Reflecting on another crisis, 19 years ago – Tribeca Citizen

April 9, 2020 Community News

When I bought the Tribeca Citizen from Erik just over a year ago, I never thought I would be producing daily coverage of a pandemic for weeks on end. In fact, on March 11 I was chatting on email with S. and Tom Miller about the history of a building called Hope. Thats my marker for when this all began the last post I did in the normal Tribeca. In the past month, not only has the world turned upside down, but we still dont know when it will right itself.

There is one thing I keep hearing from shopkeepers, residents, business owners: even September 11th didnt feel this way. There is a pall maybe its the uncertainty that has yet to lift. Perhaps folks in other neighborhoods are feeling the same way, but other neighborhoods were not ours nearly two decades ago and dont have that same point of comparison.

It first sunk in when I got this note from Hal Bromm on March 19, who was by then working remotely after he closed his West Broadway gallery:

These days I think back to the morning of September 11th. Walking north on the Westside Highway among the silent, stunned procession of powder-covered survivors, a ringing phone interrupted. A man near me answered his mobile, stunning us all as he shouted, Theyve just hit the Pentagon! It felt like WW3 had begun.

After ending the call, he observed to no one in particular that this day will change everything. How right he was. But perhaps that sea change to all our lives will ultimately seem small compared to the impact this will have on our lives. Who knows what life a year from now will look like?

I was not here in 2001 we moved from Chelsea in 2004 but I welcome here in comments thoughts and reflections on that time versus this one. And what we might do to make our lives look somewhat similar to the one we left behind a hundred years ago.

See the article here:

Reflecting on another crisis, 19 years ago - Tribeca Citizen