Tower Of Strength

There’s a train you can take from Hoboken terminal called the PATH (Port Authority Trans Hudson) train. If you’re out and about in town and it’s past 1am then this is the way to get home.

The other day, I was out and about in town (sans Stephanie, avec three ladies – one make-up girl, one creative director cousin and one talent agent) and took it upon myself to drink plenty of Stella. Despite my preconceptions that US booze is for girls by about 1 o’clock I was several sheets to the wind, having managed to start a row with the women and pour beer on my crotch. Again. I wandered through the cold empty streets, walking straight as an arrow, singing beautifully and thinking clearly about my transport options. I knew that somewhere on 26th Street was the PATH train and that it would take me nearer home. Having tried and failed to call Steph a couple of times to clear up which Avenue (the only number I could remember was my own, which I rang but kept getting voicemail) I’d walked the entire width of Manhattan before I gave up and got a taxi (I gave the driver directions, which after a while he ignored or we’d still be sharing a coffee in Albany about now).

Back to the PATH train, and aside from somewhere on 26th Street, it also goes to the World Trade Center (sic). I’d been here once in 2004 and I visited again this past week. Nothing has happened in those two years and the place still has something strange about it. On the face it just looks like a building site, but with the surrounding tall buildings still covered in scaffolding and the displays around the place you do get a sense of the scale of what occured there. Here’s a couple of photos of the fence:

That last photo is the PATH station entrance which they have recently reconstructed and which, by the way has about a dozen fully working (at the same time!) escalators put together in only a couple of years. London Underground might want to find out who built them. Anyway, I was here as it’d just been on the telly that they had started laying the foundations for the replacement buildings.

Personally if I was in charge of this multi-billion dollar construction (and no I’m not, despite recent successes hanging pictures) I would have stuck two fingers up to the terrorists and rebuilt them exactly as they were. Instead we have the Freedom Tower. I actually don’t mind the architecture, imagine a glass skyscraper with a pointy bit on top and you’ve got it. None of the character of the Empire State or Chrysler buildings or any of the London Gherkin silliness just a quite tall building (at 1776 – sheesh – feet it should come in around number 3 in the world). It’s the name I mind. The Freedom Tower ? Come on, that is just gay. The country is 200 years old, not 12. Somewhat ironically the attacks on the World Trade Center which now allow for the contruction of the Freedom Tower, also led to the introduction of the Patriot Act which allows the government to look at your medical records, search your house, listen to your phone calls and most importantly find out which videos you’ve rented, all without a warrant, or even telling you. Fortunately my recent rental of “My Brown Eye: Not The Winker, The Stinker” was under Steph’s name.