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| Home Front |
| WTC folklore |
| 2001-09-27 |
| John Strausbaugh NY Press Like all great historical eventsthe crossing of the Delaware, the first men on the moon, the death of Elvis the destruction of the World Trade Center instantly began to spawn urban legends, the spread of which is now, of course, eased by the Internet. And on the Internet theres already a site devoted to collecting and disseminating these legends: NYCstories.com. The site is compiling WTC folklore and apocrypha thats being disseminated by e-mail, word of mouth or other means. Its small now, but its got the potential to grow into a great bin of all the preposterous tales people tend to spread at times like these. Here youll find the story of the office worker who surfed the roof of one collapsing tower all the way to the ground, suffering only broken legs. The fireman whose dead dad, a former WTC worker, appeared to him and helped him lead 30 people to safety. The one about how New Jersey (alternately Brooklyn) public schools had to close because all the Muslim students were out in the streets celebrating. The inevitable photo, captured from CNN footage, of a devil face in the smoke pouring out of one of the towers. And various other Photoshopped jokes that have begun making the rounds, from the bin Laden-with-giant-spliff Because I Got High one to the grimly hilarious one of the doofus having his picture taken on the WTC roof deck as an airliner homes in on the building a few stories below him. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |