"Eh, excuse me," a man says to me in a European accent, "Ground Zeh-ro?" We are on Vesey Street.
"It's right there," I answer, pointing behind him, "you've passed it."
For anyone living in New York who doesn't know, tourists descend upon the former site of the World Trade Center each day in droves. Indeed, they now arrive by tour bus and swarm out onto Church Street, perhaps around to Vesey or Liberty, or if they are really adventurous, over to the World Financial Center, for a view from the Winter Garden. They cluster around the metal barrier that forms the perimeter of the site, trying to take pictures through its grid. And they point.
At what? There is nothing to see. A construction site, a lot of vehicles, but not a lot of activity. What do they expect to see? Most of them never even saw the World Trade Center, so what does its absence mean to them? A couple of vendors sell cheap souvenirs with garish photos of the attacks, emblazoned with the word "TRAGEDY" in block letters, along with counterfeit FDNY baseball caps.
And so the tourists shuffle around, the office workers race past, the construction workers hold up the backdrop, and that is where we are four and a half years later.
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The families of 9/11 victims are moving to establish their own Ground Zero memorial and visitors' center at 120 Liberty Street. For more information:
http://tributenyc.org/
Exhibits will include videotaped oral histories from first responders who participated in the rescue and recovery effort. The families' association (http://www.911wvfa.org/) is also launching a volunteer guide program, training survivors, family members and community residents to give tours of the Ground Zero site.
Exhibits for the the Tribute Center are being designed by Monadnock Media (www.monadnock.org), an award-winning multimedia design firm.
--A friend of the Porcupine
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