September 27, 2001 Re-Opening
I recently blogged about my interview with Associated Press Business Reporter Joyce Rosenberg. We agreed that the current Wall Street crisis is, in many ways, a greater threat to the vitality of Lower Manhattan small businesses than the consequences of 9-11. I took a photograph of an empty subway train at the Wall Street stop to accompany that blog entry and happened to notice that it is almost identical to the photograph I had taken in an empty subway train at the same stop. My attorney happened to remark to me that the financial district is like a ghost town these days. But I noticed another similarity.
Attached are two photographs I took on September 27, 2001 of Mangia, which is a chain of sandwich and lunch restaurants in New York City. This particular one is located on Wall Street and it is where one of my business school class mates, Alex Krutov, often meet for lunch. I mentioned Alex in the first edition of my book as he was on his way to meet me in my Wall Street office from his home in Brooklyn on the morning of 9-11-01. After I made it safely out of the World Trade Center, I attempted to reach Alex by mobile phone to tell him what had happened and urge him to turn around and leave the area. Anyway, we were evacuated on September 11, 2001 and allowed to re-open in our office building one week to the day later. This is because of the symbolic importance attached to reopening the New York Stock Exchange. Had we been located even one block north or south, our reopening would have been delayed by many more months.
A Sad Occasion
This photograph shows the reopening of Mangia on Wall Street on September 27, 2001. In the window, you can see a cake on which the icing announced “Welcome back”. The restaurant recently closed. Its business consisted of serving lunch to workers on Wall Street and the financial district and catering meetings at Wall Street firm. With the demise of several of the largest Wall Street firm, major layoffs among the surviving banks and reduced discretionary spending among those workers who remain employed, Mangia could not remain open for business. This is a restaurant that successfully recovered after 9-11.