Ground Zero

Today I learned I hate tourists. Not all tourists. Not even for the obvious reasons. Let me explain.

To me, tourists are like pigeons; they're just a part of the city. I generally ignore them and am not generally annoyed by them. Are there instances where they're in the way when I'm trying to get somewhere? Certainly. Are there instances where I have to jump out of the way of a photo? Yes. Do these things bother me? Not really. It's part of commuting to and working in the city, especially Downtown. Not to sound glib, but it is what it is.

When I quit smoking, I decided that once a day, sometimes twice, given the time, I would take a walk. New York is, after all, a walking city, so why not take advantage, take a break, get some fresh early fall air (even if it is interspersed with diesel fumes), and replace my bad habit with something good? The loop around City Hall Park and by the Brooklyn Bridge is perfect, but it's gotten stale. Broadway down to the water and back is great, but it's too long and too crowded. Today, I decided to take a loop around Ground Zero and come back. Perfect distance. Perfect day. Perfect amount of time. I mapped it and set out into the glorious afternoon sun.

I stepped out onto Fulton Street - which I have learned is wide by Downtown standards - and headed down to Church, hooked a right onto Church, and ran smack dab into a tour group with matching red hats. I meandered through them and subsequent groups, crossed Vesey, cut left and inside another tour group into a mass horde of more tour groups, smaller groups of European tourists, and PATH commuters. It was a game to me. I snaked through group after group, hitting the brakes, looking for my hole, and swoop! Repeat 10-15 times.

I continued on Vesey through a cloistered almost-tunnel, in typical Downtown early-20th Century architecture, and hooked left across Vesey onto West, which surprisingly was not as crowded as the first part of my journey. Once I passed 1 WTC and saw the park, my first thought was I realized where all these tourists I have been seeing since I started working down here have been going. It was like every single one of them, every one of them that has bumped into me, asked me for directions, walked by me speaking in a different language to each other, it's like they were all there. All at that one time. It was a true lightbulb moment.

I continued to meander and snake. Tourists of all size and stripe stood at the sides of the 1-acre pools - footprints of where the towers stood - taking pictures. Of the pools, of 1 WTC, of each other, of themselves. I thought about the time I came to New York in 1990. I thought about riding the bus down West Street with my parents and being confronted by this enormous silver monolith.

"Dad," I asked. "Is that the World Trade Center?"

"Yeah," he said. "That's one of 'em."

My ten-year-old self had never seen anything of that size and scale. I was blown away. And there were two of them! To stand between them felt like you were at the center of the world. That's what I thought about on 9/11.

I was never one of those people who got all emotional about 9/11, besides in the typical non-New-Yorker, non-Washingtonian sense: find the bastards who did this, hang them by their balls with meat hooks, and give any American who wanted to the opportunity to land one solid punch in their face. It was what I thought was the most fitting punishment. Yes, 9/11 was an affront to me as an American, but I didn't have to live with it and be reminded of it every single day. Even now that I'm working Downtown, my first thought was "Uggh, is it gonna be a zoo down here on Thursday?" (It actually wasn't)

But, I digress. Walking around those footprints, something stirred. Something dark, something mean, something depressing. And these people just flock here everyday to take pictures of it. I started to realize these were familiar feelings. I had them at Auschwitz, which is sacred ground for a Jew. Maybe I had more emotions about 9/11. Maybe I had empathy for New York and it's people that I never knew I had. I started to get angry - it's usually where I go when I get sad. I had to get out of there. OK, be cool. Just finish the loop and get the hell out of there.

As I walked on the east side of the Tower 2 footprint, three Spanish girls where trying to pose themselves for a picture. They weren't getting their act together. They were jabbering on about angles, and where to stand. I became incensed. As one of them put her iPhone up to take the picture of another, I walked within six inches in front of the phone, ruining her picture. "Gracias!" she said, sarcastically. Without turning around, I flicked her off and kept walking.

There were so many things I wanted to say and do that I was disappointed I only flicked her off. "Fuck you and your picture, you vapid touron!" was one of them. Knocking the phone to the ground and breaking it was another. The burning tingling was still roiling in my stomach as I turned to the south side. "I need to get out of here," I said to myself, barely audibly.

I turned right back on to West and almost had tears in my eyes. This is sacred ground to me, I realized, and is to many, many people. And tourists like these girls just wanted to get their selfies. It was a photo op for social media. They don't have these feelings of angst and sadness that I now know I have. And I hated them for it.

On the way back, I dodged people like I did on the way down, but this time it wasn't a game; it was with a purpose. St. Paul's beaconed me; "Come back to where it's safe." Fulton Street never looked more welcoming. As I entered my building, I exhaled emphatically. I was safe. All that was left to do was to ride the elevator up 10 floors, where I would be perched above the streets and the ambling masses.