning was carrying the smoke away from my view so it didn’t look all that smoky either. So I was certainly thinking small plane and accident at that point and, while I certainly knew that whoever was in the plane at the time and whoever was in that side of that tower on those floors was in for a bad day or worse, I was clueless as to what had actually just happened and why even though I had come very close to seeing the entire thing evolve and only missed it because by chance the street I was one of the few in that part of town that wasn’t on the proper angle to visually converge on the towers. So, after staring at the hole and smoke for a few minutes and noticing that, in typical NYC fashion, most folks were still going about their day with only an occasional glance upward -- in particular I noticed some cement workers fixing a step in front of a building without paying attention at all to what was certainly going to lead off the nightly news even if it was nothing more than what I thinking at the time -- I walked out of view and to the final few blocks to the office. And by doing so managed to miss, again only by chance and by minutes, the 2nd impact. It wasn’t until I got to my desk that I heard of the 2nd tower being hit and started to realize what was occurring. But even then, I, like Edgy mentioned, tend to dismiss at least half of what I hear as unfounded (what do you mean the tower fell?!?) and so was still slow to understand that the worst of what one could imagine was really the truth that day. The office pretty much said that anyone was free to leave although, with no transportation off of Manhattan I stayed until around noon pretending to work and chatting on the MoFo. Eventually I just strolled uptown (after e-mailing JCL to tell him I might be crashing at his place if I could figure out how to get back to L.I.) and caught the just-opened subway out to Jamaica where I picked up the first running LIRR (avoided the Penn Sta crush in the process). At home there was an e-mail from the parents. They didn’t have any reason to think that any of their kids would be in the WTC or Pentagon that day. But with phone service iffy and three of us living in NY and two living in northern Virginia at the time they just wanted everyone to check in. I think I was the last at about 4PM

TransMonk Sep 11 2012 02:59 PM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

Shit...I guess it was still the MoFo then. Dang.

Frayed Knot Sep 11 2012 03:25 PM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

Yeah, the CPF got started about two months later. Meanwhile, the MoFo at that point was already heavily into an all-out war mode on just about any subject so 9/11 didn't make things any smoother.

Mets – Willets Point Sep 11 2012 03:26 PM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

I've never had a good story to tell because I slept late that day and pretty much everything happened before I woke up.

seawolf17 Sep 11 2012 04:01 PM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

I do, through it all, really enjoy the "where I was" stories. I can't get enough of them. They're all so incredibly different. Mr. Cheapo's CDs, in Commack, always puts out new releases early; I stopped there on the way home on Monday 9/10 to pick up the new double-live discs from Tesla and Dream Theater early, both of which released the following day. The Dream Theater live disc, "Live Scenes From New York," had an ominous cover: It was recalled and replaced with a different image a few weeks later. I also distinctly remember the Ryan Adams video for "New York, New York" that he filmed on September 7. [youtube]hmHgY_J63Ik[/youtube]

Zvon Sep 11 2012 05:30 PM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

Mets – Willets Point wrote: I've never had a good story to tell because I slept late that day and pretty much everything happened before I woke up. Same here. I worked nights and would leave for work around 4pm. I got a phone call from my mom around 2ish. I had just gotten up. She said " Did you see what has happened?" and I said no, I was just getting up and she said " Quick, turn on the TV. I'll call you back later." So I did and at first, I was like wtf? A plane hit the WTC? Then the clip of the 2nd plane hitting. OMG, whats going on here? Then they did a recap of the morning events. The planes hitting, the people jumping, the towers falling. I don't know about you WP, but to have been exposed to the event in this fashion was very traumatic to me. I mean, this was traumatic to everyone, but to see the entire thing go down in a series of news clips that lasted maybe 2 minutes was jarring to say the least. I knew someone who worked there and that was my immediate concern. I found out shortly after that she had left that job some time before. I worked in a AC casino at an American Express office and I called in and told my boss I think we should close for the night. He said bullshit, get your ass in here so I went to work.

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr Sep 11 2012 08:23 PM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

Nice piece here in the Atlantic, from Old '97s frontman/former downtown resident Rhett Miller. Flames shoot out either side of both towers. Flames shoot out of the building that houses the Amish Market, where we grocery shop. Bodies drop from a hundred floors up. One lands on the median, right in our line of sight. Firefighters and paramedics surround it, roll it on a stretcher, and carry it off. I feel the beginning of something that’s hard to put into words. A mechanism that I developed during my adolescence, surviving in a broken home. I am distancing myself. I know it’s real. And I know it’s bad. But I’m not going to think, right now, about what it means.

The Second Spitter Sep 11 2012 08:38 PM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

It's funny, my sister said to me yesterday "I'm certain you would have never left New York, if it wasn't for that day."

Edgy MD Sep 11 2012 08:47 PM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

seawolf17 wrote: [youtube]hmHgY_J63Ik[/youtube] That just kicks me in the face. Haven't heard it in a while and never knew about the video. Love that it ends with a "Walk on the Wild Side"-y sax solo.

G-Fafif Sep 12 2012 01:18 AM Re: It Was Eleven Years Ago Today

In Las Vegas to cover a trade show from Sunday the 9th (when I scoured the nearest sports book to find the one tiny TV showing the Mets-Marlins game) to Tuesday the 11th. Supposed to fly to San Francisco for a conference and wing my way back to LGA by Friday morning the 14th (with the Mets-Expos game that night on my agenda). Woke up at 8:45 local time, turned on the TV, flipped to the Today Show in search of weather and honest to god wondered why they were pushing this tacky Movie of the Week so hard with the CGI in which a major city is attacked. That's really what I thought I was looking at. It took me a while to grasp that everything being shown and being talked about had already taken place three time zones away. Couldn't reach my wife who worked practically around the corner from the WTC on Park Place. Reached my sister who told me she heard from her that she was en route to Bay Ridge with a co-worker who lived there since LIRR was shut down. I later learned she watched people jump from the towers from the Williamsburg Bridge. It was the last day of the trade show so, without knowing what else to do, I went downstairs to the ballroom to cover what was left of it. Hadn't bothered putting on my go-to-meeting clothes; was wearing the White Sox "These Kids Can Play" t-shirt I slept in. The discussion on stage seemed oblivious to what had been reported. Then a major industry figure (for whose family's product SNY's Freeze Cam would someday be named) got up to give his keynote address, said a few reassuring words and the show was adjourned. I went to the front desk of the hotel and confirmed I could hold on to my room indefinitely since all flights had been cancelled. Went back to my room to watch TV, make phone calls and blow my nose, having woken up with a cold. By the time I re-emerged into the lobby the next day -- where scattered people continued to gamble, et al -- the place was a ghost town. I remained stranded in Vegas until Sunday the 16th. I have never been back and never want to see that place again. I wouldn't exactly call it survivor's guilt, but it's always bothered me I wasn't in New York when it happened. I worked at Ninth and Broadway in those days and probably would've been dragging my ass to the train when it all went down. I wouldn't have been anywhere near it and I would've been of no particular use to anyone who needed help, but my momentary displacement still bothers me. (Longer version of this story, with more baseball detail here, if you're so inclined.)