I took Tuesday September 11th, 2001 as a vacation day because I was gonna see MJ at MSG on Monday, September 10th, 2001 with my friend Christine Babiak. It was to be a typical piece of MJ self-aggrandizement celebrating his 30th year in the business but not without its pleasures.
The first two hours was various artists playing MJ covers, everyone from Master P to Liza Minelli, Dionne Warwick to Usher to Gloria Gaynor, Gladys Night, Jill Scott, Missy Elliot, 98 Degrees. A touch Karaoke but not bad.
Next the Jacksons came out and performed a Jackson medley to be followed by a Jackson-NSync mash up on "Dancing Machine".
MJ came out and performed a handful of songs proving he was indeed the King Of Pop. Finally Yoko Ono, Quincy Jones and Kenny Rogers joined the rest of the performers to sing "We Are The World" at which point Christine and I ran for the doors.
So no, not the MJ concert of my dreams, and the only time I ever saw him live, and absolute proof he was one of the best live performers ever.
As mentioned, I had no work the following day so I spent the night carousing around Manhattan till around 9am when I found myself at my local bar in Astoria and everybody was watching NY1, the first plane had hit WTC and people still assumed it was an accident. At 903am, the second plane hit. Both Christine and I had the day off, but my niece Louba didn't. I celled her, yes, she was at work. I told her to wait for me (who knew what else was out there?) and I doubled back and took one of the last trains returning to the city.
Walking across 29th and 5th, I looked down the avenue and saw one of the buildings fall. The city was a surreal mess, a funeral atmosphere, people were whispering. No police whatsoever. Traffic stalled. I picked up my niece and then my nephew called me: he was in town on business and was staying at the WTC Marriott, could he stay with me. His hotel was gone.
The city was in lockdown so my niece, her girlfriend and I went on a pub crawl! Finally they opened train service across the bridge. My nephew hooked up with his cousin and I and we went home.
Later than night we were having dinner at a local restauran, and my nephew told us about watching people jumping out the window onto the courtyard in front of him. The first thing he had done was call his wife and then his parents to tell them he was alright, and then he called me.
I went through a civil war in Lebanon and nyc hit me like something like that on 9-11: the calm after a street battle was over, quiet, lulled, nervous, always looking over its shoulder and then as the neighborhood came back to life a sense of community. The sense of community in nyc that day and for the hollowing week was something I had never seen before and have never seen before. As Bob Dylan once put it "Strange how people who suffer together have stronger connections than people who are most content".
Ten years later, Michael Jackson is dead, Christine is living in L.A., WTC is on its way back up and both my niece and nephew are doing fine..