I was walking down Broadway this afternoon. It was early enough that the lunch crowd was jamming the sidewalk like an ant colony. By Trinity Church, there isn’t a whole lot of space to walk anyway, so it’s a real feat of navigation to get where you’re going sometimes without having your personal space ruthlessly invaded. I’ve heard that London is even more crowded than New York. I can’t imagine lunchtime there. Nevertheless, since New York is a walking city, if you spend enough time here, you get in some serious cardio, which I enjoy, most of the time.

Cardiovascular exercise by definition demands an increase in your heart rate, which in turn demands that you take in more oxygen. The irony is that in New York City, the only place to walk is now the only place to smoke. In front of nearly every doorway you pass is a smoker or three. Walk a few blocks on a New York street and you’ll likely develop black lung. I’m not a smoker, but the first breath I take every time I exit a building or a subway station is fouled with cigarette smoke. Somehow I never seem to remember the last time, and always look forward to that breath of outside air, only to be poisoned all over again. Great for my lungs, especially if I’ve climbed a long flight of stairs.

For a long time, I lived by the belief that in all cases, things are never as good as they once were. It’s a fatalistic sort of attitude, I know, but there was enough evidence for me at the time to proclaim it. On the discussion of cigarette smoke, it clearly doesn’t apply. I often think of how it must have been 50 years ago, when so many more people smoked and the rules for smokers were so much more relaxed, if there were any rules at all. People smoked in movie theatres, restaurants, elevators, hospitals and offices. I can’t imagine the stink that must have permeated every place you went, not to mention the yellow-brown hue on every ceiling. A good example of this color is left in a very small section of the restored ceiling in Grand Central Terminal. Look for it near the Vanderbilt Avenue entrance. Among other pollutants, cigarette smoke had completely obscured the aquamarine ceiling with its constellations behind a stain darker than a beer bottle.

I guess I should be pleased. Today, you can’t smoke anywhere. You don’t even have to ask for a table in the non-smoking section anymore. Just a table for two, please. That’s all. Of course, when you leave the restaurant, it’ll be two blocks before you’re granted a good lungful, but at least you get to enjoy your meal. Now, if only I could lobby for that back alley clause in the anti-smoking legislation, I could enjoy a walk down Broadway too.

I hesitate to make mention of this subject because it seems so hackneyed now, but I experienced such an emotional response to it that I wanted to share it.

This morning, I was walking by that huge pit across from St. Paul’s Chapel. It’s the infamous World Trade Center site that people seem to delight in referring to as “Ground Zero.” I don’t use the term, partly because I always thought that the term referred to the exact location where a bomb had been dropped. That didn’t happen there. With all of the president’s nonsense about terror and now with Oliver Stone’s new movie, I always thought that using the term was buying into the culture of buzz words that dilutes the significance of things, the September 11th attacks included.

If you don’t see the World Trade Center site every day, you might not know that they’ve recently moved the visiting area on Church Street. They moved all of the memorial signs that used to hang high over the heads of tourists that would visit there to a more confined area near the PATH station entrance. They’ve set up a number of trailers just inside the steel barriers that are serving as offices for the police and security, so you can’t see much from the original location.

While I walked south on Church Street this morning, a small arrangement of white flowers wrapped in cellophane caught my eye. It was stuffed into the grating that keeps everyone out of the pit, near a sign that asks that you don’t leave things there. Stapled to the bundle was a small card, the kind that florists have. In a woman’s hand was written “Happy Birthday.”
Watch those buzz words. Ground Zero, heroes, 9/11, a generation’s defining moment. So many iconic images. I didn’t realize how desensitized I’d become. I allowed the whole desecration of the site by the media, politicians and those damn morbid tourists taking pictures in front of it, to take my heart away. I never embraced the horror of September 11th for what it could do for me, but I have entered the WTC PATH station in a hurry, without being completely mindful of the significance of the place.

The weather was perfect this weekend. I had a great bike ride in Central Park. Someone else had a birthday celebration, with a little bundle of flowers and a simple message, next to the most famous construction site on the planet.