The Freedom Tower gets a new name

No more Freedom Tower.

The tower being built atop Ground Zero to replace the Twin Towers which fell in the devastating terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, will now be known as One World Trade Center.

Steve Sigmund, the spokesperson for the Port Authority (who owns the site), says the name is more marketable. One World Trade Center is the address of the future building.

To be fair, “Freedom Tower,” does sound a little bit like it came out of a comic book, and it reminds us of that whole “Freedom Fries” debacle which was so generally embarrassing.

One World Trade Center. Personally, I want to open a burger shack nearby and name it Another World Trade Center.

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10 Places to Absorb Slavery’s Past

Visiting places with dark pasts isn’t as odd as it sounds — in fact, it ‘s quite common. Lonely Planet picks up on this travel trend in their 2007 Bluelist, which examines the general popularity of tombs, graves, and memorials as destinations. Furthermore, the authors point out that Ground Zero and Auschwitz have become modern-day pilgrimage sites. “Dark Travel,” as it’s been coined, is incredibly popular.

USA Today recommends a few more non-cheery holiday stops in its article 10 Great Places to Absorb the Reality of Slavery. The article suggests that we should “celebrate freedom by remembering slavery,” which is not bad advice. Without understanding slavery, how can we truly understand what it means to be “free”?

Sights include the Harriet Tubman Home and the Civil War and Underground Railroad Museum, as well as the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site.

WTC Pano

Keeping with the fifth anniversary of 9/11 theme, here’s a very nice panorama of the hole at Ground Zero that really conveys both the size of the space as well as the rather sad barrenness of it. I’ll be keeping an eye out to see if anyone posts anything having to do with the ceremony today or the lights tonight.

Guided WTC Tours

Here we are on the cusp of the fifth anniversary of 9/11/2001, so I figured I’d post something relevant to that. While you can easily go down to the Ground Zero site (though not tonight, the “Decider” is speaking) and walk around, the view of the hole is actually quite dismal. So most tourists just kind of stand around outside the fence and snap photos of each other, well, standing around.

But there is more to the site if you put in some effort. In fact, visitors to the World Trade Center site can now get a guided tour, which comes with a first-hand account of the attack. All this thanks to a program being run by the Tribute World Center. The center opened to the public on September 6th, and guides are now ushering folks from around the world, sharing personal stories from that day. Again, I wouldn’t advocate gong down there tonight ,but on your next visit to the Big Apple, this might be a nice way to lean about the horrible tragedy of five years ago.