World Trade Center

[Sweet_VeeVee24]

I know that this is going to be the most heartbreaking move to go see; especially for all those who lost loved ones and witnessed first hand what happened September 11th. I, for one, have family that leave in New York, so I know it will be tough for me to watch this movie when it comes out.

Nicholas Cage and Jennifer Gardner are in it.

I would like to go see it....I do know that a lot of people might be upset once this hits the theaters, and that is very understandable.

I just wanted to know if anyone would be going to see this movie when it comes out?

[Toups]

I'll probably go see it.

9/11 makes me sad, but I love watching anything that's about it. I even have Peter's Jennings Live ABC broadcast that aired September 11, 2001 on disk.

I don't know why I'm drawn to 9/11.

[Sweet_VeeVee24]

I was at work when it happened. I live in Wisconsin, but I dealt with the Medicare branches of all the states, and New York was our major contact for Home Health claims...I was in the cafeteria when I saw the attack; my eyes were glued to the television in disbelief. One the tower went down, I was numb.

Everyone was calling folks on their cell phones, including me, to make sure families were safe.

You watched Peter Jennings; I watched Tom Brochaw.

[Toups]

I was at school when it happened. When I was on the bus and I heard someone saying that "all of Silicon Valley is down," of course I had no clue what he was talking about. I didn't find out about the attacks until 2pm EST. I got home at about 4:30pm EST and didn't turn off the tv until 1am. I got to bed around 1am and listened to talk radio for about another hour, and when callers were saying that CNN got more angles of the planes crashing into the building, I immediately turned on my tv to see it.

I was able to get the Peter Jennings Broadcast. I want to see how it was broacasted live, but I probably won't watching it for another 5 years. I think on the 10th anniversary will be a good time to watch how everything unfolded live on television.

Did you see the A&E movie about United Flight 93? It was so intense/sad. I'll watch Paul Greengrass' Flight 93 movie too when it comes out on DVD.

[Sweet_VeeVee24]

No, I didn't see it. I just noticed Toups, that your join date was September 11, 2005.

I still have the People magazines that focused on it; as well as the yearbook that they always do for the year.

The one thing I think about are all the children that are without a mother or a father...

[Toups]

Yeah, I know. What a major coincidence. l

On Oprah, they showed a video clip of a father telling his son (about 5 or 6 years old) that mommy wasn't coming back. The boy was crying and asking why his mother had to to die. I still get chills when I think of that clip.

[applcin]

I won't see it in the theater. Not sure if I'll choose to watch it later when it makes its way to cable.

I live in one of the boroughs of NYC. The tv stations (whose antennas weren't obliterated) were saturated with almost non-stop coverage for a week. We were glued to Peter Jennings and Rudy Giuliani. Peter Jennings....ah...he was just always there, you know? So steady, so familiar, so dependable. And, let me just say, in my opinion, Rudy earned every ounce of respect and commendation he received after that because he was IT for us, he was the one we looked to, listened to and needed to be strong for us and help us figure out what we were supposed to do next. It was really brought home to me again when I saw what went down with the politicians and the police in New Orleans during Katrina. Being able to have faith in the local leaders and knowing that some kind of organization and control still exists in the midst of chaos makes a big difference. In addition, New Yorkers are strong and they carry on but they remember and they live with news alerts of possible planned attacks so it's an awareness that is a fact of life here now.

Anyway, after that week I couldn't take anymore and watched hours of my tapes of "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" so I could forget for a while and laugh again. I could see (and smell) the smoke and dust from where I live. The firehouse in my neighborhood lost the most firefighters of all the firehouses. People I knew casually, relatives of friends, and people who sometimes came to my workplace died there. A nearby street was renamed in honor of a young woman. The lost firefighters are still honored with various tributes to this day. A toddler who lost his mother has since been been raised by his grandparents. People knew Father Judge. I have the 9/11 documentary by the Naudet brothers (who were in the midst of making a film about NYC firefighters in that area when hell broke loose) on tape and I've watched it a few times since then (that "probie" later transferred to my local firehouse). I didn't watch that "Flight 93" movie.

I always had some controllable nervousness about heights (avoiding ferris wheels, roller coasters, that type of thing) but the last couple of years it somehow crept up worse on me because I've started experiencing white-knuckle anxiety in places like a mezzanine in a theater/arena or looking out a 2nd story window or a very high bridge. It's that whole perspective of being able to see how far below me the ground is. A couple of people have mentioned to me that it may be an aspect of 9/11 that has invaded my psyche.

Anyway...sorry to have rambled. I'm not upset that movies (as opposed to documentaries) have been made. I just don't know if I want to see a fictionalized version of things with actors just yet. Guess I'll just have to feel it, and myself, out first.

[Danni]

Color me pessimistic, but I do not see why we need a movie about it. I mean, right off the bat you know what happens. What exactly is the movie going to show that we haven't seen in reality? If there was some conspiracy theory behind it, maybe, but what is the whole point of it now?

[KLN]

I remember on September 10th, Alyssa (co-SON creator with Toups) and I got into this huge !@#$%^&*]fest argument on AIM. We argued like !@#$%^&*]es! She lived in NYC.

Anyway, the next day was 9/11, and we bonded. I miss her.

[Angela]

We're rehashing 9/11 here? I can do that.

I live in Queens, I'm right across from mid-town Manhattan, a beautiful view of mid-town Manhattan, and I could clearly see the twin towers in Lower Manahattan b/c they were huge.

I was walking to an appointment (not too far from home) and the bridge I pass had a direct view of the Twin Towers. Oh my gawd, it was such a beautiful day - the sky was so blue - and it was an election day (the primary elections for mayor) and I was planning to vote later in the day. Guiliani before that day - the great divider of NYC (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx, S.I.), amazing how things can change in a blink of an eye - he was absolutely hated in NYC right before that point - cheater, divider - but the man came through like a willful champ when the President was hiding.

So I was walking, I saw people slowing down as they were driving looking at the towers and I looked at the top of the first building (towards my view) and it looked charred and I was like "man, that is a bad fire, it's gonna take them a full year to make it look as pretty as usual. Nasty looking." So I continued walking, got to my appointment and everybody was just walking around like something happened and they weren't sure what. So, I put on my walkman, and they were saying some type of plane hit one of the towers...at first it seemed like they were saying maybe a small commercial plane, then they said it was two planes hitting each tower and it was seemingly now clearly intentional hits with two planes. So I told everybody what was being said, we discussed it for a few minutes in a sort of disbelief and we all started kind of racing for home. Then you hear another plane has hit the Pentagon on the radio and I started thinking "is this the end?" So I ran home - the phone service was out of wack for a little while, got my mom from her apartment, after we saw the buildings go down we high-tailed it to the grocery in case we needed to stock up incase this wasn't the end. We probably watched more CNN than anything for the next month.

Man, shell-shocked, shell-shocked is how you explain the week of 9/11. BTW, I think they pre-empted programming in the entire country for that week, not just NY, app. For the next several weeks the City was eerily silent. When they finally started playing music again (instead of broadcasting) on the radio it was Jewel's "Hands" and Enrigue's "Hero" and Lonestar's "I'm Already There," among a 2-3 other poignantly sad songs ("New York Minute" also, things can change in a New York minute) in continuous cycles with some broadcast edited into them. It was traumatizing, still is. And for a while you could actually smell the burned metal from Lower Manhattan through a good part of the city - it was traumatizing. I can imagine it was traumatizing for the people watching on TV, but I mean it was just extra bad with the smell and realizing so many dead people who were desperate to stay alive, who were jumping out of windows b/c they thought it was their only chance were part of that smell...and the constant visual of no longer seeing something (just seeing that cloud of smoke instead) you were used to seeing everyday as you passed by to go to work or where-ever. The quietness was just eery in NYC, it was so sad - everybody was walking around not saying much anything and looking just sad for weeks and weeks.

Harry got up

Dressed all in black

Went down to the station

And he never came back

They found his clothing

Scattered somewhere down the track

And he won't be down on Wall Street

in the morning

He had a home

The love of a girl

But men get lost sometimes

As years unfurl

One day he crossed some line

And he was too much in this world

But I guess it doesn't matter anymore

In a New York minute

Everything can change

In a New York minute

Things can get pretty strange

In a New York minute

Everything can change

In a New York minute

Lying here in the darkness

I hear the sirens wail

Somebody going to emergency

Somebody's going to jail

If you find somebody to love in this world

You better hang on tooth and nail

The wolf is always at the door

In a New York minute

Everything can change

In a New York minute

Things can get a little strange

In a New York minute

Everything can change

In a New York minute

And in these days

When darkness falls early

And people rush home

To the ones they love

You better take a fool's advice

And take care of your own

One day they're here;

Next day they're gone

I pulled my coat around my shoulders

And took a walk down through the park

The leaves were falling around me

The groaning city in the gathering dark

On some solitary rock

A desperate lover left his mark,

"Baby, I've changed. Please come back."

What the head makes cloudy

The heart makes very clear

The days were so much brighter

In the time when she was here

But I know there's somebody somewhere

Make these dark clouds disappear

Until that day, I have to believe

I believe, I believe

In a New York minute

Everything can change

In a New York minute

You can get out of the rain

In a New York minute

Everything can change

In a New York minute

[Toups]

Wow, thanks for sharing your story, Rugs. It's always interesting to read 9/11 stories from New Yorkers.

Kenny, I miss Alyssa too. She was the first person I thought of when I heard about the attacks.

[KLN]

Yes, they did. I did nothing but watch the news for that entire week. By the time regular programming came back on, I nearly cried crocodile tears at the thought of having something 'normal' like television again. I'll never forget it... the first show I watched when regular programming came back was The Brady Bunch movie! It was on ABC, I believe. And commercials. I saw commercials and I was like, "OMG... COMMERCIAL! I love thee!" Then Days came on the next day, and I still remember the first scene was Abe and Lexie in bed. I almost choked with happiness.

Anybody else remember what the first show was you watched when regular programming came back on TV a week later?

[Angela]

Toups, it's got me all so sad all over again - rehashing, but it's good to remember.

We were such innocent little bastards before then, more than 3,000 people, dang it. And like this here U.S. helps us do with all it's commercial goods and entertainment, it's so easy to forget the magnitude. Not to turn this political, but it just makes you clearly see how each life is worth something - how we all have somebody we love or need out there or that loves or needs us - yet look at us going into Iraq and killing upwards of 100,000 innocent civilians in a war that we basically lied to go into with a man we probably could have gotten out with some secret mission. Sigh, it's a f**ked up world, f**ked up, and America ain't helping right now. Okay rant off.

Oh, I totally feel you, I didn't really care for regular programming to come back on...the world had changed, and I wanted to stay soaked up in it's sorrow. Although I don't remember what my first regular program was, I know despite my initial feelings I was like "this makes me feel better" when they got back to regular TV - although I was addicted to CNN for the next several weeks (still wanted to feel sad).

-----

app, you know what riding the train still scares the absolute s**t out of me, although I do it a lot. The first year after the attacks, anytime the train would stop mid-tunnle my heart rate went up like 40 beats, i got it down to 10 these days. It's still very uncomfortable for me, but that's also thanks to the blackout NYC had last summer (last summer, right?) - and damn that took out a good portion of the East Coast, my heartrate went up about 80 beats when that happened, because you were slowly learning all the places without electricity and it was huge --- I though terrorism for the first few hours.

[KLN]

Anyone remember Ashleigh Banfield? This was her finest moment, IMO. I remember she was interviewing someone live on television from the streets of NYC and just behind them a nearby building (that had been weakened with the WTC collapses) collapsed mid-interview. Everyone went running and it was freaky as hell!

I also remember on 9/11, we heard this HUGE explosion sound over my whole city. Everyone was outside looking up at the sky. We thought a bomb had been dropped or something. Turns out, it was a military jet that made the sudden 'boom' sound as it was changing paths.

[Angela]

Yeah, Kenny I remember that, where has AB gone anyways?

Crap, talking about the fighter jets (military stuff), a good few of them were I guess patrolling NYC that first week, but loud, loud - on the day of 9/11 it was especially scary - the military coming in, fighter jets - it was like "they know something? they know something!" Then eventually it made you feel a little safer.