911 - Where Were You?

999

In the UK, one dials "999" for Emergency - here in the USA, we dial "911."

If you are a regular reader of this blog, then you know I lived in NYC for about 20 years. Even though the events of September 11, 2001 have international ramifications, and even though there were planes that crashed in Pennsylvania and in D.C., NYC suffered the greatest loss, in sheer numbers, of lives and property lost, damaged, forever changed.

With each anniversary of the event, media coverage never fails to ask "Where were you?" This year marks the tenth anniversary. A decade. The first decade of a new century, a new millennium. What conspiracy theory do you subscribe to?

I was late for a client visit, so I decided to stop into Tower Records and pick up Bob Dylan's "Love and Theft," which was released that day. I still have the receipt, tucked inside the CD... it's somewhere in LA with the rest of my physical copies of the Dylan oeuvre.



Tower opened at 9 AM, and I was there a couple minutes early, having walked from my sublet on East 4th/2nd Ave to East 4th/Broadway to the store.

I had a CD walkman, and after spending a good half hour in Tower, from 9 AM til about 9:30, watching the second crash and the aftermath, I left the store and listened to "Love and Theft" all day long until I joined a friend and watched the replay of the morning's attacks over and over again.

A lot has changed since 9/11, and far be it from me to speak for anyone but myself. One thing I can say as a truism, you can't take photos in airports anymore, the way you could back in the 70s...



Pleasant, Billy Idol, Brendan Bourke and Leslie at LAX

The past few days, every newspaper, periodical, blog, website, etc. I've seen carries some kind of story asking the same question: 9/11 - Where Were You? Everyone has a memory of this... do you really want to re-live it?

When I think of 9/11, I hear this.