My Sept11(+/-) 2005 trip to NY

[evilbu]

Hello,

for the last few days I have discovered the joy of sharing pics with people here. I had some trouble finding good space, and the size of the pictures. This time they should be a little smaller.

my toronto pics

my atlanta pics

NY is the absolute heaven for a humble young skyscraperfan like me.
Most of you have already seen a lot of NY, so I will try to make it a bit unique and thus still somewhat worth watching.



Of course I HAD to go up on the Empire State (located in midtown manhattan). Here I am looking (north)east. Notice the Chrysler Building, Trump World Tower and Citigroup. The river is the East River.




Well hi there! I wish I could go up that fast and cheap!
This is looking south.




Looking (north) west : the big building is One Penn Plaza (number 18). Do note Madison Square Garden on its left. The river is the Hudson River.



I posted this one before : Looking south, you can see the top of NY Life Insurance (once the highest in the world) reflecting the sunlight onto Merchandise Mart. I wonder what those people think of that in the latter.




Looking south : you can see downtown now (where the WTC towers used to be). All the time you hear people asking the staff :where were the wtc towers. Well just left of the green topped towers on the far right (that is World Financial). You can see WTC7 (the only reconstructed building at this point). Notice Woolworth Building too. The bridge on the far left is the Verrazano Bridge, connecting Staten Island and Brooklyn.


As you may know, I am a Belgian, and our country is the one from which Justine Henin and Kim Clijsters come, both exquisite tennis players (the first speaks French, the latter speaks Dutch like me). On that exact day (saturday 10th of september 2005) she was gonna play the US open finale in New York City against Pierce, and she won, making that her first Grand Slam victory. Lots of people thought we came from Belgium to cheer for her but it was coincidence.
A naive Belgian like me had never commercials written in the air, and certainly not to advertize Clijsters' game! Notice the anti suicide ballustrades.



Later that day, I visited the Chrysler Building (also in midtown)




Sunday september 11 2005. We had actually asked an official whether or not the public in general would appreciate (West European) tourists during such an event, he said it would be appropriate. This is east of ground zero looking south.
4 years earlier, I came home from high school just ten minutes after the collapse of the last twin tower. I had always dreamed of visiting them, I had them on a poster in my room. So that makes a understand a bit how different New Yorkers must think their city looks.
These are preachers, I was quite surprised how tolerating the police was of them, they were standing closer than the demanded distance of the ceremony going on ground zero, where families had gathered.



World Financial 2 and 3, shot from the eastern side. When you are there it is obvious these buildings must have sustained a lot of falling debris.



Those squares show the position of the twin towers. The entire area of the former WTC towers 1,2,3,4,5,6 (not seven), was sealed off in this way. You couldn't see anything of the ceremony. This was probably to show some respect. You could hear them saying the names though.
Well, I am an outsider of course (exactly 1 Belgian died in the attacks) but when you see all the firefighters, police, people crying outside, you understand this is a thing people are confronted with everyday. I have my own ideas as a foreigner of these attacks and their consequences, and there lots of other human dramas out there just as worse, but being there definitely showed me the horror of the attack.



WTC 7, the only reconstructed building, north of ground zero.
Lying south of ground zero was Deutsche Bank, being demolished at that time. This dumbo forgot to take a picture however. In april 2006 human remains were still discovered in this building.



This is where firefighters, accompagnied by a French reporter, witnessed the first plane hitting the tower, when inspecting a gas leak, resulting in the only real footage of the first crash.

Compare :




The view has completely changed.



At night, two rays of light could be seen, commemorating the loss of these mighty towers, and especially the thousands that perished with them.




next day, I took this shot of Ellis Island, with Goldman Sachs (New Jersey) behind it.



This is not well known, but on september 16,1920, a bomb went off near the headquarters of JP Morgan Inc at 23 Wall Street (it is just across the street from George Washington's monument). 33 people died, the owners of the building refuse to repair the obvious damnage in this picture.
That is me




Crossing the Brooklyn Bridge at sunset, walking towards Manhattan. Note American International Building, the Trump building and the Woolworth building. Actually, I don't see why joggers and bikers like this bridge, you are walking above the traffic jam and thus in its fumes.



Lights are being turned on.


Me at Times Square . Me and my family joked, you have all those clichés together (Times Square, yellow cab, street lights), this could really been a typical tourist guide cover...



On to the UN then! Man, there seems to be something going on in NY every day. However, a visit was impossible as they were celebrating their birthday. These are Falun Gong followers (the Chinese religion/sect being persecuted in China) demonstrating in order to take advantage of the UN conference to gather attention.
Police were all around. They didn't really like me walking past all those Falun Gongers (I am always very curious and especially now because I had read a lot about Falun Gong before). All they did was distributing pamflets and demonstrating the physical exercises.
Very sad was also one Arab guy on a bike (going away from the UN). He had to get off, had his bag inspected and his bike. It took only a minute, but I could pass with my bag with no problem at all.



Now only a hundred meters (30 feet) or something like that,from the UN, : all of a sudden a huge fuss! Police were putting up those things to prevent people from going into the street, we had to stay on that corner. The policeman and his superior would say contradicting things at first, adding to the confusion, and pushing us eventually further and further back. This lady disobeyed and got yelled at, she couldn't get between his police car and his blockade, so went around the car. Look how happy she is.
Then a big bunch of cars passed, accompagnied by lots of police (one of them had a face not to mess with and held one arm with a huge gun out of his window). When we asked what it was all about, they said :"The president just went by".

One female police officer actually told me to leave the UN for what it was and go drink in the Village, and I replied I couldn't as I was only 20, thus making it legal for me to drink home but not in the USA. She said: do it anyway.

Later I met an Armenian delegate, who simply took the bus. He was very happy to meet someone who knew at least something about his country(Caucasus, Ararat,..) but his english was very poor so that was about all we could say.



A free visit to the Trump Tower in midtown (not the Trump World Tower). Well it's nice, some shops and restaurants, and these nice illuminated waterfalls.



Again at sunset, not so famous : Metropolitan Tower, not far from the Trump Tower in midtown. Once the highest residential tower in the world.



Last day : central park. This is the Jackie Kennedy reservoir. We laughed at the sign 'Please run counterclockwise', I had never seen such an explicit order like that about a similar thing.

However in the movie the Devil's advocate, before the fat guy is killed in the end in Central Park, he is nervously running near the reservoir, and there is actually a jogger yelling "Wrong way!" :d





Belvedere Castle



John Lennon got shot just outside his house near Central Park, this is in Central Park to remember him.

That's it
Well that me what you liked and didn't like!
If you want to point something out regarding the size, I am quite inexperienced, but PLEASE be clear whether or not you mean the number of kilobytes or the actual space they take.

[Archiconnoisseur]

LIDAR image of Ground Zero. You can easily see the damage to the tops of the World Financial Center buildings.

[3tmk]

I think you should resize the images, it's hard to appreciate them if you don't have a 30" monitor

[evilbu]

As I said, incompetence is on the basis of this. I rejoiced when I managed to make the pictures smaller in number of kilobytes, within a few hours I will have adjusted the pictures.

[evilbu]

After a lot of trial and error, I managed to make the pics smaller in number of kilobytes, and resized them also into a 640*480 format (most of them).

Is it better now?

[evilbu]

Please, if some are offended by something I posted/wrote about 9/11, tell me, that was not the intention.

[Archiconnoisseur]

Originally Posted by evilbu

Please, if some are offended by something I posted/wrote about 9/11, tell me, that was not the intention.

Nobody was offended; people are just all on vacation. It's hot as hell around here.

Oh, and great pics.

[van heckler]

Most of you have already seen a lot of NY, so I will try to make it a bit unique and thus still somewhat worth watching.

And that you did.

I liked the Empire State Building pic with that bird walking around.

Also, it was interesting to see the before and after shots of the street where the September 11th footage was filmed by the fire crew.

Thanks for sharing the pics