48 Hours from Ground Zero
For my last seven years in New York City, I lived on Broadway, between John Street and Maiden Lane. That location placed me exactly one block away from the former site of the World Trade Center–or as most people now call it, ground zero.
I moved into my apartment in the spring of 2000; I was at home on the day of September 11, 2001. Afterwards, my relationship with the neighborhood became, well, complicated. In the summer of 2004, I decided to reclaim the neighborhood by walking around. Periodically, I would leave my house and flip a coin. If it was heads, I’d go left. If it was tails, I’d go right. At every intersection, I’d flip the coin again: after an hour, I’d stop and photograph whatever block I was on.
The result is this gallery. I’ve chosen one photograph from the end of each walk, and written up some information about where I went and how I got there. I did 48 walks before I moved to California. I had a few ground rules about where I could walk and what the flips meant, but my basic rule was not to cheat: I was trying to surrender my fate to chance, and hoping that took me somewhere a bit happier.
Updates of my flipwalks have been sporadic, but I’m hoping to get all 48 of them up on this site before too much time passes.
My concluding thought when I started this project: “As I step out my front door and flip my coin, I keep walking away from home. So far, I keep coming back.”