Ground Zero Becomes An All-Faith Par-Tay
Can this guy relax now, please?
The cheering could be heard by the time I got to Broadway: “USA! USA!,” sometimes varied with “FUCK O-SA-MA!” or a few times, in sing-song, “GUESS who’s DE—EAD!” It was probably about one AM, and bunches of mostly young people were coming down Broadway, crossing Park Row, and heading down Vesey Street, over which the Twin Towers had loomed almost ten years ago.
A cop car was parked at the mouth of Vesey Street, its lights flashing, but there was little for the cops to do; later, I saw a phalanx of burly guys in bulky blue sweaters with gold shields walk toward the crowd, only to walk out of it five minutes later and head down Fulton, done for the evening.
Everyone had a cell phone out to record the occasion, although there was no central focal point for picture-taking, so that it was impossible to stay out of other peoples’ shots. The Liberty Tower wonderfully renamed (I almost said “rechristened!” D’oh!) One World Trade Center, to the great distress of Wingnuts everywhere, occupying its assigned corner away from the Footprints, is nearing its full height, and attracted picture-takers,
but mostly the crowd just milled around admiring each other and the night.
There was some acknowledgement of the solemnity of the time and place: college students holding candles:
and one couple who stood silently, the woman holding a posterboard with pictures of a young man in a tux, sporting a boutonniere: Michael Masaroli, her husband, who was in the World Trade Center on September 11th. I said hello to them, but was at a loss for anything more; first because a sharp-suited On Air Presence had rolled up with lights and camera, and second anything else I said would be wholly inadequate. “Lotta emotion,” said the man standing next to Diane Masaroli, and whom I did not press for a name. On Air Presence began testing his mic and I withdrew.
On Church St, which is the Eastern border of Ground Zero, there was a flag draped on the chain-link fence by the gate which serves as an entrance to the construction site. People peered through the chain-link, and took pictures of the flag, and the bouquets left on the fence, but having been given no notice that overnight a working construction site would become venerable again, the contruction company’s Porta-sans were what greeted the curious.
As time wore on, more and more of the Young arrived, sometimes in costume. I only wish I’d been fast enough to snap Captain America, with proper wings on his blue full-head mask, thank you very much, all 6’5” of him. The crowd was beginning to look very Saint Patrick’s day, minus the plastic green derbies and the vomiting. When the pickup with the “Born In The USA” boombox arrived,
I decided it was time for the Old to go. I had run into a few others of my kind: a neighbor from my apartment complex, and I encountered three very congenial Englishmen who wanted to know what I thought. I had hardly taken the time to survey myself and my eternally mixed emotions, but I replied that it should have happened back in Tora Bora. The Brits all nodded, and one said conspiratorially, “This is good for Obama, isn’t it?”
What, were there Kool-Aid stains on my ulster? I allowed as how it was good for Obama, and we embraced like the fellow-travelers we were. But that had been an hour ago, and now the word had gone out to every New York night-crawler who was inclined to display and didn’t have to be anywhere Monday morning, and they were descending on the party with roller blades, vuvuzelas, and, as I saw at the 24-hour deli while walking home, bottles of beer.
I was nearly at my building, when, “I swear, nothing is as stupid as straight white people,” said a voice out of the darkness. I looked for its owner, a young man who said he was a journalism major. He was a downtown resident, had been since the attacks, and was quite offput by the jollity and jingoistic chanting. “They’re all drunk! It’s outrageous!”
I was going to reply that the crowd was neither so drunk nor so white nor so straight as he supposed, but then I realized that the young man himself was somewhat lit. That didn’t take anything away from his main point; he’d wanted to see a little more reflection and a little less mindless team-spirit, particularly in proximity to the gravesite that is Ground Zero. “My father was in the C.I.A.,” said the young man. “He worked on this for so long, it just makes me very emotional about this.”
I didn’t ask him, or anybody, about Park 51, the as-yet-theoretical Islamic community center with mosque, or as wingnuts would have it, the Giant Golden-Domed Thumb In The Eye of Jeebus. It was two blocks away, and nobody seemed to be thinking about it at all.
Posted by Mrs. Polly on 05/02/11 at 09:55 AM • Permalink
Categories: Images • New York City • Manhattan • News • Politics • Barack Obama • Relijun •
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