THE TOURIST REPORT
Ah, the things you learn when you have tourists in town.
» After much research, my brother has declared Little Italy's Lombardi's the best pizza in New York.
» Tickets to The Producers can be obtained daily with much effort. Every night, 18 standing room tickets are sold at 6 p.m. But people start lining up early - sometimes at 6 a.m. - meaning to get tickets you'll need to wait in line about five hours. Your chances improve when the weather is bad, and for the Wednesday night show (because the matinee that same day accommodates some of the competition.) In addition to the standing room tickets, there are usually some cancellations as well as a few tickets the theater holds (for VIPs?) that are sometimes available for sale near performance time.
» And here's an efficient/disturbing one, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has a new all-in-one transit map out, with an effective date of Sept. 19. They have already edited out all 1/9 subway stops below Franklin Street. Oddly, it even excludes Chambers Street, which has been open most days even though it abuts the no-access zone. At the map's big vacant spot in lower Manhattan, "World Trade Center" is printed in light blue.
- posted by Amy @ 10/18/2001 10:07:00 AM

 

CNN'S QUESTIONS FOR BIN LADEN
CNN has done something kind of interesting tonight by showing their hand to their viewers. In a statement read on the air, and posted on their website - a statement that bears the scent of the legal department - CNN says they've received a request from bin Laden for some questions. The request comes by way of Al Jazeera and CNN vows to "run only what we think is newsworthy." And CNN goes so far to pose their six questions on the air.
- posted by Amy @ 10/16/2001 11:11:00 PM

 

MORE GERMS
Germs recounts a meeting of terrorism experts in June 1995 - just two months after the bombing of the Murrah building in Oklahoma City and only three months after the Aum Shinrikyo cult released sarin gas in the Tokyo subway -- ultimately hoping to hasten Armmageddon. One of the experts at the meeting had something to say that rings especially loudly now:

"The copycat phenomenon, which we worry about a great deal in counterterrorism, is a real risk here," Philip C. Wilcox Jr., the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism, told a packed auditorium in Bethesda, Maryland. "Once it has happened, others will take their cue and try it again. Once the barrier has been breached, what was originally unthinkable now becomes more likely."

- posted by Amy @ 10/16/2001 10:53:00 PM

 

ANTHRAX CASE AT ABC
The latest case of anthrax - in a baby - is now linked to my former place of employment. Be safe out there.
- posted by Amy @ 10/15/2001 10:38:00 PM

 

GIULIANI IN THE PARK
Spent part of Sunday afternoon in Central Park and took a Central Park Conservancy guided tour with my husband and brother, who's in town for a few days. The park was fantastic, of course. The leaves are just starting to change and the weather is still warm. The tour was an east-to-west walk around 72nd Street - and we had pretty cool highlights on both side. As we were getting ready to start the walk, there was a big commotion as the Hispanic Day Parade came up Fifth Avenue, and then suddenly a lot of cheering and suited guys and cops walked in our direction. I said it must be Giuliani, but we couldn't see him until he got very close to us on the street leading into the park. He had been smiling and waving, but as he got close to the van that would take him away, it looked like he dropped his game face. He appeared tired and serious, like a man leaving a funeral. The crowds were energized even after he pulled away. It was like seeing a rock star. Then on the other side of the park, we saw Yoko Ono at the edge of Strawberry Fields.

Last night, I resumed reading the Germs book, the one co-written by the New York Times reporter, Judith Miller, who got the powder-filled threatening letter that shuttered the paper's office last week. (Her first-person account appeared in Sunday's paper.) The book talks about Giuliani, who apparently has been mentally preparing for this kind of thing for several years, which could help explain why he has had the coolest head since Sept. 11. Here's an excerpt:

Josh Lederberg continued to raise the alarm about civilian vulnerabilities. In May 1994, the New York City health commissioner, Margaret A. Hamburg, arranged for him to brief Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani on the biological threat. A former prosecutor, Giuliani had begun to grasp the political impact of public-health issues when the New York City tabloids broke the story of an eight-year-old killed by a rare form of streptococcus. Some parents panicked; there were calls to close every school where a child had strep throat - a move, Hamburg noted, that would have shut down every school. The incident, she recalled, marked the first time that Giuliani "understood how unsettling an invisible, infectious disease can be to a population."

The mayor was behind schedule, so the briefing began in the early evening. Lederberg offered a tutorial on the life cycle of the anthrax bug. Hamburg was dismayed. At the end of a long day, the mayor could not possibly be interested in such particulars. "The mayor's going to kill me," she remembered thinking. "But Giuliani loved it. They went into all kinds of detail - how many spores could you get into a lightbulb, that kind of thing. It went on for two hours."

- posted by Amy @ 10/15/2001 10:12:00 AM