New York Stories

This morning we all caught up and had a spot of Breakfast.  Lezmond and Jodi, decided they would like to do a bus tour, so they went and organised that.  (They also went to the Harry Potter exhibition, which sounded like a bit of fun).  Jussie and I decided we would go downtown and check out the Twin Towers site.  It's quite incredible and sobering to see the large gap in the city.  There is a lot of work going on down there, building new towers and a memorial park/water feature.  They are going to build seven towers on the site, the first one will be around 104 stories high, with a spire on top, this will be the tallest building in America when it is completed. The other towers will all surround, and look over the memorial park, and will reduce in height.  They look pretty cool.  It's quite incredible walking around down there, because I could recognise buildings from watching the September 11 events occur on TV, back in NZ.   You can't help imagining all the people fleeing the site, it must have been terrifying. 
Next, we wandered around Wall St and the rest of Downtown, including the Staten Island Ferry terminal and the Charging Bull - with the massive balls - that are shiny from people kissing and touching them. (For luck).  Wall Street is heaps smaller than I imagined, in terms of the size of the street between the buildings.
Jussie and I then hopped on a train so we could go and Meet back up with Lezmond and Jodi to check out the Twin Towers Museum workshop.  We got the wrong train and ended up in Union Square, but that was no problem, cause we found a bar to have a beer in, and Union Square is an awesome spot anyway.  Its cool walking around the city, its so great when you have those moments of "oh look, we wouldn't have seen that, if we didn't screw up the direction we were going"   I believe there is a lot to be said about just pounding the feet and following your nose - I find it really enjoyable.
Anyway we ended up meeting Lezmond and Jodi on time and went down to the museum. Now this museum is amazing, it was rated number one on trip advisor for things to see in New York.  It is always booked out way in advance so you need to book tickets online - but if your visiting New York, I would really recommend it.   It takes about 2 hours to view, and it is a really small place - not much bigger than a person's lounge. They allow 28 people to be in the museum at a time.   So it is a bunch of photo's /images taken by Gary Marlon Suson.  He is the photographer that was appointed by the New York Fire department to help document the recovery mission after September 11.  Three weeks after Sept 11, it was decided that access to the site would be restricted, and so for around 6 months he was the only photographer on site, while they were searching for bodies.   The don't show you any images of the planes going into the towers, nor do they show any body parts or things like that.  It's more about capturing the firefighters, the stories, the rescue workers and animals etc.  They also have a piece of one of the planes, which is pretty out if it, and a bunch of other things recovered from the site.  We were really lucky as Gary Suson, had just happened to pop into the museum, so he introduced himself and explained the photos and some of the stories.  Here he is here;

They give you tour guide headsets as you walk around, and you can punch in the number of each image and get a story about it read by Gary Suson, and featuring audio from the day and stuff.  It's pretty amazing, and quite full on.  We were all feeling a little somber afterwards but I would still highly recommend it.  At the end of the experience, I went and shook Gary's hand, and thanked him for such an amazing job, he was very nice and asked where I was from etc.  You got that feeling that although he was a lovely man, and looked healthy (a lot of the people who worked on the recovery have died since because of the toxic fumes - all the recovery dogs died) that he had definitely seen some harrowing things.

After the exhibition we went over to Brooklyn, to meet the people that Jussie has been staying with, (they are really good friends of Chris and Irene.). There names were Jai and Jillaine, and they have the cutest baby called Ulani. We went to this awesome little restaurant that did a burger and beer deal for $10.  Really excellent burgers, and amazing hand cut fries - mmmmmmmmmm tasty.   We then cruised back to their place for a beer.  Sooooooooo Cool.  They have a balcony overlooking New York and Manhattan.  It was great meeting some local people and being told little tidbits about the neighbourhood and buildings.  They had a couple of other friends come over and I got chatting with an Australian guy.  He was telling me all about the Green Card lottery every year, and I have to admit it has certainly taken my interest.  I would love to come and work here for a few years or something, I really love this city, its so primo, so may look into that over the next few years.  He was really into it, and gave me a bunch if tips and tricks about the process.  I started talking to him about how friendly people are here, and how I had a way different impression before getting here.  He told me that a large part of that is a fall out from Sept 11th.  Apparently people were alot different before Sept 11th, but that, on the day everyone came together and gave each other a helping hand where needed.  He said that a lot of people believe that this made people realise that they are all sharing a common small space with people from all over the world - and that they are all here for a reason - not in a religious type of way - more the personal reason's for being here and wanting to do whatever it is that they do for a living, or their art, music, etc.  Because of the size and the nature of the place everyone shares a common goal/space/energy and so there is a great amount of tolerance and understanding.  Now I have only been here for 10 days, so clearly that is not long enough to really know what it's like - but I have to say (and i have said it before) the people here are amazing.  It is truly a melting pot of cultures and people, and to me, it is really magical.