SGU #WTC

SGU IS AN ART PUBLICATION PUBLISHED BY MINT&SERF WWW.SPECIALGRAFFITIUNIT.COM ©MINT&SERF 2011

LIKE AN AMERICAN BY: MIKHAIL SOKOVIKOV EDITED BY: BAMBI

We had been discussing with the team how to focus on other details of those few days and how to avoid the obvious – how to capture that time period, instead of describing the disaster. The Dot-Commers infused the city with monopoly money and made it fun for many of us to revel in the streets. We still do similar things now to we did ten years ago. Graffiti, party, graffiti, rack paint, court girls, art, music, and more graffiti. We don’t really rack anymore, although I still compulsively steal bubble gum and beer from Manhattan delis at night to see if I can still get away with it.

I have been trying for days to close my eyes and remember my feelings of sadness and grief. Me brother recently told me that, I kept on making jokes and laughing that whole afternoon. Serf recalls me leaving him a sarcastic message about how his favorite skate spot was now gone. I have no recollection of that. I have been trying my hardest to bring myself back to those few days to try to rehash significant memories, but in reality, I didn’t know anyone who died on 9/11, nor anyone who worked or volunteered at the WTC site.

The black smoke I saw billowing from the Financial District as the train was pulling out of Smith and 9th Station was the only thing that grounded me to reality for a few minutes each day. The ground was smoking for months, with the black smoke turning white eventually. But, as soon as the train descended inside Carroll Street Tunnel, it was out of sight out of mind for most, including me.

to paint, going to Williamsburg to party and returning to Manhattan to do both. In actuality, because of 9/11 and the Dot-Com crash, the agency where I was interning fired half the staff and hired me as a full time freelancer. I was at the Attik from 11 – 8, busy with new work responsibilities I enjoyed; then I’d wind up with Serf on some LES roof with couple of bottles of Sutter Home White Zinfandel and a briefcase full of stolen paint. We’d drink, paint and chase girls. We celebrated life every night on almost zero dollars.

For many months after, the city was saturated with WTC content and I chose to block it out. There seemed to be countess slogans, formalities, flags, souvenirs along Broadway and Canal, everyone wearing flag pins, holding hands at Union Square, signs of solidarity everywhere. United We Stand scrim vinyl banners were hanging out of windows and off roofs.

Everyday the media was vomiting headlines, gruesome pictures and minute-by-minute info-graphics of those fatal moments. It was definitely over the top and hard to tune it all out. But it was easier and more rewarding for me to focus on my blossoming graffiti career.

A shrink would probably call this self defense mechanism DENIAL.

Once the N and R trains resumed operation under the rubble, we had a plan to hit Courtland Street Station with some tribute messages. The War On Terror made us nervous about getting falsely shot and we chickened out. Besides painting a mural with Goal and Zephyr in Williamsburg dedicated to 9/11, I don’t remember any one of my friends doing anything patriotic. Such scumbags.

There was no mention of 9/11 in anyone’s graffiti, as if everyone Actually outside of those few dark was in denial. I still don’t rememdays, my life went as if nothing ber anyone giving blood besides significant had happened. I was my dad during those critical days. busy working at the Attik and playing in the streets. Subconscious- Luscius Pitking or LPI, as it is ly the events made me appreci- now called, was a medium-sized ate fun in my life more and thus engineering company my dad I spent even more time venturing started working at in ‘91. They into the night, going to the Bronx specialized in Failure Analysis

and Destructive and non-destructive testing. Basically, it was their job to determine the nature of Tishman Scaffolding Collapse in 1998, or 2007 The Con Edison Gas Explosion. It was located on Hudson and Duane, only a few blocks from WTC. He began as a machinist making less than 20K a year. Kind of a low ball for a PhD physicist/engineer and graduate of MePhi, one of Russia’s leading science universities. That’s that immigrant hustle. He’d show up everyday around 7 AM, an hour before everyone else, in order to balance out his cigarette breaks throughout the day. He did his job honestly and diligently every day.

“Less talk, more work,” he used to say to my brother and me. By 2005 he’d molded his American dream by working hard and becoming Chief Metulurgical Engineer, earning a six-figure salary.

He was getting flown around the world to determine mechanical failure of cruise ships, gas pipe fractures and other nerdy stuff I never got into. He loved it though. It was his dream job.

On that day, I didn’t know that he was at a ASME meeting in Norfolk, Virginia. And once normality ceased to exist, we had no idea where he was or how to get in touch with him. My brother and I rushed to the city in my dads ‘88 Silver Lincoln Town Car to try to help with transporting people from the city to wherever, but by 2pm nothing was moving in or out of the Manhattan. We rushed past enormous crowds of people on Manhattan Bridge hurrying to get away from the unknown. You could look straight through the clouds of concrete dust mixed with black smoke and see the dark circular silhoette of the sun. Once on Canal Street, we approached a uniformed policeman to find out where we can sign up to volounteer.

“Don’t worry about it, its all under control” - the cop answered with a shrug. We realized that there wasn’t much we could do and continued on toward Union Square.

Everything and everyone was in disarray. Chaos terrified streets.

PHOTO: MINT&SERF

PHOTO: FADE AA

During the first week, DDC (Department of Design and Construction) hired LPI to help the city agency in determining the structural damage and failure of the rubble that was once the World Trade Center. The city couldn’t afford to lose any more of it’s people. I have no idea how and where you would even start.

“Was in the WTC site.. Terrible” reads my dad’s entry from September 18th in his LPI branded brown leather Moleskine look-alike. At 55, he was climbing on top of debris in his blue LPI overall and a matching color hardhat.

He would later tell me that it was so hot that no one was wearing respirators most of the time.

He wasn’t picking up his phone during lunch and his wife of twenty-nine years was becoming increasingly nervous. Even though they had been separated for six years, they were immensely empathetic toward one another. It was 5 pm. I was at the gallery working on a new commission for Nike/ China when she called and asked me to take a ride to his house in Sheepshead Bay to make sure he was alright. He had been sick for a while, but still went to work as much as he physically could.

Carboplatin was killing off malignant cells while at the same time depleting his energy and applying tremendous amount of strain on his heart. After the heart attack couple of weeks earlier he’d grown increasingly disappointed in himself. He became less optimistic, which was his trademark his whole life, and projected genuine concern for his near future.

His biggest hang-up in his life up to that point was thinking that he could never be a true American, because he wasn’t born here.

When traveling for business, he always rented an American car (usually a Cadillac), always ate at a steakhouse and drank The King of Beers like an average American at the local pub. But this was different: he was looking and sounding less confident in his health. Over the weekend, he came to terms with the fact that he couldn’t work full time and

began the application process came genius and change. The one for part-time disability benefits. major ingredient that was needed to ready the birth of ideas—that I rang the bell a few consecutive could improve the human contimes and proceeded with my dition—was cheap rent. Cheap own set of keys. The anxiety was rent meant anything was possicreeping as the floors went down, ble. Not needing to earn a fortune but I remained optimistic none- working at a job meant having the theless. I ran to the door, inserted time to indulge in one’s fantasies. the key, pulled the door toward Fantasies turned into realities and me just a bit, turned the handle to the future had something new. the left and pushed it open. I pre- The effects of gentrification could sumed he was resting and quick- be seen everywhere. Most noly ran to his bedroom, but the bed tably, the one major demon that was undone and empty. I turned continued to strangle the life out around went back into the living of creativity and change was the room, knocked on the bathroom escalating rent. So many thought door, and realized it was quite that if sometime catastrophic dark and empty as well. I quickly happened, people would flee the turned, scanned the apartment city and the price of rent would and saw him in his blue bathrobe come falling down. 9:11 has slumped over at his desk. His proven the opposite to be true. right hand was still squeezing a pen that was inking his signature For a couple of years after the on a check for mortgage payment devastation caused by the colfor his humble 1 bedroom Ameri- lateral damage of the attack, it can Dream Co-Op. I can’t recall seemed like downtown almost what went though my head at that died. Downtown was bleeding moment, but when I grabbed his money. It became a crime scene forehead to lean him back in the on a national level. Slowly, as chair to check him for vital signs, the area opened up, the smell he felt cold, clammy and dead. of death was still fresh in the air.

Heavy, pasty, grainy dust was always in your ears, eyes, nose, and throat, causing health problems. One of the only booming businesses was the sale of cheap, China-made souvenirs, hawked on the sidewalk by foldBY: CLAYTON PATTERSON EDITED BY: MONICA USZEROWICS ing-table vendors. But the rents never dropped and slowly the

By 1979, NYC had reached the higher rent greased the wheels continuing gentrification. bottom of its decline. Most of the of fires and destruction had given way to the unnoticed, slow march 9:11 cleared out many of the mostup the hill towards gentrification. ly smaller, independent, struggling businesses. Meanwhile, the The observations and opinions I billionaire types Bloomberg was write about in this short piece are attracting to the city continued to direct results of my experience flow in. More neighborhood luxuliving on the Lower East Side of ry hotels were built. More luxury NYC. The Lower East Side had skyscraper apartment complexalways been a magical caldron. es burst up, changing the skyIt fermented the juice that fed line by pushing ever upward the the imagination of hundreds who number of floors it is legal for a went on to make a contribution building to have. NYU, bursting to the ongoing, ever-changing at the seams with a glut of exhistory of America. The Lower cess money that needed to be East Side was where the idea of worked into higher profits, filled the American Dream was born. the Lower East Side with multistory student dorms. More places Out of the immigrant masses for students to live meant more

911 BLOOMBERG’S GOLD RUSH

students. More students meant more tuition, which meant more money to buy more land. The university’s driving up of land values resulted in forcing out more oldschool people. This made it impossible for the next generation of the avant-garde to breathe.

But it was all good business.

For some artists, 9:11 was a

windfall, the abandonment of downtown was an attraction.

Street art and graffiti developed a stronger presence. The freedom of abandonment allowed gallery owner Jeffrey Deitch to have colossal events that brought out hundreds of young people. A new generation of art stars was born. Downtown, once again, be-

came a cool destination. Some places thrived as a result of 9:11.

It seems like Koch’s quote about a changing New York fits the corporate plan: “It is simply a question of a proper time, that a place becomes a proper place.” --Koch in movie Captured, by Ben Solomon, Dan Levin and Jenner Furst.

PHOTO: CLAYTON PATTERSON 179 ESSEX STREET CIRCA EARLY 90S

PHOTO: CLAYTON PATTERSON 179 ESSEX STREET CIRCA POST 9/11

PHOTO: PABLO POWER

WTC 911 BY: PABLO POWER EDITED BY: BAMBI

Back then it didn’t seem excessive or over-indulgent to start my weekend on a Tuesday. Not even on a Monday for that matter, like I did that particular week. There was a BlackBook Magazine release party that Monday night though, and attendance was to be taken very seriously. Especially since in those days there was little else to be serious about. I was in my twenties and living out my dreams in New York City; my phone was ringing off the hook with good-paying work that took me to exotic destinations across the globe. I moved in what I imagined to be quite a fabulous social circle. It was the New Millennium and there seemed to be no limit to how much better the next day could be from the last, or for that matter, how much better the next party could be from the last.

never paid the place much attention as I sped by, dodging early morning truck traffic, but that morning was different. I couldn’t contain my excitement for that night and grinned as I thought back to the last Fast Ashley’s party, when I did shots of bourbon with Harrison Ford and rode his coattails around for the rest of the night. Memories of that classic night only inspired me to make this Tuesday night even better. I was sure that it was going to be another classic night. As I began my ascent up the bridge, I heard our rallying cry from the previous night, and it helped give me an extra boost of energy to stand up in my pedals and gain speed to pass the other bikes on my way over the East River.

When I made it to my destination on Broadway, I pushed my bike into the elevator and pressed 6.

I could feel my anticipation for that night building as the elevator made its way up to the top floor.

I nodded to myself as the doors opened on my floor, and assured myself again: “Tonight is going to I did have to work in the morn- be siiiiiiick!” The day had not even ing though, so decided to forgo yet begun, but it was official: this the next party that Monday night, would be a night to remember. and get some rest to be ready for Tuesday night’s party. From what “I think a plane just crashed into I was hearing, it was going to be a the Twin Towers.” I didn’t even look no-holds-barred blowout at Fast up at the person who had uttered Ashley’s, and they threw seri- the impossible as I snickered at ous parties for people who took him. The idea was too absurd to their partying as seriously I did. even acknowledge and it was too There was sure to be abundant early in the workday to muster the free food and booze, the hottest cognition from my hungover brain girls in town, a soundtrack spun to contemplate such an occurby the best DJs, and all against rence. “No, really. I was getting a mise-en-scène of the epicenter buzzed in front door and a plane of hip: Williamsburg. My fabu- was flying really low over the city lous friends and I all parted ways and I swear I heard a huge crash into to the balmy Monday night downtown.” His further descripwith handshakes, high fives, tion elicited outright laughter from hugs, and a promise: “Tomor- myself and the few other people row night is going to be siiiiiiiick!” who had also, for some reason, shown up to work before 9 am I rode my bike to work every day that day. “Brian, you obviously that summer. The next morning, haven’t had you’d coffee yet. Go I took the same route that I did get a cup and sit down. You’re every morning from my apartment losing it, buddy.” We all mocked in Greenpoint, which brought me him incredulously as he shufdown Wythe Avenue and directly fled away, still muttering about past Fast Ashley’s on my way to a crashing plane to anyone who the Williamsburg Bridge. I usually may believe him. I was working

in a photo studio in SoHo at the time, and we all went back to the morning routine of checking camera gear and preparing lighting equipment for the various shoots that were happening that day.

It only took a few short minutes of settling back into that comfortable, familiar routine and I had completely forgotten about Brian’s silly plane crash story. Then Mr. Roche came out of his office.

He was the accountant for the studio that I worked in. He was there every morning before me and left long after me every evening. Despite being seemingly attached to his desk chair, he was always cracking wise at someone’s expense or laughing with a puffing pipe in his Cheshire maw. Mr. Roche never came out of his office.

“Can we see the Twin Towers from the roof?” I turned and looked at him as he asked the question, realizing that at his desk was a radio that had it’s dial permanently fixed to NPR, which was always reliable for a quick update of the weather or some other such mundanely promising news as was routine until that breaking report.

He wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t laughing. There was no pipe puffing. He wasn’t joking. The room fell silent momentarily while everyone looked at each other in puzzlement and tried to get their heads around the idea that some fool may have actually crashed his plane into a building downtown.

Without a word, the first few of us bolted up the flight of stairs that led from the top floor to the roof.

At fist sight, and according to the details of first reports, it seemed that a small private plane had crashed into or maybe just clipped one of the buildings. It looked like an innocent mistake, a freak accident most likely, but no one really knew what we were looking at or how to process the visual. What was there to compare it to? I had heard a story about the Empire State Building being accidentally hit by a plane in the 1940s, so that’s probably all that this was. As more people from the building came upstairs, the confused silence turned to

questions: “Where’s the plane?”

“Did it land?” “Is it inside the building?” “I wonder if anyone was hurt?” and then even to jeers: “What an idiot!” “I bet he was drunk!” “How stupid could you be to not see that big ass building?”.

Although there was a lot of smoke, no one really knew the extent of what happened, so the general consensus was that an inept pilot had accidentally crashed his little plane into the building, a few people in the plane were probably hurt or possibly killed, and the damage to the building would be patched up in a couple of weeks.

No big deal. Just another day in The City. Most people, including myself, were literally laughing at the pilot’s incompetence and the absurdity of the whole situation as we headed back down to work.

Mr. Roche lit his pipe and cracked a joke. All was good in the world.

Being that our studio work environment was probably more liberal that the offices on lower floors of the building, a few of us grabbed cameras, affixed the longest zoom lenses in the equipment room, and headed back up to snap off a few frames for posterity. We were all still making light of the accident, and I closed my left eye to look through the viewfinder. The amount of smoke had grown considerably in the few minutes that we were downstairs getting cameras and now I could see some flames with the help of the lens. There was one helicopter hovering at the level of the crashed floors. The other tower was beginning to be obscured by the smoke. The newly crisp, late summer sky provided a deep, bright blue background.

It made for a mildly interesting documentary picture, so I clicked off a few frames, but was already bored by the lack of change in the scene and halfway through the roll was about to stop and head back downstairs. I was just firing off what I had decided would be my last frame and was about to open my left eye to stop shooting, when I heard a familiar, but impossibly close roar from my left ear.

PHOTO: PABLO POWER

That next second -- I still see and feel precisely as it happened. It’s the one that sums up that whole day for me. I relive it often, for no particular reason usually, other than the fact that the image has been burned so deeply into my memory, my mind, my psyche, my brain. It’s the moment that everything was suddenly defined and when everything changed. It was the second that the unthinkable, unprecedented, abstract, and distant became undeniably real and was happening right at home in a way that couldn’t have been more palpable. As the shutter clicked open and closed that one last time, I saw the flash of not just a plane, but very clearly a massive commercial jet, disappear into the back of the building and transform into a flaming stream of destruction, debris, and death that spit out of the front side of the building. A fireball larger than the entire city block that I was standing on followed and instantly released a plume of black smoke upwards.

I looked over the top of the camera, unable to believe what I had just witnessed, as the rolling crack of the explosion 20 blocks away reached my ears. As I lowered the camera to my side, I could feel a short blast of heat on my face like opening an oven and quickly closing it again. It was immediately obvious that whatever was happening was not an accident at all. In the silence that followed, it struck me. The thought hit me as the heat from blast of the explosion churned past. I was frozen in horror, attempting to make sense out of what I had just seen, but still managed to get the few words out. It was embarrassingly obvious; it was a thought to myself that was some how verbalized on its own. “The entire world just changed forever.”

In the hours that followed, I sat in front of a television in the studio’s cafe and watched as planes continued to fall from sky. At the point that Pentagon was hit, it seemed that anywhere could be next. If the security of that inviola-

ble redoubt which symbolized the very security of our entire nation had been compromised, then anything was possible. When it first happened, there was some uncertainty of whether that one was even a plane or possibly an attack of some other sort. That’s the point when sheer panic took hold over the studio. In the confusion, people were wondering out loud what the chances were of our little building being attacked next. The towers collapsed into themselves and someone watching TV with me told his own story of being on the eighty somethingth floor during the 1993 World Trade bombing, and that it had taken him three hours to get out of the building.

The scene at Ground Zero was incomprehensible. Women and men alike were coming down off our roof weeping. I never bothered going back up to get a view of what was happening further downtown; I just sat and stared at the television, not speaking, unresponsive, almost catatonic.

My only coherent thoughts were of trying to reach family to assure them that I was unharmed, and to make sure that everyone that I cared about was okay. That was impossible for the duration of the day though, because no cell or landline phones were working, adding to the uncertainty of how broad the attack could have been.

Someone yelled, “Everybody go to the bank right now and get your money! The grid is about to go down and there won’t be any access to banks anymore!” I didn’t know what a “grid” was, or why it would affect my account, but fearfully ran straight to my bank and withdrew every dollar I had.

help. I made my way against the procession of survivors and began walking my bike downtown, back to Brooklyn. Since I wasn’t able to reach anyone by phone, I decided that I’d do it in person, door to door, and that the Manhattan Bridge would be the most direct route to start the trip.

When I rounded the bend at the end of Canal Street and could see the bridge, I started to realize the depth of what had happened that morning. Tens of thousands of people filled the entire length of every traffic lane as far up the bridge as I could see. I joined the throng, shoulder to shoulder, with the proximity of rush hour commuters. Even the people who were most deeply entranced in the memories of their experiences that morning couldn’t help slowing down and periodically taking a look back over their shoulder at the dark, rising cloud that enveloped the lower tip of Manhattan.

The cloud hadn’t reached us yet, but the creeping smell of doom pursued us across the river, where it settled in to haunt parts of the borough miles away for weeks to come. It reeked of oily plastic, burning electricity, and metals melting into strange new alloys.

A question always lingered, I’m sure in everyone’s mind, though I never heard it verbalized: was it also the smell of bodies burning?

Early casualty reports were even higher, but eventually it was verified that over two thousand people were buried in the collapse, which smoldered for weeks. Who in modern day New York City could have ever imagined what a funeral pyre for several thousand people smelled like? Maybe it smelled Broadway had become a street like the weeks following 9/11. leading out of a parallel universe in the few hours that I had been Once I had found that all of the upstairs. It was barely noon, but people who were most important not a car was on the road. People to me had safely made it through covered in ash, most too dazed the day, I got on my bike for the to have even wiped their faces ride home. As night fell, I biked off yet, were streaming uptown. over streets usually so familiar No one spoke a word. The only that I could have navigated them street noise was from the few re- with my eyes closed. Yet suddenmaining emergency vehicles that ly, after the day’s events, they felt hadn’t made it to Ground Zero foreign and menacing. I passed yet, as they rushed to offer more through Fort Greene and then

escaped my mind until that point, but I was embarrassed at myself at the mere thought of ever having been to a party before that night.

It had indeed turned out to be a Tuesday night to remember, but for reasons that would far eclipse what I had expected that morning, only twelve short hours before.

I never did develop the roll of film that I shot that day. On a practical level, I told myself that since better photographers took so many pictures that morning, with better cameras, and even closer to the disaster than I was, that there was little point in developing my pictures. As time went on, and more of the now iconic photos of that day were published, I convinced myself even more to

put that roll of film away forever.

The reality of it was something else though. I knew that seeing my own pictures of that morning would place me back at the instant that I watched the second plane fly through its target, when the folly and carelessness that constituted my life was lost, and I began to doubt all of my priorities for the first time. Sometimes I do wonder if I may have captured a moment or an angle that was different from what everyone else had, but ten years later it still doesn’t matter to me. I don’t have to see the photos because that’s the frame that I always remember, that I’m always taken back to, that I always relive. It’s impossible to forget. It was the instant that my entire world changed forever.

ERIK FOSS 15

Williamsburg, both quiet neighborhoods on a normal night, which now seemed completely abandoned. My route home took me back up Wythe Avenue and I suddenly found myself passing Fast Ashley’s again. My surroundings felt so unfamiliar that it was right in front of me before I even realized where I was. Unlike that very morning, when I sped by on my way to work, I stopped and contemplated the building from the street. I left my bike at the curb, walked up to a window, and peered into the darkness. I wasn’t checking to see if there was a party inside, because I knew there wouldn’t be, but to remind myself of what I was supposed to be doing that night. Not only had the thought completely

TWIN TOWER NUMBER WON BY: JAY FOXX EDITED BY: BAMBI

4:54AM SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 The iridescent buzz of citrine yellow lights lining the dank walls hum as I finish a rustoleum chrome power outline over my crisp **** fill in. The clank of third rails tick and tock providing the soundtrack to my personal jihad on the MTA system. My cavernous location makes me feel like a modern day caveman carving my name with flats and gloss onto soot covered tablets. I stand back and admire my work. I’m engulfed in the warm womb of the 2nd Ave. train tunnel. My spelunking partner *** is shaking the remains of a choked summer squash American accent can, squeezing the final drops of paint to finish his one shot at fame. A fame only recognized by other transit outlaws. A fleeting, selfish fame. We risk our lives for the narcissistic pleasure that is graffiti. This is a private prayer service for me. I do this for selfish reasons, of course: this is a personal narrative I’m weaving for myself. It reaches a point of euphoria few drugs can take you to. Trust me, I know.

As my high peaks I feel the rush of hot rusting wind begin to blow around my ankles. It slowly gains momentum and rushes up my leg. An F train is barreling down the sepia colored shaft that is this tunnel. I’m a professional, by this time, at dealing with precarious situations. I’ve scaled buildings 10 stories high, slashed deep wounds into my limbs on razor wire and been chased by heroes with bats. A train is a controlled danger. This time is something different. The humid wind is blowing in both directions and fast. Trains are approaching in both directions. BIG TROUBLE. I scream to my partner to get to my side. The gust of wind has intoxicated him like a nymph siren’s call. I scream again and he starts

to move. *** is not the most agile bloke and he gets tangled in the escape. He’s falling face first towards the third rail. In a moment of extraordinary clarity and strength I grab all 250 pounds of him and yank him in between the cement dividers as the trains blast their triumphant horns at us.

The trains zoom at mach speed two feet from us in each direction.

The momentum almost lifts me off my feet from the raw power of the iron horses. As the trains flash by us, so does my life. I can still feel the power of those trains and the feeling of how insignificant I was at that moment. The buzz of my graf high tumbled harder than any skyscraper. We stood silent for a strong minute before exhaling a storm of curse words. We sprint towards the lights of the platform. Deeply exhaling, we climb out of our cave narrowly avoiding deaths iron messenger.

The sun is peaking out of its nimbus down comforter and slowly follows us west and north. We are quiet, re-evaluating our actions and life decisions. I’m covered in filth and utterly exhausted. We part at West 4th without a word. *** acknowledges that I’ve saved his life and nods. His body language tells me everything. I board one of the steel snakes that almost took my life thirty minutes before. I’m not religious but I say a prayer to someone, something, anything. I reach my family’s home around 8 am. I’ve dropped out of art school. Aimless, I’ve chosen the path of most city outlaws: dealing drugs, fighting, writing graffiti and living with the parents. My father is up and making runny eggs. We don’t speak for a few minutes as I shuffle around hiding cans and washing off the rainbow specks of paint covering my hands. He offers me an egg sandwich and we watch NY1 morning news. Roma Torre rattles off local gossip in her comforting New York accent.

TOWERS DROP. I witnessed history unfold with my father in real time. I sat with him and experienced something that words cannot tru-

ly and accurately describe. It was a powerful moment I shared with him that I will always remember.

Time warps after the north tower fell. I don’t really remember what happened until about noon. I had a complete sensory overload.

The streets were silent and gray and from my corner I watched the smoke ascend with the souls of the dead. I dap up the block boys, Section 8 and project kids.

Crazy Danny from the 2nd floor is wrapped in an American flag bed sheet with a 2X tee tied around his head like a turban. He sits perched on an azure Honda Civic like an urban pirate at mast looking out for the enemy. Sour Deez Rick is in a 3X tee to his knees.

A pinwheel rainbow fitted sits low on his eyes. He’s pacing back and forth, mumbling under his breath. Peto sits on the stoop, his two-tone do-rag breezes in the stale wind. The smell of death has reached uptown. The toxic scent that burns from hell’s candle had reached our lungs. It streams through our blood. The noxious scent has gotten the Trap Boys high. They are in a frenzied state, each boiling with confusion and anger. They have sticks and bats, razors and guns. I grew up with all these guys and I can see the pain and confusion painted on their faces. How could anyone attack their city? This is personal.

There is talk of rioting. Chasing habibi to hell is what I remember *** saying. Andre from the fourth floor is riding high on his mountain bike in circles. His Mitchell and Ness jersey is crisp; he’s cursing to the sky. The crowd swells. Watching and feeling death has made the team electric. We begin to slowly mob downtown. Unsure of the destination, the group swirls like a punk rat-king. We are walking the precipice of violence. At any moment this crew could turn and self-destruct. At the height of our vengeful pilgrimage, the electricity inverts. The tension and violence subsides and turns almost spiritual. (At this time nothing was confirmed so we still were not sure who was at fault or what really happened.) Air Wolves and

F16s soar above our heads. With each passing of the war birds, we cheer. A rag tag lot of kids had unified and -- without even being something that we understood at the time – changed us as people. ’ll be honest -- I didn’t want to head down to what became Ground Zero. Not only could we not pass 59th Street, I was scared and uncertain of what awaited. I decided to stay with my friends and family in my neighborhood and we bonded over weed and beer. Eventually we started to laugh. It took my city many years to recover from this event. It will never fully heal. I look at 9/11 as a time where my life ended and a new one began. I almost died that morning. Instead I went home and watched thousands die. I bonded with my city and its people. There is no insightful anecdote I can give you. Count your blessings.

TRIP P TILL THEY FUCKING BURY ME.

“WORST COMES TO WORST” BY: JASON GOLDWATCH EDITED BY: BAMBI

I was 25. The idea of combining the coasts was pertinent at the time, especially for Dilated and myself.

Some of our favorite writers, musicians and friends and family, for that matter, were from New York.

The Coast vs. Coast beef was just stupid. It seemed so contrived.

So the thought was to put out a video that would connect the two coasts seamlessly, both with locations and cameos. Everyone’s family to us, and the distance between the coasts is a non-issue.

We shot first in Hollywood on September 2nd, 2001, on Sunset, mostly around the Capital building. The shoot went smooth as butter. LA is always gorgeous in September; the song was a completely infectious good vibe track, and life was beautiful.

A day later we flew out and

VIKTOR TIMOFEEV

scouted locations in NY. Rakaa still needed something for his first verse, and the way the video was structured, it needed to be in NY somewhere: “ I got world wide family all over the Earth/ And I worry ‘bout em all for what ever its worth/ From the Birth to the Hearse, through streets these guns burst/ Words I disperse are here to free mines, and if mine are needy, I need to feed mine....”

I thought the WTC was a perfect backdrop for those words, and a very iconic NY image. So we permitted and went ahead, shooting in NYC at The World Trade Center on September 7th, 2001.

We shot at the base of the towers. While we were framing and lighting, I walked over to one of the buildings and leaned against it with my chest. I looked up all the way into the sky, which looked like it stretched for fucking miles -- a perfectly straight, unwavering monolith. Arguably an icon of Western Imperialism -- I mean, that’s why we were there shooting it. But something struck me.

It was just such a monument of human accomplishment. These enormous structures. What if I had wandered from the woods in 500 years onto a destroyed civilization, and came upon these gigantic towers…?

Humans are such amazing creatures.

Back on set, the guy we hired to be our “agent in dark clothes with ear piece” didn’t show. So I ended up grabbing a guy who was chillin’ by the fountain. He looked New York, worked on the 78th floor, and was on his lunch break. He already had a dark suit on and had been watching the production for a good half hour, so we fitted him with an ear piece from a PA’s walkie-talkie, got a signature, and threw him in the video. He was so stoked, and “couldn’t believe his luck.” He told me he’d been an extra once before, and always wanted to be in movies. He was late going back to work, but I needed a few more takes, and he stayed for us.

We exchanged emails and phone numbers to keep him up to speed once the video was finished.

I turned on the TV. Every sinSeptember 11th I was back in gle channel had burning towers.

Venice, California. I had been editing in my crib late into the night I’ll never forget, sitting at my before, and had left my AVID run- edit looking at the shots of the ning, the two Towers left up on towers from a few days bescreen. I WILL NEVER FORGET fore: perfect, stoic, unbreakable.

THAT. My most shattering mo- I was stunned. The TV playment on September 11th was be- ing them crumbling into dust, ing woken up by consistent phone the reporters voices seeming so calls and strange-sounding mes- distant. It was completely mindsages from upstairs. I heard my shattering. I keep flashing back mom sobbing and telling me to to the cold granite on my chest turn on the television, my dad as I leaned up against it, and the just repeating my name over and guy from the 78th floor, whom over, like I wasn’t picking up on we never heard from again. And purpose. Eventually I headed up the real armed security guard on stairs, walking by my edit, glanc- site who was screaming at some ing at the towers on my screens kids for playing in the fountain... for a split second. The words “GROUND ZERO” hadn’t en- “WCTW my peoples come first.” tered my consciousness yet, but -Dilated Peoples it was just a few moments away.

NEVER FORGET BY: WYATT NEUMANN EDITED BY: BAMBI

So I’m standing on the A train this morning and I’m looking across and there’s a dude in a polo type shirt with FDNY embroidered on the side. I’m thinking to myself, “Did this douchebag pick that shit up at the motherfucking FDNY/NYPD tourist souvenir shop or what the fuck?” I really hate that shit. Then I see his dude next to him wearing the same shirt, only his also has his name – “Marcos” – embroidered on it.

Shit’s real. Respect. Whatever.

Two stops later.

Brother next to me moves to get off. I shift, he moves. Then I look up and I see this: “9/11 has been covered from every perspective. Except his.”

I sit. I think about it. I start to get mad. I gotta get a flick of this shit.

I can’t believe my motherfucking eyes. But I got some straphanging motherfucker blocking the shot. I gotta get it. One stop goes by. Dudes still there. Two stops go by. Dude aint moving. Then I start thinking… what will these firefighters think of me catching a shot of this? They gonna get offended by some tattooed dude with a motörhead bag copping a shot of some bullshit president on some lying to the public shit? Hmm. Do I really wanna fight America’s Brav-

est? At 9 am? On the A train?

George Bush, man… that motherfucker. I start thinking about it.

“Never heard his perspective?”

Really? Isn’t this the same dude that wouldn’t let independent journalists into his press conferences? Isn’t this the same dude that would only answer queries about 9/11 and the ensuing war if they came from a pre-approved list of topics and appropriate questions? Or better yet, isn’t this the dude who covered for his corporate illuminati crony motherfuckers while they used their ties with the Middle East to stage, design, manipulate, corrupt and execute the greatest crime to ever be committed against the American people? That motherfucker? Yeah, okay, let’s hear his perspective on this shit. I’m in.

VIDEO SCREEN GRAB BY: JASON GOLDWATCH

GORDON STEVENSON ROBERT WALTZER

Problem is? It’s a lie. Ten years in the making. Where were the answers when the American people needed them? Where is my husband? Where is my wife? My son? My daughter? Did they make it out alive? Where were the warnings? Why weren’t strike fighters deployed from Quantico?

Or Ft. Dix? How did 220 stories of re-inforced steal I-beams and concrete collapse at nearfree fall speeds from an uncompressed kerosene fire? Is there any plausible, scientific explanation for the collapse of Building 7? Why did Osama bin Laden publicly decry and denounce involvement in the attack on the WTC 4 days after 9/11? Why did he then change his story three months later, and did the fact that his father and George Bush Sr. are business partners have anything to do with it? Where are the weapons of mass destruction?

tive on all that. Maybe while he’s standing on a box, naked, with a hood over his head and electrodes tied to his fingers. Or maybe hog-tied in an orange jumpsuit and after being subjected to sensory deprivation for months on end. No, that would be barbaric.

That would be torture. That’s… against international treaty law…

But isn’t that how we get the truth in this country? Isn’t that how we get honest “perspectives” from potential mass murderers and their accomplices?

Ladies and gentlemen, I do believe a waterboarding is in order.

right. I go in again, making a scene. Holding steady, get that framing; don’t blur that shit…

So there I am, Bad Religion raging in my headphones, and I’m thinking about all this, getting madder and madder. Two more stops. Thinking if these FDNY guys get in my face on some political shit, I’mma have to stand my ground and tell them what I think. After all, I am a New YorkAnd finally, how can you kill so many er, man; I have a perspective, too. innocent women and children?

Last stop. Bam, dude moves. I Yeah, I’d love to hear his perspec- go in for the shot. Fuck, it ain’t

“What’s that?”

ART: ALFREDO MARTINEZ PHOTO: ANDREI SOKOVIKOV

I got it.

I turn back to my camera to look at the shot but I keep one eye on America’s Boldest, just to see if they got something to say about it. Dude closest to me is staring at me. He looks at the poster. Back to me. Back to the poster. Back to me. Over to his friend. Says some shit.

Then looks at me. He says some shit. I pull out my headphones.

This guy, this New York City firefighter looks right at me, then turns and looks straight at the photo of George W. Bush, staring him in the eye and says blankly: “I don’t believe a goddamn word out of that fucking guy’s mouth.”

Yeah New York, that’s what’s up.

PHOTO: NATE “IGOR” SMITH

SKULLPHONE

THE LONG WALK HOME THE DAY AFTER TUESDAY BY: OSVADO CHANCE JIMENEZ

walk away. She gave up attending a private university -- I couldn´t even give up smoking. Her eyes reminded me of every single thing I hated about myself. Every disEDITED BY: BAMBI appointing decision I made comSeptember 12th, 2001 started pounded itself in every diaper I with a hangover - -and my usu- changed. I hung up the phone and al unemployed search for loose prayed she would be late forever. change so I could buy a newspaThen I turned on the TV. per, coffee, and buttered roll. I’d started every morning that way since I got my working papers That night the shelter was nice at the age of fifteen – minus the enough to allow my baby mother hangover (well, most of the time). and son to spend the night with I was 25 years old and had recent- me at my mother’s. We all slept ly been laid off from some internet together in a twin-sized bed. It company that promised high-end was the first time since my son fashions and a digital concierge was born that I wanted the both with more bugs than actual worth. of them so close to me. No I was also a brand new father -- one could have imagined someunemployed with a baby mother thing so amazingly catastrophic. in the New York City shelter sys- When you grow up in New York tem, and riding it out until her the first thing you do it look up at Section 8 came through so I could the skyscrapers. You have a trust pretend that I was a family man. in them. The steel behemoths of success and power filled with Every day of my life was me trying the white collars that run them to stretch out my unemployment and the blue collars that mainbenefits to cover whatever needs tain them -- they won’t fall on my son had … and consumption you. Trucks can’t knock them by a selfish need to smoke myself down. Planes don’t run into them. into complacency. I didn’t want The city as one living organism: this life. I was sleeping on the top somehow this works. Planes bunk I grew up on back at my don´t hit buildings; they wave mother’s apartment. I had a girl- hello and goodbye as they hug friend that I was pretty sure didn’t the clouds. The skyline loves you. love me and was only playing the role of a responsible person cop- My corner store was on edge. The ing with an unplanned pregnancy. I streets of the Lower East Side matched her with the crazy-Latin- were empty and eerily quiet. From boyfriend-from-the-projects rou- every window, all you heard was tine, who acted out whatever he the news blaring the same rhetoric learned about relationships from over and over. Every newscaster in the blunt guts and 40 oz.-covered the world was trying to win a Peabenches in his backyard. Need- body Award or an Emmy, putting less to say we didn’t last long. the events of yesterday in some sort of poetic and final context. I I woke up on September 11th just wanted to buy a newspaper. at exactly 9:03. My baby mother was calling me to let me know she “Mafeesh –“ (some derogatory would be late because of some Arabic word we would shout at activity at the World Trade Center. each other) “--where’s the Post?”

I adored my young son, and most “No Post today.” of my days were spent with them until their curfew was up. It was “What do you mean?” the most beautiful and yet also the tedious time of my life. Here “It didn’t come. No deliveries.”

I had this woman making the ultimate sacrifice in order for me to have a chance to be a doting fa- “So let me get a coffee light and sweet and a roll.” ther and all I wanted to do was

“My friend, nooooooo deliveries.”

Then the reality started to hit me.

There was no traffic outside apart from the fire trucks, police cars, news trucks, and ambulances.

Then the tanks started to roll in, and those big military trucks that you would only see in a episode of M.A.S.H. or whatever war movie that might be on HBO. My deli guy, a young dude from Iraq, held a bat. He was visibly nervous. Every Puerto Rican junkie with a brain cell left to watch TV was entering the store and throwing sly and loaded threats at him. Some were funny; others were just too real.

We’d known this guy all our lives and now everyone was looking at him like he was the enemy. The air in the bodega was suffocating with this newfound xenophobia aimed at Muslims, or anyone with a tan not brought on by rice and beans or the sun. I left and to walk north in search of a newspaper.

When the first tower collapsed, I cried. I thought about the daycares that were in those building for all those working moms.

I didn’t even know if there even was a daycare in those buildings, though for some reason the thought took me from smug educated Palestinian sympathizer to a wounded New York father. When my baby mother and son arrived I did the whole cliché-ish touchtheir-faces-to-see-if-they-werereally-alive thing, then ran outside.

I wanted a rooftop. I wanted to see the most amazing thing ever.

The first thing I saw was my best friend -- covered in ash -- crying hysterically. She would later tell me of running from downtown and how the plane flew over her head and into the building that was right across the street from where she worked. She would tell me of seeing people jump. I never told her how jealous I was.

After her, one by one, everyone I knew started to show up. Even kids that I hated or could never get along with came around -- everyone struck with an excited bewilderment about the day’s events.

No one could believe it. Everyone had a theory. But after the initial shock no one wanted to talk about it. Everyone just wanted to smoke weed and everyone wanted a beer or five. We congregated on 5th St. and Avenue C. When the block was nine months pregnant with all of us we went to a rooftop on East 4th. By then the second tower had already fallen, and lower Manhattan looked like the boiling top of an erupting volcano. I never saw the towers on fire, and secretly envied everyone who did.

As I arrived to 14th St. I realized what was going on. My entire neighborhood had been quarantined. Anything that needed to be carried that couldn’t fit in car wasn’t making it pass 34th St. The police, along with the M-16 carrying military, was asking for ID from anyone trying to go and ogle the wreckage. If you worked downtown you needed to show a work ID and if you were visiting someone they had to meet you at a checkpoint and come and get you. And then the military tanks… so many tanks. The only time I’d ever seen a tank before was once when I went to the Smithsonian in D.C. There they were, armed

and ready and on my street. had made it to work on time that morning -- and they had all died.

The mood on the rooftop was How do you thank God and curse oddly festive. Everyone from my the heavens in the same breath?

501, PTA graffiti - and a strong arm, any Chinese person with an By the time I found a newsstand orange bag - crews were there. . with a newspaper to sell I was We were a bunch of cantanker- well over 34th Street. By the time ous frenemies and there we were, I was walking back to the Lower breaking bread like we had never East Side the first of the missing decorated our own backs with person posters had started to go knives. No one dared to mix poli- up around Union Square and Beltics and religion about what had levue Hospital. Random strangers just happened. Every person just were comforting each other in the smoked and drank until his walk street and everyone was lighthome became an amnesia-filled ing candles and organizing vigils. stumble. Some of us brought our The crowds near the checkpoints dogs, while others had their roll- became bigger and bigger as the erblades on. We all laughed and day grew longer, resembling the shared. Everyone called their fam- opening bell at the stock marilies and told them they how much ket. Everyone knew someone they loved them. No one even who had died in those towers, looked at the smoke rising from and it was like the city had this the pile of rubble downtown -- same tragically romantic heartexcept for a set of brothers sitting beat. That, for some reason, had near a ledge comforting each oth- me feeling increasingly jealous. I er. This was their roof. Their sister started to compare the event to had worked at Cantor Fitzgerald the storyline in the graphic novand if it wasn’t for her alarm clock el The Watchmen – it was some mysteriously failing that morning, ruse by our current dimwitted she would have been in those president to get the people of the towers. A week before, we’d had world to like him, or a power move our annual BBQ in our backyard orchestrated by his illuminati and met several of her co-work- family. Pure hate and envy on my ers. The story was that they all part. All I had was the day’s his-

JORDAN SEILER

and a mind that could sleep at night because it didn´t witness 9/11. And there I was, here I am, talking about what’s “unfair”.

Several months would pass and before my baby mother finally get her Section 8 and I scored a job at New York Filmworks running the Audio/ Visual department. Here is where I found all these random photos taken by people in or around Ground Zero.

In the pile where a couple photos of Arabic men, armed and proud to be on the front line of whatever cause they where fighting for. I wondered if the see-saw of middle eastern politics and the harsh realities of every sunrise could harden a soul to the point that you could walk away from your family and die for a regime. I was living in America, and never had to make that choice.

As beautiful as it is to stand for something... I did not envy them.

Due to pro tools and other technologies, my department didn´t have much of a workload, so I would help out by doing local pick-ups and deliveries. One of my stops was the medical examiners office. By then the entire office looked like something out of a horror movie where the government tried to quarantine an outbreak. After going back and forth for a while I asked my boss what was in the black containers I kept picking up and dropping off and why was he on my ass every time I was a half hour late. I wished I didn’t. I was responsible for picking up and delivering the slides that countless 9/11 family members depended on to identify their loved ones remains. Every single workday was another face I saw loaded with hope twisted in deep sadness and despair. A sadness buried in confusion and anger with questions even god shied away from.

MICHAEL ANDERSON

toric newspapers and a gallon of milk that I was hoping it wouldn’t spoil on my long walk home.

The closer I got to my house the quieter the streets became minus the noise of emergency services and the smell of burning asbestos or whatever those building where made of.

The streets somehow became a playground due to the missing traffic: children rode blissfully on their bikes while the drug dealers hugged their corners on a beautiful late summer evening. The neighborhood drunks got drunk and the old ladies that gathered in front of stoops had a new fever to their eternal gossip. I walked my baby mother and my son to the train station as the shelter wouldn’t allow her another night out with her family. I didn´t want to let them go, but I had to. Everything was always so fucking unfair to me.

Look at me: I had my family, and a beautiful sunny day with every single friend that I grew up with

MISHA MOST, MOSCOW, RUSSIA