A nice place to visit, but…
I’m about to sound like a selfish prick, so please forgive me in advance:
A Hands-On Tribute to the Pain and Valor of 9/11 (NY Times)
This is around the corner from my apartment, and it seems I’ll be walking past this more than a few times a week on the way to the subway, the bank, clothing stores, local bars, etc. I did not know about this until 8 hours after it was unveiled.
I think it is a nice thing for the firefighters. But I’m gonna say NIMBY on this one and say that this should have been in Ground Zero/WTC proper.
For one thing, it’s hideous. A bronze relief of flaming towers 10 feet high, 56 feet long? That’s excessive for something on a residential street. Plus, I’D LIKE TO FORGET ABOUT 9/11 FOR FIVE MINUTES, PLEASE! And I’m sure many other local residents feel similarly. It would have been better to put it in the touristy area of Ground Zero, where us residents won’t likely see it on a daily basis. I really don’t want to look at this thing, and it’s a brutal thing for people living in the neighborhood (more than a few thousand in the surrounding blocks) to deal with.
But not as brutal as the tourists, and that’s my second issue with it. Previously, the block on which this sits could be described as tranquil. It was a block that, for most tourists up to now, was a place where you should consider just how freaking lost you are, because nothing of interest sits in NoBatt. But now the tour buses are going to likely pull right up on Liberty Street or Albany Street if they can… or people will just walk one block from Church St. (the previous “get through the crowds and noise as quickly as you can” disaster zone for local residents) and will begin to clog Greenwich. That’s a bit of encroachment for me, because now the hordes will be only two blocks away, not four (as they previously were). I understand that we have a tourism industry in this city that needs to be accomodated, but I present this to you: wouldn’t it have been smarter for crowd control purposes to install this where the crowds already walk, on the north side of the street across from the firehouse? Did you have to use the side brick wall of a firehouse, around the corner (and on a different block) from the entrance? The crowds are already bad enough, and now they’re going to disperse among more local streets and cause more “stop-and-gawk” havoc.
As someone who has observed the regular groups of tourists closely over the past 18 months, I have to say that they’re best contained in a very small area… far away from anything that I need to do! I lack respect for most of them, I have to be honest. Ground Zero is like a landmark to them, another big dot on the sightseeing map. This is not a deeply spiritual place for these people. It’s not in their capability to be spirtual, as they’re all a bunch of McDonald’s-toting fannypack-wearing fatasses waddling around. I’m sorry, but if you (like most Ground Zero visitors) wearing TRACK PANTS and FLIP FLOPS on a visit somewhere, or if you can’t put the freaking pocket digital camera down for two seconds, then you must not take this experience very seriously. I understand that there’s nothing bad about that, and that you’re entitled to come look if you want. I support that. But I’m not inclined to agree with the ruination of the sanctity of what’s left of my local neighborhood because people want to stand around and stare at an oversized garish death scene installed on a wall. Put it on another wall where people can get to it easier. Why spill the crowds out over two more blocks? (since it goes to each end of the block it’s on, I know that tourists are going to be milling around the two adjacent blocks. Great for O’Hara’s, but a little shitty for anyone in lower BPC walking to the E train.)
No offense to the firefighters, dead or alive, I just don’t like the look of the monument, and I don’t think it’s in a good location. It’s going to adversely affect the residents of this neighborhood, needlessly. And, you know, who gives a shit about the residents anymore? We’re all going to get priced out of the neighborhood soon anyway. Then more trust fund kids and Europeans can buy apartments and keep real estate prices high, while destroying the concept of “neighborhood community” altogether. It’ll be like Soho - all style and no soul. No one remaining will understand the significance of any memorial or monument, and probably they’ll piss on the wall when drunk late at night (like I saw a guy do on that same wall the other night). And it’s off on a side street, so no one will see it happen. I hope no one kisses it the next day.
I’m really finding this neighborhood to be OVER… new Starbucks be damned…