Eight years ago, I left the Chanin Building where I was working around 10:30am, after my co-workers and I had absorbed the fact that Everything Was Different Now™ and that we should probably try to find our way home, or at least somewhere seemingly safe.
Walking across 42nd Street for the second time that morning, I reached Times Square, where all traffic had disappeared and many thousands of midtown office drones had gathered to stop and stare at the giant news ticker. Like a hypnotist repeating a phrase to lull you deep into his psychic embrace, the ticker gave us little more than the painfully obvious as it told us over and over again that the impossible had just happened. But we couldn’t look away.
In our quiet vigil, I felt a visceral bond with the thousands around me, and this city, in a way that I will (forgive me) Never Forget.
So there. That’s my contribution to the annual schmaltz-fest. I’m going to cut against the grain and tell you that I actually enjoy watching the MSNBC re-broadcast every year. It allows me to relive those moments of pure, irony-free love for this city and the people who live here, when it seemed as if all of us were in Times Square that gorgeous Fall morning watching the ticker spin.
