One of my high school friends, Peter Kaczorowski, had won the Tony Award for lighting design for The Producers, which was THE hottest show on the great white way. My wife and I got tickets for our weekend anniversary in mid-September for another show he had worked on. It was to be my first trip to the city ever. We were really looking forward to it.
Then IT happened. We thought about not going on our vacation in the days that followed. Then one day Mayor Rudy Giuliani appeared on TV imploring people to please keep visiting the city. So we went - 10 days after.
It wasn't like it was, as I had imagined, nor was it like anything we had encountered in subsequent years. There were no jets flying overhead. There wasn't a lot of tourist traffic and the air had a certain smell and feel to it, not unlike, I would imagine, that of a war zone after the smoke had cleared.
I spent my Friday night, September 21, 2001, standing in line for about 4 hours just to see if I could get tickets to the hottest show in town. At about 5 minutes before the curtain was to open, I was at the front of the line, losing hope that I’d get those tickets. A lady came up to the front door and said, “Oh…Nathan Lane’s not performing tonight…” Then she approached me and sold those 4th row tickets to me at face value.
It was a time of great generosity in The Big Apple.
We were at a diner and there was hardly anyone in the diner except for us and a table of 6 or 8 of the responders in this usually jam packed eatery near Times Square. They looked pretty weary, like they had worked 24/7 which they probably nearly had. We called the waiter over and offered to pay for their meal.
The offer was refused. He simply said, "those guys eat for free here."
TJ Gallivan
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