Shell of a Town

What local colleges have a better student life than College Park? Strayer, AU, Georgetown, GW, Southeastern, GMU, Howard, NOVA, Catholic, Montgomery College, Marymount, Gallaudet, UDC

By David Morton

All you really need to know about the nightlife in College Park, Md., boils down to one word: faggot.

Apparently lots of faggots wander around the few bars in the city’s small commercial district, getting on people’s nerves. Those in the know say you should definitely avoid the Cornerstone Grill and Loft at the corner of Route 1 and Knox Road, one of the three main drinking establishments catering to the University of Maryland’s more than 34,000 students.

“I don’t want to deal with the faggots,” says Mark, a 19-year-old freshman, on a recent Saturday night. He’s on his way to R.J. Bentley’s Filling Station, the Cornerstone’s neighbor and chief rival. The Cornerstone just has too many guidos, he says. “They spike their hair in this onion bloom.”

Five junior women, Bentley’s regulars, offer detailed support for the contention: The Cornerstone is very Greek, plays “black-girl music,” and is filled with kids from New York and New Jersey who wear heels and gel up their hair. At Bentley’s, though, the dress is more casual. It plays “white-girl music” (the girls themselves are white), and it hosts a big contingent from Baltimore prep schools. If that’s not reason enough, three of the girls say they got their faces licked by random guys at the Cornerstone. “I was fingered!” says another of the girls, seemingly astonished by the recollection. “Yeah, I wasn’t happy about it,” she adds.

There was a faggot sighting just the night before. Shortly after the bars’ closing time, a student was walking along nearby Princeton Avenue when a car drove by. According to Prince George’s County police, the driver called the student a faggot. The student kicked the car. The driver stopped the car, grabbed a crowbar, and attacked the student. They both ended up at the hospital. The faggot apparently put up a good fight.

Tonight, also around closing time, a fight breaks out inside the Cornerstone. Bouncers quickly muscle the combatants out, but they carry on fighting outside. One guy gets his face beat in near the curb. Two others are grappling on the median of Route 1. Within minutes, two quick bursts of gunfire punctuate the proceedings. A bouncer later tells the police that a man fired several shots in the air and then fled.

The officers briefly wave their flashlights on the pavement, trying to find any of the spent shell casings among the students milling around. J., a Cornerstone bouncer sporting a Jägermeister lanyard, finds one. It is small and gold-colored and resting in a sidewalk crack at the corner.

“That’s a .22!” J. exclaims to his bouncer buddies who’ve congregated around his discovery. “What kind of bullshit is that?”

“That’s a 9 mm,” counters another bouncer.

“I’m in the military,” argues a Cornerstone patron. “That’s too small to be a 9 mm.”

A bouncer from another bar ends the debate: “Let’s put money on it,” he says. J. puts a pint glass next to the casing as a makeshift evidence marker.

A Cornerstone bouncer sees a kid lingering in the street and orders him away. “Faggot!” the kid replies.

“Faggot” bookends Saturday. It is the opening salvo and the closing remark of another bungled attempt at the collegiate experience. Downtown College Park, or what counts for downtown, becomes at night a vile broth of popped-collar thugs and P.G. violence, a street play of lowest common denominators. Oh, you can grab a smoothie, too. Those with a taste for brain food or quirkier fare ought to look elsewhere. College Park is just not that kind of town.

University of Maryland President C.D. Mote Jr., in his recent State of the Campus address, touted the school’s solidifying status as a top 20 public university, a huge leap from its reputation a generation ago as a meathead party school. These days at the state’s flagship campus, the average GPA for incoming freshmen is a 3.9. Most cracked 1200 on the SAT. Yet those figures, while impressive, aren’t good enough. A 20-year project is underway to propel Maryland into the small circle of elite public schools that includes Michigan, Cal, Wisconsin, and Virginia. Maryland, said Mote, is about halfway there.

But whatever the president’s success might be on the academic front, Maryland will never rank among the heavyweights. Stocking the student body with mathletes has done little to address College Park’s greatest shortcoming: It has the locational charm of a highway rest stop. The campus itself possesses lovely qualities, such as tasteful neo-Georgian architecture and the wide grassy expanse of McKeldin Mall. The town has neighborhoods that are as green and chock-full of pre-war cottages as Takoma Park. But it doesn’t suffice. Instead of an Ann Arbor, a Berkeley, a Madison, or a Charlottesville—perennial chart-toppers on lists of America’s most livable cities—you somehow get, in College Park, an ugly shopping strip, a scarcity of choice, an air of lurking danger, and the promise of thoughtless mayhem. According to FBI figures reported in the Diamondback, the principal college newspaper, Maryland has the highest rate of violent crime among universities of comparable size.

Perhaps nothing in recent memory puts the gap between better grades and better living in starker relief than the recent student tradition of rioting. The first major occurrence was in 2001, when the Duke basketball team ousted Maryland at the Final Four. Fans took over downtown, broke through glass storefronts, ripped up the adjacent residential neighborhood, and hauled out furniture and fence posts to feed the flames. The final damage toll was more than $500,000. Similar violence followed Maryland’s national basketball championship in 2002. Three state troopers were reportedly injured, and an off-duty Metrobus driver, in uniform, lost vision in one eye. The rioting, says Maj. Cathy Atwell, spokesperson for the university’s Department of Public Safety, follows major matchups, win or lose, basketball or football, and certainly whenever Duke is involved. In April, when the Maryland women’s basketball team beat Duke for the national title, hundreds of sudden fans took to the streets again and tried to tip over a shuttle bus. Amid the chaos, a sophomore had her legs crushed on Route 1 by an oncoming car.

So now, after big games, university police come out with pepper spray, riot helmets, and “turtle suit” armor, often assisted by county, state, and park police. Violence like this hasn’t cropped up on campus or near it since the antiwar demonstrations of the ’70s. Now it happens because Duke sucks. Or maybe because otherwise the campus will lack distinction.

The phenomenon puzzles residents and officials, and the fact that it also occurs elsewhere offers little solace. “I’ve read books on it; I’ve talked to psychologists,” says Maj. Atwell. “I don’t know why they do it.” Atwell was shocked when she heard undergraduates saying it was the riots that inspired them to come to Maryland. An alum herself and a 28-year veteran of the university’s force, the major now sometimes roots for Maryland teams to lose.

Without a single solution to the spurts of mindless violence, Atwell hopes the rioting will pass from fashion—already the unruliness has faded significantly in intensity. The president has made ending the embarrassing riot culture one of his highest priorities. If things get out of hand, and you’re caught in the crowd by one of the campus security cameras, you can be expelled.

A more complete strategy would complement the threat of punishment with positive incentives. Students are obviously bored. Try this: Make College Park worth not destroying.

For about a quarter century, Jim Dodson has survived on paper-thin margins. Since 1983, he has sold comics in the main commercial district along Route 1, near the corner with Knox Road. Before then, as a graduate student in entomology, he would rent space once a week at the student union. With every comic order, he assumes significant risk. Clogging the shelves right now are more than 25 issues of perhaps his worst recent investment, Supergirl, Lost Daughter of Krypton No. 9. The title’s popularity has fallen off “precipitously” from the months before, says Dodson, shaking his head.

Dodson often lets personal fancy trump business acumen. For the past seven years, he has dedicated a whole floor-to-ceiling shelving unit and about $1,500 to books espousing the libertarian philosophy he shares. In 2004, he changed the name of the store from the Closet of Comics to Liberty Books & Comics, creating confusion among passers-by who think used books are the more important component of the store. Sales of the political volumes are rare. “It’s my heart saying, ‘I support this publisher!’” he says. “But you don’t sell one damn one of them.” He bought 100 copies of a 19th-century political tract he likes to just give away, and when I decline an offered copy, his shoulders slump in disappointment.

Liberty Books represents exactly the kind of profit-ambivalent operation that College Park desperately needs more of. By appealing to obscure tastes, by taking risks with your stock, you help build an interesting downtown. If only there was more room. The buildings aren’t very big, there’s not much retail space, and what space becomes available commands sky-high rent. For the most part, only national chains can buy in.

So in recent years, downtown College Park has lost a card-and-gift store, the Planet X coffeehouse, a yarn store, and Terrapin Taco House, which had been in business for 34 years. The Maryland Book Exchange was once the finest bookstore in the Washington area; according to Kyle McAbee, 53, a former employee of a long-gone rival store, the Exchange “attempted to get every book in print.” Now half of the store’s floor space is dedicated to Terps gear. Independently owned Vertigo Books, which moved from Dupont Circle, partially makes up for the losses, but the shopping area has also gained Starbucks, Smoothie King, Potbelly, Noodles & Company, Cold Stone Creamery, and about a dozen other generic, market-tested sure things—almost all of it food. Ask an undergraduate what he values most about College Park, and as likely as not he will say Chipotle, and he will boast the true fact that the local franchise has rung up some of the company’s highest sales. “It has the best meat,” says Evan Doyle, a 21-year-old senior. “It’s spicy—but not so spicy that people who don’t like spicy won’t like it.”

The place with the most traffic, though, has to be Wawa, although its customers show it little outward affection. On weekend nights after the bars close, students stream in, crowding the store with their bursting nihilism, and attack the shelves. Nick, a 19-year-old sophomore, says that his friends play a game based on who can pop the most bags of chips. “Fourteen is the record,” he says; the champion got caught on No. 15.

That’s not college. That’s College Park.

On a recent Monday evening, the motor of an air conditioning unit overheats on the fifth floor of an off-campus student high-rise. Local firefighters respond with overwhelming force. A fleet of four firetrucks and four or five SUVs flying the colors of various local fire companies tears down Route 1 and climbs Knox Road into the apartment tower’s parking lot. Soon after, the men are peeling off their gear and uncoupling a hose from the hydrant. Another night, another siren serenade. “We call it the sound of home,” says Christine Dollymore, 47, a longtime College Park resident. “If we don’t hear the fire engines, something’s wrong.”

Fire resonates with particularly tragic memories in College Park. Earlier this year, 22-year-old senior David Ellis died in a fire at one of the notorious “Knox Box” apartments, clusters of cheap rental blocks abutting the south end of campus. In May, 20-year-old junior Daniel Murray was charged with setting the fire at a rental home on Princeton Avenue last year that killed 22-year-old senior Michael Scrocca. Murray was allegedly drunk and angry at being taunted by people at a party hosted at the house, so he returned early that morning while everyone in the house was asleep and threw a lit broom on the porch couch. In 1912, a catastrophic fire burned nearly the whole campus to the ground.

College Park isn’t actually always aflame. The main reason for the constant racket is because Route 1 is the central conduit of area traffic to and from the Beltway at the northern border of town. Several local fire companies use it to reach highway car wrecks. That is but one of the many ways the state road channels bad vibes through town.

The road, four lanes parted by a suicide turning lane, is the spine of the city—and also its angry heart. Formerly a stagecoach trail between Baltimore and D.C., it would later define what College Park was to become: divided. The campus grew longitudinally, stretching south to north along the west side of the road. Most of the city developed longitudinally along the east side. There would be no center where the two would meet, not unless you count the wide road itself.

That the university would be located here at all, near the eventual confluence of I-95 and the Beltway, and within 20 miles or so of Maryland’s population centers, ensured that the College Park campus would have a heavy commuter contingent. More students have been living on or near campus in recent years, but about 10,000 undergrad and graduate students purchase parking permits, and many of them live outside College Park. Route 1 is their driveway. At rush hours it is a parking lot. Returning home, traveling the two-and-a-half miles from the main gate to the Beltway can take, in some extreme circumstances, an hour and a half.

You know you’ve had a deprived college experience when half of it takes place in a car. For those who drive, heading to campus is the equivalent of going to work. Home—where you buy groceries, eat, and sleep; where you raise a family, vote, and host neighborhood barbecues; where you watch fireworks, bowl, and pay taxes—is elsewhere.

It was the university’s bad luck to be founded, exactly 150 years ago, about 10 miles from downtown Washington. At the time, 10 miles was a long way, and the capital was too small to matter. But a century later, the college town found itself a commuter suburb. Area amenities concentrated elsewhere, and communities like Takoma Park, with its small-scale charms unbothered by a major thoroughfare, became more desirable places to live.

Eric Olson, a 36-year-old member of College Park’s city council, recently gave me an evening tour of the town. We drive in Olson’s green Chevy pickup through his beautiful neighborhood of old cottages at the south end of town, and very quickly we’re out onto Route 1 and into the downtown district. Olson, who handles smart growth and transportation issues at the Sierra Club, says the city is finally redeveloping the area to make it more townlike. Within a few years, the anonymous City Hall building behind the shopping strip will be demolished and replaced with a mixed-use development—condos on top, retail at the ground floor. There will also be a new parking garage, something desperately demanded by store owners who cater to a commuter-heavy campus. As it is now, “we get all the negatives of the traffic and none of the benefits,” Olson says.

We drive farther north up Route 1, which is called Baltimore Avenue on the signs, past the university’s main entrance and the horseshoe of Fraternity Row, and now it’s standard exurban no man’s land. Empty lots, Jiffy Lube, Taco Bell, boarded-up restaurants, chain motels. There are several gems out here, too, such as the College Perk coffeehouse and Alario’s Italian Pizzeria and Restaurant. Atomic Music moved to Beltsville a few weeks ago.

We pull off the main artery onto what is by comparison a small capillary road, into another charming neighborhood like Olson’s, all residential but for a sprinkle of interesting stores such as the Smile Herb Shop and a vegetarian cafe. Farther on, nearly at the Beltway, we reach a shopping plaza with a My Organic Market and an REI. These are all types of stores you’d expect to see in a college town’s downtown. But we are now three miles away.

Back onto Route 1, we pass what Olson calls “sort of the middle” of College Park, but in a city with no town square, that doesn’t mean much. Nearby is the city’s veterans memorial. It shares the corner with a U-Haul franchise. The great hope for Route 1 is that it will one day become a boulevard, with a grassy median and trees and graded turning slots and bike lanes and more sidewalks. Olson very consciously wants College Park to be more like a classic college town, and he believes that a made-over Route 1 is the answer. Such a plan has been approved by state officials, but it has yet to receive funding. The town has a lot of the other requisite qualities: ethnic and income diversity, Metro access along its eastern boundary, a paved bike path through some charming, historic neighborhoods. “We’ve also worked to sell the city,” he says. “But you know, the challenge is Route 1.”

Getting from enclave to enclave, to College Perk or to the supermarket, from south to north and from east to west, requires driving on or across it, and you might even have to make a left turn. One day it might be possible to fix up Route 1. But you will never be able to escape it.

Over the years, alcohol has become a scarce commodity on campus. Kegs are banned on university property. Parties in dorms are strictly controlled, low-key affairs. Frat houses host only a few parties a year, and when they do, they must register each one and supply a bouncer to check IDs at the door. University police patrol the football tailgates, where if they catch you playing beer pong, you might lose both the beer and the balls. The 2002 death by excessive intoxication of a fraternity pledge amped up the vigilance.

An unintended result is that the drinking has moved farther afield, into College Park neighborhoods. The frats, for instance, operate satellite houses. Some parties migrate outside the jurisdiction of the university police, requiring walks down darker side streets beyond the reach of the campus shuttle-bus system, into territory where drunk students make for mugger prey.

The campus police acknowledge that the restrictive beverage policies often just shift the drinking to more perilous spots. “I would argue that it does cut down on some [underage drinking], because you have people unwilling to take the risk,” says Maj. Atwell.

But sticking close to campus doesn’t necessarily help. In 2002, a 20-year-old student was fatally stabbed by a nonstudent outside a party a few blocks from university police headquarters.

Every college town suffers town–gown friction. In College Park, gown fears town, and the fear is well-justified. According to FBI stats, incidents of the worst violent crimes—rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults—increased some 50 percent in 2005 from the year before, to 38. The number of robberies, 18, was the most in at least a decade.

According to Maj. Atwell, part of the problem is that area criminals have easy access to campus from University Boulevard and Route 1. In 2000, after University Courtyard, an off-campus student-housing complex, opened at the extreme western edge of town, it instantly became a vulnerable target. “It was clear people were coming off University Boulevard, victimizing someone, and pulling out quickly,” she says. The ready escape routes also facilitated car thefts. When the GTA wave hit P.G. County several years ago, the problem spiked in College Park. In 2001, there were 115 cars stolen from students, quadruple the figure from the year before. The average annual toll has been about 70 since then.

University police distribute mass e-mails to students as serious criminal incidents happen. To students, these dispatches of robberies and assaults read as a drumbeat of increasing danger. “Seems like last semester it was one every other day,” says Alex Cameron, a 19-year-old sophomore. Crime alerts actually hit in-boxes on average once per week, but the violence struck Cameron close to home. Two of his fraternity brothers were mugged independently of each other last semester; in one of the incidents, the victim was also beaten, right in the middle of Fraternity Row. “It’s pretty pathetic that guys have to worry about pairing up and walking home,” says another brother, Jeff Wimbish, a 22-year-old senior.

A month into the new semester, there is little sign of a letup. At 2:30 a.m. on Sept. 22, five days after shots are fired outside the Cornerstone, a man threatens a student with a replica semi-automatic pistol outside the Wawa. About 24 hours later, early on Saturday morning, shots are fired into South Street Steaks across the street. (Three suspects, all nonstudents, are quickly arrested.) On Sunday night, two men hold up a student at gunpoint just outside Cameron and Wimbish’s fraternity house. On Tuesday afternoon, an armed man robs a downtown bank.

Like any college, the University of Maryland yearns to shut itself off from the outside world—to fend off clashes with thugs as with other undesirables. The city doesn’t show up on tourist itineraries, and people in the area who didn’t attend the school tend to not even know what College Park looks like. But the city figures prominently on the maps of perverts, so much so that the Cornerstone has an anti-creep strategy: On a sign by the door, it says that if you don’t have a college or military ID, you pay a $50 cover.

“There’s so many fucking bars in Baltimore, and you want to pick up drunk college girls?” says Cara Thompson, a 22-year-old junior, outside the Cornerstone following the initial gunfire incident. “People come here just to pick on our people, and that sucks.”

Earlier that same night, a middle-aged man in a tie and thick glasses who called himself Don strode into Bentley’s. Bald but for wings of mussed hair leaping from his temples, and with his shirttail sprouting from his open fly, he looked as if he might have already weathered a big night instead of having just begun one. But the frumpy professor act worked. Without hardly trying, by just keeping a grin locked in place, maintaining a look of wide-eyed surprise, and bouncing from foot to foot, he got some of what he was looking for from the ladies. During “Pour Some Sugar on Me,” he achieved a girl sandwich on the dance floor. There was, however, no touching.

He then pulled a disposable camera from his shirt pocket and snapped pictures of his dance partners. They took pictures with their own camera with him, and then he went downstairs. Don enjoyed similar success down there, with raised glasses in his honor and more photos. A long-haired guy in a lumberjack flannel leaned into Don’s ear and asked, “Who are you?”

“I’m Don!” he replied.

The longer he stayed in one place, the more strongly his aura of creepiness radiated, and the more space women would give him. He went back upstairs to a crowded corner where the Don effect would still be fresh. When that scene tired after 10 minutes, he left.

“The girls were kind of wild,” said Don in a thick Southern accent when he walked out. “They’re all over you.” Don wasn’t a professor. It’s unclear what he was. “I was just on the interstate, thought I’d have a beer,” he said. He was heading for Richmond that night, having started from somewhere in Pennsylvania. He visibly saddened at the thought that he was now being followed, ended the conversation with an “OK,” and then crossed Route 1.

Don entered Santa Fe Café, circled around for a few minutes, saw there was no dancing, and walked out again. I asked about the pictures he was taking. “I had some shots left,” he replied. “Thought I’d use them up.” There was a pause, then, “I think it’s time to go,” and he disappeared into the parking lot of the shopping plaza. Just passing through, like everybody else.CP

Additional reporting by Jason Cherkis

All we had was everything we gave...

September 11^th, 2001.

September 11^th, 2001 the world changed.  Four planes and over 3,000 perished for no reason except hate.  I, as well as every member of my generation lost my innocence on September 11^th, 2001.  I didn’t lose anyone I knew but over 3,000 did.  I saw the faces of fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, cousins, grandparents, grandchildren, crying for their loved ones, holding out hope for information that their loved one was somehow alive.  Their tears burned into my memory never to be healed. 

As I try to recall the events of September 11^th, 2001 as well as the following days I can’t help but to recall everything from these days.  At around 9:20 I was sitting in Mrs. Wagner’s office waiting to speak with the Principal, Mr. Blumenstein about possibly setting up an AIPAC chapter in my school, when a student came in and said “Another plane just hit the twin towers.”  “Another one,” I said when I was told that I should go to class.  Upon entering the classroom my teacher told us (the class) that if we have anybody that we might have known that we can go call them.  So I did just that, but not before going to my car to listen to the news, when I heard of a third plane just hitting the Pentagon.  I thought that surely World War Three had begun, and I soon would be seeing unimaginable horrors.  I was frantically calling everyone I knew only to get a recording or a busy signal, until about 20 minutes later when I finally got through to my father who told me that he knew less than me about the situation. 

As the day progressed I was lending out my phone as I was the only one getting through to anybody due to the fact that my phone had a very good antenna.  Between 2^nd and 3^rd periods the principal put the radio over the loudspeaker, and during this time everyone in the school heard of the towers collapse.  During 4^th period I actually saw video of the 2^nd plane hitting as well as the towers collapsing, and the only words out my mouth for the next couple of minutes were “G-d save us all.” 

At about 1:15 I had an Israel Guidance meeting scheduled, the meeting was for obvious reasons rescheduled.  I then went home and sat in my basement watching TV for the next 3 hours maybe 4 I don’t remember much until Maariv that evening where my shul was filled to capacity, and from about 8:15 until 9 we said tehilim.  Upon my arrival home I proceeded to drape my American Flag over the railing of the porch of my house as well as my Israeli flag.  Later that night I spoke to my friend Shani.  All I can remember from that conversation is crying on both ends of the phone as we both lost it.  Each of us had stayed strong the entire day and needed to breathe.  I eventually went to sleep that night, not before writing e-mail’s to my friends as well as making sure that my friends were okay.

            The next day my school was canceled.  I had planned on just sitting and watching the news all day, but fate decided against it.  I had been in constant contact with my friend Shani, and I decided that I would go visit her in her school but my parents said no.  Only 5 minutes later my brother got a call from a friend asking him if he wanted to go to the city to volunteer.  My brother said yes and I immediately called my parents and after some bargaining I was allowed to go.  We drove to Queens College to try and persuade more people to come with us as well as to pick up a few more people who had said they would volunteer with us. 

We then proceeded to take a subway into Penn Station.  From there we walked to Chelsea Piers where we sat outside for over Two hours waiting to be asked to volunteer.  As we were sitting there I can remember seeing the hundreds of trucks going down the West Side Highway to and from Ground Zero.  I remember seeing what some of those trucks were bringing back, one of those sights stuck in my mind.  It looked like a bus that had been crushed with just the wheel without any tire or any brakes was on the street.  When I said “That’s a bus,” I was corrected by someone who said “that’s an ambulance,” and then the sound of the wheel rolling along the asphalt became apparent as it carved into the street, and the ash of the buildings flew off of it. 

About an hour after that a Buddhist Monk was carrying boxes of cans of coca-cola.  Me, a Jew, and an African American helped this Buddhist Monk wearing his traditional clothes to the drop-off point.  About 20 minutes later my brother and his friends left to see if maybe they can get in to volunteer through the drop-off point.  I got a call about 30 seconds later saying that I should go to that spot and volunteer.  I went in and proceeded to pack up garbage bags, toilet paper and other various items like that.  About an hour later we were gathered on the basketball courts and told that our services would no longer be needed there and were told that at the Jacob Javits Center we may be able to get work volunteering.

            On our way there we walked with a group of people one whose name was Mike the others I do not remember, and I will tell you later why I remember Mike.  On our way there we saw an army helicopter landing on a helipad usually used by civilian aircraft.  We did pass one particularly amusing sight though it was a traffic light dangling from a wire.  The reason it was funny is the story that was told to us by the cop who had witnessed it.  He told us that a news truck had forgotten to lower its satellite dish, and upon passing through the intersection knocked out the light.  The cop had proceeded to write a ticket unable to control his laughter.  It was then I thought that we will get through this.

            About 2 minutes later we got to the Jacob Javits Center where there was a line around the corner for volunteers to sign up at.  We were not able to do much by signing up, as the list was almost a full notebook long.  We did however, decide to wait around and see what would happen.  For over 3 hours we sat on the sidewalk while people came and joined us.  One person was a freelance photographer from Staten Island who used a longboard as a method of transportation.  Another was a Hatzloah member from Queens who helped us find a pizza store to deliver to us.  Over the three hours we talked about everything imaginable.  At one point I saw people carrying American flags around.  When I asked where I can buy one the lady told me that they are free and proceeded to give me one, even though I told her she didn’t have to.  At about 9 o’ clock a shipment of supplies came in, and our group happened to be at the right place at the right time.  We then proceeded to pile up these new supplies in the parking lot across the street from the Jacob Javits Center. 

            After we finished with the piling up of supplies we called it a day.  On our way back to Penn Station we were stopped by two police officers who had told us that there was a bomb scare at the Empire State Building, now the tallest building in NY.  While we sat waiting for the all clear sign someone said “no one thought that the Twin Towers would collapse,” it was then that I proceeded to call all my friends and told them that I was okay.  One of my friends became hysterical as she cried out of fear that I may be hurt, and at one point I thought I might be when I saw all the police cars speeding away from the Empire State Building.  It was during that tense moment that the all clear sign was given and that we proceeded to go home.  The rest of the way home was uneventful.  One thing I do remember is the song that was playing in the car as my brother and I pulled up to our house and it was “Alive,” by POD, a song which helped many people through the tragedy.

            Thursday September 13^th, school had resumed.  The day was a day in which the Torah was read.  Afterwards the prayer for the sick was abnormally long due to all the names of people that may have still been alive in the rubble.  After davening, I proceeded to try and get a group of people to go back to the city with me to volunteer.  At one point I had at least 10 people, most of who thought the school was behind the idea and backed out once they heard the school was against it.  I still had one person that was willing to go with me and we were about to leave to volunteer against the will of both of the Principal’s when my mother called and decided to not let me go.  I was deeply affected by the lack of support I got from my school on that matter; however, I now understand their concerns.  A couple of minutes later I and my friend Mick were called into the Principal’s office where we decided to raise the American and Israeli flags.  There was one slight problem and that was there was no way getting the flag up without the use of a very high ladder.  Within half an hour a Fire truck came and did the honor of raising the flag for the first time in a long time.  It was also decided to have an assembly on the front lawn later that day where a poem would be recited and the flags of America and Israel would be raised, of which I had the honor. 

The rest of the day passed without much incident up until 8:30 when I spoke to my friend Shani who seemed to be having a hard time with what had happened.  We decided that I would travel to her for Shabbos; however my parents wished that I stayed home that weekend.  After a couple of minutes of cajoling our parents, it was decided that Shani would be coming to me for the meals and staying by my friend Deborah. 

On Friday afternoon I drove to her school to pick her up, with an American flag (the same I had gotten at the Javits Center) waving from the Sunroof of my car.  It was raining so the already sad mood was dampened further.  Upon arrival at my house we watched President Bush’s speech at Ground Zero, both of us with tears in our eyes.  The rest of the afternoon passed by pretty much uneventful, except for my blunder in forgetting to tell my Mother that Shani is a vegetarian until right before Shabbos.  Luckily my mom found something that was edible for her and according to Shani was actually good.

            Friday night was pretty normal except for Shani being at my Shabbos table and her anecdotes about her antics.  After dinner however, Shani and I went back to Deborah’s house where we were joined by my friend Ilana and her friends Lauren, Olivia and Jen.  They were in Woodmere for a NCSY Oneg.  As the night turned out, Lauren had an interesting story of an Arab family, one which her family had once been close to, suddenly and unexpectedly moved a week before September 11^th.  In fact the Mother of the Arab Family had told Lauren’s Mother that she should not go into New York City September 11^th.  The family it turned out most probably had something to do with the attacks as soon after 9/11 the FBI had been searching the family’s home.  After Lauren’s story Deborah had brought out her picture albums, or maybe it was before Lauren’s story.  Anyway there was one picture of Deborah and her friends at Chelsea Piers and they were standing in the exact spot which I had been packing up supplies only 3 days earlier.  It was then that I had pretty much lost it but somehow I maintained my composure.  Luckily for me Ilana and friends had decided to leave so I was able to show some weakness.

            The next day went on pretty much the same way as Friday night meal except that at davening Shani had sat in between my Mother and Deborah’s mother.  After lunch Shani and I had gone to my basement to talk and before long fatigue overcame the both of us and we fell asleep.  At about three o’ clock we both woke up and decided to go to the Oneg, which was down the block from me.  That was a pretty interesting place as pretty much all my female friends were there.  Although I was with Shani most of the time so it really didn’t matter much.  Somehow during the course of the day the idea came up that we would go and volunteer at Chelsea Piers that night.  While at first the idea seemed unrealistic, it slowly came into our minds that we were going to go.  When Shabbos had ended the calls were made and as it turned out Me, Shani, my friend Michael and my Brother would go and volunteer at Chelsea Piers.  Shani would be staying by me, because of the late hour that we would be coming back. 

            We caught a train to the city and before long it became apparent that without Shani at my side, I would be losing it all night long, something the heroes from Ground Zero did not need to see.  Shani and I walked hand in hand from Penn Station to Chelsea Piers, probably more out of a sense of being there for each other than anything else.  When we got there we had to wait a couple of minutes before we could go in, and volunteer but we ended up getting inside within half an hour.  At first we packed up a truck full of biohazard suits and respirators for the workers at Ground Zero.  After that we pretty much cleaned the place up, from scrubbing bathroom floors to vacuuming the carpet in the main gathering area, we cleaned. 

Afterwards we pretty much hung out waiting for something to do.  It was at that time that I bumped into Mike from September 12^th.  He had apparently waited around long enough and was sent in to work at Ground Zero.  One story which he told is burned in my mind forever.  It went like this “I pulled a baby from there…man their were day-care centers in the towers.”  I could not breathe afterwards as the shock is still in my mind.  There were volunteers from Ground Zero coming back with broken ankles, and bad backs all ready and wanting to go back to Ground Zero.  On a lighter note, there was a priest going around making sure everyone was okay and taken care of, but the highlight of the priest was when he and a Hatzloah guy started to walk and talk, and continue to make sure everyone and everything was okay.  Maybe the terrorists didn’t destroy the USA and did the exact opposite and strengthened it.

            As we walked back to Penn Station without my brother who had stayed to continue volunteering, we were greeted by an overall calmness and politeness by everyone in New York City.  We were asked to take some extra bags of bread to maybe give out to some homeless people, however, we found none, and upon our passing of the Jacob Javits Center we proceeded to ask around to see if anybody wanted, eventually a Salvation Army Food Truck accepted the bread.  While waiting for our train in Penn Station, we saw two men, covered in a white dust and who had looked worn down both physically and mentally.  We figured they were workers from Ground Zero.  We asked them if they were and they answered in the positive, we proceeded to say thank you.  As we walked away from them we could see their tired faces brighten up as they knew that they were real life heroes.