It could have been me.
I could not get that phrase out of my mind as I rode to work this morning.
It could have been me.
Today dawned bright and clear for me, as it did for them--yesterday. A beautiful mid-autumn day, sunny, a little chilly but not unpleasantly so, with strong breezes shaking leaves turned red and yellow from their branches and rippling reflections of the sky, glass, steel and concrete at the mouth of the Hudson.
In other words, the sort of day people picture in their fantasies about bike-riding in New York.
It could have been me.
And so they went for a ride, for fun. I was riding, too, in an entirely different part of town, from my job back to my apartment. Though they weren't going to work, many others who followed their path, on bike or on foot, no doubt were. I myself have ridden along that path, to work and for the same pleasures they were enjoying.
I could have been one of them.
Five came from Argentina--old friends celebrating the 30th anniversary of their graduation from their high school. Another came from Belgium, with her mother and sister. They survived because they weren't with her.
I could have been her.
So could any of the kids who were leaving Stuyvesant High School at that very moment. No doubt some of them sauntered along, or pushed or shoved each other (as high school kids are wont to do) into or along the path. They would hang out with other kids. Or they would go to practices in sports they play, languages they are learning, plays in which they are performing or skills for tests they will take and essays they will write in the hopes of getting into the colleges they or their parents choose. One assumes that one day, at least some of them will be part of some 30th anniversary celebration, wherever in the world they may be.
They could have been among them.
Still others walked dogs, pushed strollers and held hands as they strolled along the nearby piers. Or they sluiced through crowds on skates and skateboards. They were all mere blocks away from the 9/11 Memorial and even closer to--though, as fate would have it, a world apart from--the Argentinian and Belgian tourists on bicycles.
I could have been with them.
For a time in my life, I was riding daily along the stretch of the Manhattan Greenway known officially as the Hudson River Greenway-- or more commonly as the West Side Highway Bike Path-- along the stretch that separates Greenwich Village, SoHo and Tribeca from the river. At that time, it was part of my route to work. Before and since then, I have ridden there for pleasure--sometimes as part of a city jaunt, as the tourists did yesterday; other times en route to a ferry or bridge that would take me to another part of my ride. More often than not, I rode alone, but sometimes I'd accompany whomever I happened to meet--along the way to my job or wherever else I happened to go.
They could have been with me.
Every time I pedaled along that path, I was home within a few hours. Today I will be home about 40 minutes after I leave work and get on my bike. They, I am sure, thought they were going home, too--today, tomorrow, next week or the week after.
I could have gone with them.
But they are not going home. They probably never even imagined that they wouldn't: They could not have foreseen the way their rides, their vacations, their journeys, would end.
It could have ended that way--for me, for anybody.
The Argentinians, the Belgian, never suspected that under a clear autumn sky in New York, death would descend upon them. They certainly never expected it to come in the form of a van jumping the barrier that kept all of the other West Street traffic away from them, or for said van to be driven by someone who knew nothing about them except that they were riding bicycles peacefully. On their bikes, they never expected to meet the fate of the folks sipping drinks at Le Carillon or listening to music at the Bataclan. Or the ones enjoying a fireworks display on Bastille Day or shopping in a Christmas marketplace. Or simply out on a summer day.
No one expects it to end that way.
Of those five Argentinians and the Belgian who went for a bike ride--and two others who went for a walk--on the West Side Bike Path, all that remain are mangled bicycles and shards of clothing and other personal items. They went for a stroll, they went for a ride, and each of them is gone, gone, gone.
It could have been me.
I can only be grateful that it wasn't. My thoughts are with the victims.
Today I rode into Manhattan for a couple of errands and to have lunch with Bruce. Even though I rode my "beater" (the Le Tour), I decided take a bit of a ramble around the city.
Somewhere along the way, it seems, a hipster couldn't bear giving up his bike when he got married and had a kid:
This Peugeot "Nice" was parked across the street from where the World Trade Center once stood. I've seen bikes like it--which may also have been Nices--in France and Montreal. But this is the first time I've seen one here in New York.
To be fair to hipsters, that paint job is pure '80's.
Aside: I didn't go anywhere near the WTC for a couple of years after 11 September. Although I didn't lose anyone I knew, I simply couldn't bear to be around it.
I continued down Broadway to the ferry terminals. I missed the day's last ferry to Governor's Island and I decided I didn't really want to take the ferry ride to Staten Island, as much as I enjoy it.
Another aside: Staten Island is at its closest to the rest of New York at the Verrazano Narrows, where the eponymous bridge crosses it. At that point, SI is about 4300 feet from New York. However, the island is only 600 feet away from New Jersey. After the English took New York and New Jersey from the Dutch (who took it from the Lenape Indians), they supposedly settled the dispute over whether Staten Island belonged to New York or New Jersey with a boat race:
Was anyone accused of doping? Maybe they can use the Tour de France to decide whether France or Spain gets Andorra.
Anyway, I rode up the Greenway that skirts the Hudson. Lots of the cyclists I saw today probably moved to New York in the last few years. They don't remember the city without the Greenway. They also probably think the Christopher Street Pier always looked something like this:
I remember when it looked nothing like that. My earliest memories were more like what you see in this photo Ross Lewis took in 1993:
Believe it or not, I actually ventured out onto the pier when it was something like that. My first adventure there was during my high school years, in the mid-1970's. I don't remember much about it because, well, I did something teenagers sometimes do when they're someplace they're not supposed to be. I don't think I would've gone onto that pier if I weren't intoxicated. In fact, I probably wouldn't have crossed under the elevated West Side Highway. A truck crashed through it in the early 1970's; although it was closed immediately, it wouldn't be demolished for another 15 years. In the meantime, only those who were intoxicated, adventurous or simply had noplace else to go would cross under that highway to get to piers that were, in some cases, literally falling into the water.
For a long time, those derelict quais were among the few places to which the public had access on New York City's hundreds of miles of shoreline. New York is different, in that sense, from other seaport towns like Boston, San Francisco and Istanbul: Until recently, there was really no individual or civic pride in the waterfront. It seemed as if one's social status was directly proportional to how far one was from the water. That might be the reason why addresses along Fifth Avenue, which is further from the waterfront than any other New York City Avenue, became the most prestigious in the city.
I have long said that New York could be, by far, the most beautiful city in the world if its waterfront were cleaned up. I'm glad to see that's happening, finally. Still, it's almost surreal to see the shorelines become places of recreation.
One of my uncles worked on the Brooklyn docks; as a teenager, my mother worked in a factory just steps away from those docks. When I was a child, my father worked in a factory that was less than a block from the 57th Street pier, which is only about half a mile from the Intrepid. Those workplaces, not to mention those jobs, are long gone. In fact, the old Maritime Union headquarters in Brooklyn, which took up an entire square block, is now Al-Noor, said to be the largest Muslim elementary school in the United States.
I continued up the Greenway past the Boat Basin, Harlem toward the George Washington Bridge
On my way back, I saw this charmingly theatrical facade:
This building was the old Audubon Ballroom. Many jazz performers played there; in addition, the Audubon was a movie theatre and a meeting-place for labor activists. However, it seemed not to recover from having been the site of Malcolm X's assassination until Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center turned it into a research laboratory during the 1990's.
How much else will change by the time I take another ride like the one I took today?
