We understand your need; please understand ours and other New York City, NY Tourist Trap Tips

The site of the World Trade Center is something you, as a visitor, cannot avoid. You need to see it with your own eyes in order to fully comprehend what the dramatic photos and the horrific videos cannot convey. It happened to you, too.

But we are the ones who saw it happen. Most of us either lost someone that day or know someone who did. Over the weeks afterwards, the warm soft air of September, the same ambiance that inspired the song, "Autumn in New York," carried an an unmistakable and unspeakable stench of the thousands of dead. We lost too many of our brave firefighters, dependable EMS and resolute police to ever forget. For months afterwards, the city was papered with flyers and photos seeking information that would never come.

For myself, on the night of September 10th, I had dinner in an outdoor cafe less than 100 yards away from the South Tower, on the river walk. Afterwards, my dinner companion and I sat on a bench within 50 feet of the boats in the little harbor and chatted with a young mother who said how privileged she, her husband and her toddler were to live in the apartment whose window she pointed to. He worked in one of the upper floors.

A few minutes after 9am the next morning, as I watched the burning North Tower from my window in Jersey City, the second plane, flying abnormally low, turned directly overhead, then sharply back above the Statue of Liberty. I knew exactly where it was headed and screamed at it to stop. My neighbor down the hall, who had come to my window because her view was limited, collapsed when it hit because her she knew that her nephew worked on the very floors it had entered.

I tell you this you so will understand my own need to rage at those who stand on that sacred ground and peddle lurid booklets and videos to you. You will understand why, as I pass through the temporary PATH station, onto the plaza, I will interrupt the sale of that pornography. I ask you, please do not buy it.

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At Least Do This: Please discourage anyone else from buying that crap. I promise you, possessing and looking at it will not be good for your own mental health. You will discover that it is not a souvenier you will put on your night stand or show to your friends with delight and shared fun.
Alternative: Go inside the St Paul Chapel and leave a donation. Visit the official Fire Department Memorial Wall at the site of Firehouse #10 on Liberty Street. You will find in those acts the closure and peace that the violent pornography of the attack cannot provide.