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A wonderful tribute to the victims of 9/11 by Sky Element Drones, 2,977 Lights over New York Harbor. One light for every life lost. Filmed on the 9th of September.
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Well I'm not American, never been to NY, and was barely alive at the time of 9/11, but I've seen enough 80s and 90s movies for them to be ingrained in the skyline. They don't have the "modern", clean glass look of many newer buildings, they really look, well not really industrial, but more purposeful I guess.
Around my parts there's barely any tall buildings, so I take anything I can get, and of the buildings I've seen in person, One Canada Square in London gives the most similar vibes to me.
I go down weird history rabbit holes, and have spent a fair amount of time scouring the internet looking for interior pics/videos of the WTC towers. It's interesting because when you look at the exterior, the windows seem like tiny slivers and you'd assume you'd hardly be able to see out of. But when you see interior photos looking out over the city, it's a stunning view. This is a nice collection (minus the watermarks).
It also puts into perspective how massive the buildings were. The corporate office pictures are also interesting to me, surely a lot more interesting than my office! It's just crazy to look at these pics and think about how for thousands of people, the WTC was a part of daily life. For so many families, lives changed in an instant.
Part of the reason the towers looked the way they did is because the architect was afraid of heights and that motivated him to make the windows more narrow than required:
My husband and I started trying to beat each other at calling out shots of the twin towers, which slowly morphed into us just shouting out "twin towers" at any footage of NYC, then any footage of a city skyline lol
Me too, I watch Barney miller still, and that intro gets me every-time. I’m not New Yorker, I’m a Texan, but I was a BM fan and grew to enjoy that sky line. But I’ll never forget watching live, seeing them go down.
Barney Miller is a great show. It’s so far ahead of its time. I mean, except for the clothing and men helping women with their coats. It’s also a realistic look at NYC in the 70s. I went there as a kid. Blackout- An American Experience documentary is also a good look at what happened when the power went out and how much NYC has changed since 1977.
Yeah, movies before 2001 often prominently featured the twin towers in their establishing shots of New York. I had visited New York a couple of times when they were still there, and it made perfect sense why they were such an easy focal point in shots: their scale and size was absolutely dominant and unavoidable.
functional brutalism, id describe it. theyre functional. no big 100 meter spire for a dick measuring contest. no weird forms and shiny surfaces. just a big grey box.
People always compare the before and after photos nowadays but if you really think deeply about it, the twin towers and where they used to stand are like a physical representation of of the world permanently scarred and later evolved. So much of the present day was shaped by the catalyst of the 9/11 attacks, and countless lives were dramatically changed or shifted course
A big part of it is that when they were built there were very few other skyscrapers around them and they looked out of place but over the years other buildings were built around them and they became a centrepiece of lower manhattan
It had a very unique design where the exterior frames were load bearing columns. It allowed for very open floor plans at the cost of a very simple and continuous exterior facade. A big reason why they collapsed too
I… don’t know? I guess I strongly associate drones with modern warfare and they feel a bit soulless to me. I do love the annual tribute in light (the two huge blue beams into the sky.)
you also rarely hear about how windy it was without them suddenly. also people used to use them to orient themselves when walking- uptown vs downtown. how turned around people were for a long while. heartbreaking. and heartbreaking for everyone in the world who has experienced this.
As someone with no experience in architecture, I loved the design of the towers. They just seemed so smooth and sleek climbing into the New York skyline.
Honestly probably one of my personal favorite buildings/set of buildings in history.
One World Trade is not exactly in the same spot as the original towers, but very close, so it would obscure the view of the drones from a lot of angles, if they tried to replicate the exact location
The Titanic tribute was really incredible! It was oddly moving when it began to glide over the water before dissipating. Like having it back for just a tiny moment.
No, no significance to the number of drones, which was ~900. (There were about 1500 victims of the disaster). The drone show only lasted for about thirty seconds, so no reenactments or anything. You can watch it here.
Oh that makes you an old Titanic nerd. You must have been elated when the movie came out! You aren't that person who has like 10,000 copies of it are you?
Haha no, but I had been a Titanic nerd for years by the time the movie came out. My parents took me to see it for my birthday, which made Kate Winslet's topless scene extra awkward. 😂 I mostly went to see the ship.
Crazy, interesting thing I just learned about discovering the Titanic at the bottom of the ocean. It was actually a disguise for the real mission - the US Navy trying to track down lost nuclear subs!
As I get older, rewatching that tragedy unfold hits harder and harder. I can't imagine the terror those inside must have felt and I can't imagine dying that way. I'm not necessarily religious, but I pray those who ensured have found peace.
Yeah, I still have a hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that I watched this happen live. I still remember seeing my mom completely break down when the first tower fell.
I couldn't wrap my mind around the devastation back then and I'm not entirely sure I even can now.
I remember I was buying a spindle of blank CDs to distribute a local artist's album. A friend had produced the album and I'd played some instruments on it as well as did the photography for the CD cover.
I was in Tesco at Kingston Park near Newcastle, north-east England. It's since moved but the usual back of the store TV wall was there along with a few single cased blank CDs. A member of staff was nearby and I remember looking at the TVs, which were all showing the same thing, a smoky building with vertical bars or windows, couldn't really make it out. It was difficult to get the scale so I asked the staff guy if he knew what was happening. He didn't know so I asked him about CD spindles and he suggested a business nearby.
I remember looking at the news broadcasts again before I left, and the lower thirds said "All American air traffic has been grounded."
That stuck.
I got home and then realised what was happening. I powered on my PC, and looked for news online and noticed I'd received an email from the head of a company called CoffeeCup Software. I'd registered some HTML authoring software but the email wasn't about my subscription. I'm guessing they knew someone who was in the towers that morning because it was a very emotional call for the total obliteration of the country responsible. They later followed up with an apology and retraction.
The rest of my day was wandering through messageboards full of hate, figuring out who Al-Qaeda were, and why it had happened.
I'd love to see a return to the kind of measured news reporting that was exemplified that day.
I went through this two years ago, I was 7 when it happened, just grew up accepting it happened…then one day I stumbled across a post one morning on here (oddly enough now, I forget exactly what the post was) and for whatever reason it resonated with me in how horrific that day was. I ended up watching “9/11: One Day In America” and holy shit…I wept. Made me realize there was so much more significance to that day than I realized growing up
I know... I've cried about it a lot. I was 11 when it happened and obviously you know it was a big deal, but at that age you can't really empathize like we can as adults. So coming to realization of what that must have been like is a horrific realization. It's unfathomable to realize some people die that way.... those poor poor people.
I was 10. My school went on lock down and my teacher had the TV on and we watched it, in silence with the lights out. A classroom full of 10 year olds and what I remember vividly was the silence. After the initial shock my teacher broke down and wept on the floor. She was inconsolable. Other teachers had to come move her to a different room. I remember not fully understanding the gravity of the situation but knew it was life changing. Her son was in T1 at the windows of the world restaurant. No one there survived. I still think about her.
The older I get, the more these memories impact me. The more I grasp what 9/11 was and how soul crushingly sad it all was and still is. And flight 93.
You know what…you just jogged my memory on what post resonated with me…it was a post asking what the worst way humans have died was and one of the top comments was the victims of 9/11 that survived the initial impact but were above the floors of the crash…seeing that stopped me in my tracks and I was like “jeez…I didn’t realize how horrific that was if it’s a top comment on worst ways humans have died” :/
I know or one of the people who jumped or fell from the top stories... some of the 9/11 documentaries speak about people describing loud bands every so often and it was from people jumping and falling to their death. Their is also the famous picture of the man who looked calm as he fell to his death. It's truly unspeakable and words are useless to try and understand what that could be like... it is so devastatingly sad.
The doc "9/11" by the Naudet brothers - if you're not familiar, it was supposed to be a doc about being a rookie firefighter in NYC - is a must watch, at least once. B/c they were with the FD, they had unique access and filmed inside the Towers after the planes hit (also how they have the only video of the first plane hitting).
There's a scene where they're inside the lobby - can't remember if it was T1 or T2 - but you can hear these loud bangs in the background - at first there's so much chaos that no one seems to notice. But it continues. One of the firefighters asks what those noises are and someone says it's people who jumped.
Can't really describe the reaction - but you could see a change. All I can say is it was like they were completely focused on floorplans, logistics and strategy, but in that one moment, it became real on a human level.
Anyway, I'll never forget that sound. It means nothing until you realize what it is.
And the famous photo you mention is called Falling Man. There's also a documentary by the same name. But to this day I have nightmares about the people jumping/falling, so I've never watched it.
i go to a cemetery that has many 911 victims, and it's really sad to see how many young adults died and the potential they never reached - a lot of very talented and ambitious people. i googled some of their names.
There’s a twelve hour compilation of footage, recordings and it does the opposite, it stretches out each minute and plays videos taken that minute, so you have a sort of omnipresent view of the area and disaster.
9/11 was very close to home, and the years of aftermath were even closer. It kicked off a career and the choices in that life in a way I never planned. People joke about it now and that's fine I guess - it's just generational trauma squeezing out through the seams. But I can't see it without reflecting on the emotions of the event and the experiences I've had since that it continues to touch. Absolutely everything changed in my life after that day.
Agreed, and I'll just add that, at first, it was so surreal that it had no impact whatsoever; years later, it seems to feel much worse. Perhaps it has something to do with how it has changed America.
My 14 year old daughter had no understanding of the gravity of it…until we took her to the museum. She cried several times while walking through and started bawling at a letter written by a little kid to their mom.
I've watched the synced videos of morning shows and other TV from that era. It's the best way to truly feel everything. I was in middle school, so while I understand it was impactful- I never really felt the impact until watching everything unfold as it did.
And I had to scrub through some of the YouTube videos because at a certain point I just couldn't watch it all.
More than 3,000 people have died from 9/11-related illnesses caused by breathing toxic air and dust after the attacks, a number that now exceeds the death toll from the day of the disaster itself. :(
A little late but the first Mayor to take a stance and show that the city and officials just tried sweeping it under the rug. Why do people do this (criminal) but no close up the paper trail?
Drove through Newark, NJ last year. It was my firs time up that way. Had never been so close to NYC in my life. Seeing the skyline shocked me. I know the towers are gone, but seeing them gone in person felt so surreal.
Yeah, dust, chemicals from the building, and toxic debris. Previous NYC admins and such kept it hidden.
Asbestos was initially found "nearly everywhere" near Ground Zero, and remained for months and months while people were told it was safe.
Zohran Mamdani had released over 170,000 documents detailing the exposure, of which, related illnesses caused reportedly almost 9,000 deaths, almost three-fold that of the attack itself.
The city knew by October, and said nothing to the people.
And let's make it a different colour for a fun visualization of how many were killed in the attack vs killed by their own government after by hiding the information then denying them healthcare.
Not just thousands. Over a million excess deaths in Iraq alone, not including any of the people we killed in the decades leading up to 9/11 in Iraq with our horrible foreign policy.
If anyone wants to get a better understanding of just how horrible the USA has been to Iraq, listen to season 1 of the podcast Blowback. It was one of the most shocking pieces of historical media I have ever consumed
Very important. I don't remember 9/11 but I do get very emotional every year when I see those beams on the skyline. It's a simple yet beautiful memorial. I like this one too though, it choked me up.
It is so surreal to realize what this really did to our country. I remember the days before 9/11 when everything just seemed more petty and pedantic. This day in 6th grade is etched in my brain forever. The anxiety, sadness, and anger experienced with everyone in our nation and our allies was surreal.
What came after has shaped the US into something completely new. Everyone was afraid, so we toppled regimes and gave up some of our rights. Terrorism wasn’t just a little word anymore, but the global enemy. So many innocent people have died here in the US/west and abroad in the middle east due to this horrific act.
The best we can do now is care for our first responders, help rebuild global relationships, and elect people who can prevent this from happening again. Finally, fuck the hijackers and Osama Bin Laden who died horribly like a coward.
I’ve developed a bit of a special interest in pre- and post-9/11 media like films and TV shows. It’s hard to overstate the shadow it cast in terms of cynicism, nationalism, irony and the feeling that the world is inherently malicious and dangerous. It feels like we are only now starting to peel away the cynicism and try to make genuine earnest media again.
The ensuing years were insane. The jingoism went right through the roof. I remember flash games where you beat up Osama bin Laden. There was no game, really, just a digital punching bag.
Halloween costumes were insanely racist. Everyone vaguely middle eastern to a population that could hardly place the middle east on a map got targeted.
And then they messed some countries up, made a token attempt at nation building, failed, shrugged and left.
America is not a beautiful place when it's in a fit of rage.
Sadly, I’d like to point out that we lost sooooo many more people than 2,977 due to cancers and such from being at ground zero and inhaling the most toxic witches brew one can imagine.
More people have died from the long-term effects of the air quality and sickness coverups by Giuliani, Bloomberg, every NYC admin since this one AND every federal admin's EPA than died on the day of 9/11. Keep that in mind, just a fraction of the people we DID forget about, apparently. Amazing stuff, how the rest don't count.
Not amazed exactly, however this is the first and probably only drone show that I've seen which has a good idea and purpose. Usually they are utterly dull and pointless
I'm not one typically a fan of these massive drone shows because it's just more e-waste. I'll accept this one though. Beautiful
Edit: I do have to wonder how it felt for those watching when all the drones returned and the lights went out and the towers no longer there again. That's some hardcore PSTD shit I'm not sure I'd want to witness
Meanwhile the Orange Evil Jackass and his minions have flushed the FBI, CIA, DOD, DHS of experienced terror experts and reassigned many to try to chase down every illegal or in many cases legal brown people. So opening the door to 9-11 or worse.
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