Wall Street
As an accounting graduate, a trip to New York wouldn’t be complete without a visit to Wall Street.
After taking the subway downtown and getting a little lost, I found my way to the New York Stock Exchange. A sit on the steps next to George at Federal Hall and some happy snaps later, I then headed down to the World Trade Center site. There isn’t much to see at the site at the moment as there is a bit of (slow, apparently) construction going on and there is a high fence that you can’t see through around the site. Even so, there is a somewhat eerie feel about the place. The 24/7 September 11 coverage that we all watched doesn’t do justice to the size of the area that was destroyed. Walking around the narrow and crowded streets of the Financial District also makes it difficult to comprehend the chaos that occurred.
Bordering the site on Liberty Street is the Tribute WTC Visitory Center. Suprisingly well done without the usual tackiness of American tourism, the Tribute Center is a gallery of various photos and quotes following a timeline of the events of September 11 and the subsequent recovery. There is also numerous items recovered from the site on display throughout the gallery. Some of my favourites:
- A receipt from a cafe on the 43rd floor of the North Tower for cereal purchased at 8.29am September 11
- The window of an airplane
- Mangled cutlery and a menu from the Windows on the World restaurant – 106th and 107th floors of the North Tower
- The protective coat and helmet of a firefighter - the coat is torn down the back where it would have been ripped from the firefighter’s body during the collapse
- The metal gurney that carried all the remains from the rubble and the American flag that was placed over the remains as they were carried to the morgue
Films provided insight from survivors as to what life was like at the World Trade Center pre- and post-September 11. There was also an entire wall covered in the missing person flyers put up by the friends and family of those last seen at the World Trade Center site. Another wall listed the names of the 2,891 victims and their photographs covered another two walls. If you had four and half hours to fill, you could watch a film that listed the names of each person killed on September 11. Continuing through the galleries, there was also a display of how those who lived through September 11 are dealing with the subsequent issues, particularly loss and racism.
The gift shop at the Tribute Center is a little controversial (Brooklyn Pizza tour guide was disgusted, for example) but I’m not really sure why – there is nothing tacky and a lot of items (like books and films documenting September 11) can be purchased from many other places – not just the gift shop. Also, all proceeds from sales go to the September 11th Families’ Association and fund the Center itself. Hardly a profit-making exercise.
You can check out the Tribute WTC Visitor Center at
http://www.tributewtc.org/index.php
After the Tribute Center, I wandered down to the Charging Bull and Battery Park. Trying to get a photo of the Bull was no easy task – he was surrounded by tourists happy snapping and groping his rather impressive nut sack. So I ended up making a second trip early the next morning – no tourists before 9am. Suckers.
Peace out.
Big D is extremely disappointed with you. There has been an extraordinary amount of time, effort and expenditure spent on your education and you use the term nut sack. I question exactly what have you learned. The correct term to describe this part of a bull’s anatomy is ASD – advanced scrotal development. I had a mate that I travelled around Australia with in 1976. He had a severe case of ASD.