PATH Train
Our big New York news this morning is that the PATH train station to New Jersey has re-opened at Ground Zero. It's actually in the pit. The radio report this morning said it's packed with commuters already - loaded with a range of emotions. Overall, it's upbeat (the renewal theme) but some people stood in stunned silence and others cried - not prepared for the exposed areas of the pit.

The closure of that station actually had a big impact on my old neighborhood in the West Village. We lived about a block away from the PATH station on Christopher, so ever since 9/11, all the Wall Street crowd has had to take buses or the 1/9 subway up to Christopher after work everyday. Soon after the market closed each weekday, a line of people snaked out of the Christopher station and down the block to Hudson Street. This lasted for a couple hours and overlapped slightly with the young tranny kids coming in from Jersey who intended to hang out on Christopher and on the piers overnight. And some drug dealers also worked that corner of Christopher/Hudson. To make the whole situation slightly less comfortable, the station itself is pretty skanky and only has one entrance/exit. The city launched a big plan to build another entrance on Christopher across Hudson but the neighbors all protested and put signs in the windows - complaining that another entrance would only bring more of the transvestite boys and their crime to the neighborhood.

So now all those commuters can go back to their routine downtown, and one 9/11 ripple in the Village recedes.
- posted by Amy @ 11/24/2003 09:57:00 AM