{"id":2626,"date":"2007-08-16T03:14:29","date_gmt":"2007-08-16T11:14:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2007\/08\/we_are_all_gettysburg_now.html"},"modified":"2007-08-16T03:14:29","modified_gmt":"2007-08-16T11:14:29","slug":"we_are_all_gett","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2007\/08\/we_are_all_gett.html","title":{"rendered":"We Are All Gettysburg Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oh, please — as if you don’t understand what’s inherently cool about lucite Twin Towers trinkets<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The other day on the E train, a woman asked me how to get to “umm, Ground Zero.”<\/p>\n

I was a little bewildered, and not because I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to go there. What gave me pause was trying to decide how to proceed.<\/p>\n

I always like to give detailed, friendly directions to out-of-towners, if only to counteract the stereotype that all New Yorkers are rude. But of all the things to see and places to go on your first trip on a subway — as she said this was for her — why go there?<\/p>\n

I wanted to ask her if she’s been to the Met, the Empire State Building, Chinatown. The SoHo Apple store, perhaps?<\/p>\n

Instead I gave her detailed, if not quite friendly, directions. I made her work for it.<\/p>\n

“You don’t want to see that,” I said.<\/p>\n

“Yes, I do,” she replied.<\/p>\n

“It’s just a big hole in the ground, a construction site. Why go?”<\/p>\n

“To pay my respects, I suppose.”<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

That woman, respectful in her slumped shoulders and doe eyes, was one of a projected six million people who will visit Ground Zero this year, according to the Downtown Alliance. That’s six million out of a total 40 million tourists annually. These are people who, for the most part, we can assume, knew none of the thousands of victims.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oh, please — as if you don’t understand what’s inherently cool about lucite Twin Towers trinkets: The other day on the E train, a woman asked me how to get to “umm, Ground Zero.” I was a little bewildered, and not because I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to go there. What gave me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new_york_new_york_its_a_wonderful_town"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2626\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}