Up First: Sharing The “Tribute in Light” 🕯️…
Click directly onto the photo below to see a video version…
A front window view of the annual 9/11 Tribute in Light
📸: Tonya Hopkins aka @TheFoodGriot — click directly onto pic👆🏽to see & hear a video version …
About The Tribute in Light:
Every year on September 11th (since 2002) in Lower Manhattan near Ground Zero, twin columns of brilliant light pierce the darkness, soaring miles high into the night sky with an unbroken, otherworldly radiance…
They symbolize the former World Trade Center twin towers, serving as beacons of remembrance, visible across all five of NYC’s boroughs -- and beyond to neighboring states (NJ , CT….)
The group of artists who conceived the installation were initially brought together by the Municipal Art Society of New York and Creative Time. The 9/11 Memorial & Museum now produces the annual event.
📍 I was able to see this illuminated tribute up close, thanks to friends who live in a building adjacent to it in Lower Manhattan…they hosted a thoughtful gathering—to connect, reflect, remember, and honor those who perished and others profoundly impacted and forever changed in an unfathomable instant..
📸 carousel 🎡⬆️: With friend and colleague, Claire Bellerjeau, Author of "Remember Liss" and "Espionage & Enslavement" ...on the roof deck of her & her husband's apartment bldg adjacent to the annual light installation of remembrance.
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July 2000 107th floor WTC 1 [photos by Konstantin Petrov / Fotki Photos]
✍🏾 Reflections from the 107th Floor…
Remembering a surreal space on this date —and the people who made it possible:
From its opening in 1976 until its tragic end in 2001, the World Trade Center’s North Tower — aka WTC 1’s 106th and 107th floors of were fully occupied by the iconic Windows on the World Restaurant Complex.
That’s right, those top floors—of what was then the tallest building in NYC—were devoted entirely to: fine dining, catering, events, craft bar service, upscale hospitality, pro level food & wine pairings , wine & spirits education…. The three floors above (108th–110th) weren’t open to the public at all as they housed the tower’s essential telecommunications and mechanical infrastructure…
So whether you were into high-end (yes, pun intended) food and drink — or not :
Windows on the World’s Restaurant was as high up as anybody in New York City could be Literally. And between 1999 — 2000, I rode that ear-popping elevator up to the 107th floor on the regular — to attend my first set of career-focused wine education classes — at the legendary ‘Windows on the World Wine School’…
🍷 An Entrée to a Professional Life in Wine & Spirits, in a Fine Dining Context …
…experiencing early wine education in a place that looked and felt like it would exist forever—enveloped by floor-to-ceiling windows showcasing a vast, ‘worldly’ view of …
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