It’s A Helluva Town

Every blogger in the world is going to have some kind of memory about the horrific events that happened 10 years ago, and, because I shared my own back in 2009, I’m going to talk about something a little different.

I’ve had the good fortune of being within a commutable distance to New York City for all of my life, and I’ve often taken this for granted. I fell in love with the city back in the autumn of 1996, when my mom took my sister and me to see Cats over a long weekend. She decided we needed some culture, and, because she could afford it, opted to book us a room at the prestigious Plaza Hotel. Much to our annoyance, the room they originally gave us contained a king-sized bed, which wouldn’t have been a problem, except I was at the age when sleeping in the same bed as my mother was a pretty horrific thought. So, she complained, and they promptly moved us to the Frank Lloyd Wright suite. As I was a budding architect at the time, having spent hours meticulously drawing floor plans and even coming up with planned communities and neighborhoods, this was a huge thrill to me – though I recall being disappointed that the bathroom didn’t have a phone in it, as our first room did.

We took the entire weekend to see the sights of New York City, and, because I had been reading up a lot on John Lennon at the time (having filled the filing cabinets of my brain with information about the Beatles while they were still together, I moved on to their solo careers), I was fascinated with his fascination of the city. I wanted to know everything about it, and my mom encouraged me to soak it all up. (There’s a picture somewhere of a teenaged me standing on a rock in Central Park, my arms outstretched, and doing my best Lennon impression with blue-tinted circular sunglasses.)

Ever since that weekend, I’ve taken every possible opportunity to go back, whether it was to soak up some culture and see some musicals, do a little light, touristy sightseeing, have a laugh at tapings of Late Night With Conan O’Brien, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report, or to act like a drunken buffoon at a friend’s birthday party at Lucky Strike Lanes. Every time I’ve been here, New York City has treated me wonderfully, and, for the last two years, I’ve been doing my damnedest to get into that city on a permanent basis. Suburban Philadelphia may always be my home, but there’s an alluring romanticism about New York City that is irresistible. I will move there, dammit; it’s just a matter of time.

I can’t offer any pithy comments or deep, life-affirming observations on what happened 10 years ago today. I didn’t see the towers fall, and I was lucky enough for it to not personally affect me – all of my friends, family, and loved ones are okay. New York is okay, too; walking around the city yesterday, it was a little eerie how not crowded Times Square was, and how relatively sparse the sidewalks were. Walking around Penn Station to get to Central Park, Meredith and I were alarmed – but not necessarily surprised – to see soldiers with loaded rifles, and the streets a little more dotted with police cars and fire engines. But the real vibe of the city was in the last showing of Hair, which I saw for the first time a few weeks ago and was, quite honestly, impressed with. Meredith and I wanted to see the last night of the run on Broadway, which is always a special show, and the venue was practically humming with peace and love. It was right where I wanted to be at that moment, and no documentary on the joining together of the people of New York City in the days following 9/11 will ever compare to experiencing it first-hand.