VIDEO: Take a stop-motion trip to 1983 New York City

In just under six minutes, you can take a (mostly) stop-motion trip to 1983 New York City in this short film called “N.Y.C. (No York City)” by Rick Liss with music by Laurie Anderson. The video follows a dizzying path through Manhattan, past familiar landmarks like the World Trade Center, the subway, and Central Park (check out the roller skaters!). While the clothes and cars may seem dated, in many ways, it’s not much different than 2011 New York City, except with more mimes.

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.