Where were you on 9/11/01?
 

I was working for an adult production company as webmaster/video editor in Los Angeles. My Mom called me at home and told me to put on the tv. I remember driving to work in a daze and it seemed like everyone else was in a daze as well.

I was especially upset because my son, who was 10 at the time was in Detroit and I was in Los Angeles.

I remember being depressed and watched and listened to nothing but news for the next 3 months at least. I really can't imagine what it must have been like to have lived in NYC.

R.I.P to those lost and all military people lost since then.

I was in a room sitting next to a concerned American.

banging one of the hottest girls i've ever dated, her mom was blowing up her phone and I was getting tired of hearing it ring so I had to finish before the ringing got the best of me lol

Highschool shop class

I was sitting in a union grievance. I was a steward at the time, and we were arguing over some petty bullshit for someone who was wrote up or fired. Which I do not recall now. All of our pagers went off at the same time. We read the message. One of the managers said,... "that puts this into perspective".

We wrapped it up, and I went home for the afternoon and watched the continuous loop on CNN.

I was sleepiing. I took my kids to school, came home and had a nap. At lunchtime, my son said that the Twin Towers fell.

WTF?

I turned on the news and everything changed. Everything.

I was asleep when it happened. I woke up and did as I normally would do. I made some breakfast then as I ate it I jumped online and read the news. I then jumped to GFY and pretty much every thread was about the attack. I left the computer and moved to the TV. I called a couple of friends and remember just sitting and watching it all unfold.

Like Rob, the next several weeks I was kind of numb. I did the things I needed to do every day, but I found I rarely watched anything but the news and didn't care about much of anything else.

I was commuting to a job in lower Manhattan on the PATH train, headed to the World Trade Center. That was just the beginning of a day I will never forget. Very lucky I was running late that day.

the 9th of November?

Just wakin' up when my wife yelled from downstairs about the first plane hitting the tower.

I went downstairs just in time to see the second plane hit.

Spent the remainder of the day transfixed to the TV watching it all unfold.

I was coming out of the subway on 34th street and wondered why there was a caravan of fire trucks and cop cars heading downtown.

I got out of bed and turned on the TV to see images of large buildings apparently being blown up, "America Under Attack" on the screen and the news ticker mentioning many different US cities. In that moment it seemed to me as though the US was being invaded. It took a few minutes to process what was actually going on.

senior year in high school, walked into the the school office to grab something and everyone was frozen to the tvs

Phoenix, Arizona, working for Lightspeed Cash. I was still in bed - it was early Arizona time - when the first plane hit. I woke up in time to see the second plane hit live.

Steve instantly called off work for the day. What a horrible day that was.

Was in my recently acquired duplex working to setup a studio... then later in the day I went pick up my dad at Montreal airport. He was in the last airplane that been autorized to land in Montreal there was a big panic into the airport and nobody in the air plane what was going on. There was 10s of securtiy agent where you wait in line to pass customs so he texted me: What's going on? and I replied him: WTC doesnt exist anymore...

That was a really special day...

Are you me? I was also in high school and also in shop class. In Cambridge by any chance? lol

in college...going to class

boning my gf all morning, i walked out of her house with the biggest smile on my face and took hours to figure out why everyone was a fucking asshole

thennn i felt like a fucking asshole

Watching the second tower get hit, live on TV.

driving home from school

i usually am asleep at that time in the morning but that morning I was on Oprano webmaster forum and somebody posted the minute the news broke something was up in NYC - ran to turn on CNN and there it was, couldn't believe what I was seeing, a true OMFG moment - I was in shock like everybody else, i thought it was possibly the end, Armageddon was upon us, reports were coming in fast and furious, the Pentagon attack, a plane headed to Los Angeles hijacked, local news got into it, bolt cutters found at Toronto International,shut that down, nobody knew who was behind it early on. I was on ICQ talking to Vick, a webmaster/photog no longer in the industry, he lived in DC/Baltimore area and suddenly he says sirens are going off and there's white stuff in the air, he was freaked out, he ran off to get his daughter out of school. Surreal.

I woke up and saw the terrible news on the internet, then was glued to the AP news feed.

I slept in late and caught it on the news with breakfast. Decided to stay home all morning on the couch, just watching. Later that day I went downtown (Montreal) and it was very eery and quiet on streets which are usually jammed with people.

(Yesterday I found myself on the couch watching "As it happened" on NBC, and I realized how much time had gone by. Sad.

I was trying to celebrate my 24th birthday. We ended up glued to the tv/computer and checking if people we knew were ok.

I actually filmed a scene on 9/11. I had a g/g shoot for one of my "Lesbian Cheerleader Squad" movies booked in the afternoon that day. I got the news on the phone when I called one of my crew people after I woke up late in the morning. I first called my mom to make sure my father was okay since he was already at work at the nearby Verizon building on West Street in downtown Manhattan. He had to run for his life along with everyone else.

Then I called the two girls expecting to cancel. But they still wanted to do it so I said what the hell, and we knocked it out in about three hours while we had the tv on in the next room. I ended up watching the news coverage until 3 am that night.

It was surreal morning in Brooklyn.

I got up somewhere between 9 and 10am. My back then apartment's window' view was facing Manhattan, I usually could see top of city's skyscrapers of downtown on a horizon line , including one of WTCs (one with antenna). That morning I looked in the window and sow dark strangely-stretched cloud over downtown Manhattan of that area, I thought to myself "must be a storm brewing".

That day I needed to go to the city to get a visa for my travel plans following Friday that week. Got in a car and went my way. Strangely all roads were empty which are usually pretty busy in the mornings. When I got to Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, I sow what I thought was fog up a head; closing in on it could see it wasn't fog but couldn't make what it was.

Couldn't believe how empty roads were. When I approached ramp to Brooklyn bridge there was a cop's car blocking entrance. Cop told me the bridge is closed. I asked why, what happened? He pointed across to the city and that's the first time when I sow few miles across something terrible that was happening, there were clouds of smoke around WTC area, one building standing in fire on some of its floors. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, couldn't make anything of it and was just in shock and speechless. The cop have told me something I don't remember exactly, something that I couldn't stay there and must come back where I came from or something in that nature. In shock I went further to get off and possibly make a u-turn to go back. Once I got off the highway I was stuck in almost non moving bumper to bumper traffic for the rest of the day, pretty much with no cell phone connection and seen tons of people passing by coming from the city through Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges. By then I was listening to radio and followed the news. Been trying to reach my family and friends to see if everyone was ok, constantly trying do dial them all, once in a while calls went through.

Fortunately no one from my circles who worked in the city got hurt at this tragedy and didn't lose anyone close to them. I was on 100 something floor at one of the buildings one of two weeks prior, meeting regarding possible consulting work there which luckily for myself didn't workout.
Next few months NYC was like a war zone, filled with military, police, constant emergency evacuations at airports and NYC's various buildings, people filled with tragedy, fear and uncertainty.

I was doing at presentation for a DVR software in the office of the security dudes inside the Montreal airport when the 2 guys listening to me received a call, started freaking and cut the meeting pushing me gently out said there was an emergency and that they had to deal with something happening in the US....

High School history class, 30 miles from Manhattan

Living in Nederlands, sitting in my office, when my wife shouted to come down stairs and look at the news.

I was at home in the UK waiting for my wife to arrive home, so we could get in the car, goto the airport and fly to Tampa...

She calls me up, and says 'I'm almost home ! We will be on our way within the hour'...

And I'm watching all unfold on TV and I say... I doubt it... :(

i was in living in Orlando FL and in my bedroom on my laptop. I remember my mom calling me from NYC telling me to turn on the news. She lives on the lower west side in manhattan so I can't imagine how scary that was

at home in Vancouver, getting ready for work which didn't happened that day, as I am a news freak, called in sick... obvious, was glued to the the tv for the rest of the day

Visiting my mother and we watched it all on Sky News.
I knew immediately from the 1st plane it was a terrorist attack but they were uncertain at the time, I kept saying how could they hit the WTC if they were in trouble?

Then that 2nd plane came into view

That and the collapse of the towers, just so sad and made me angry to think how many innocents died that day!

I went around with a homemade car sticker saying in the back window

"DEATH TO AL QUEDA FUNDAMENTALISTS" for weeks afterwards

One of my good friends just moved to New York and was literally driving into the city with his car full of crap and watched the first plane hit. He stopped and watched it unfold. Then the second plane hit. He turned around and drove back home.

I had just started my Masters degree, the whole class were in a computer lab, some guy shouted it out and we all 'tried' to load the news up

It was my school back home in Nova Scotia. :)

Posting on gfy from home.

I was in one of my first classes of grade 9. It came on over the PA system and we found a TV and sat glued, shocked for the rest of the day.

Italy having lunch in a Villa. Ended up being trapped there for days.

I was supposed to be at work on a 26 story high rise renovation in Center City Philly, however, I overslept that morning cause I was out getting hammered on Two Street the night before - the only bars in the city where you can get served underage provided you have a union card - and so I had to drive into the city from Jersey as opposed to taking the train like I normally would. Anyway, I was driving down Rt.42 and the big electronic traffic signs on the highway that warn people of congestion and accidents and shit said, "Lincoln tunnel closed, Holland tunnel closed, George Washington bridge closed" and I was thinking, what the fuck are they broadcasting that all the way down here for? I knew something was up, so I switched over the radio to WYSP and Howard Stern was hysterical, "we're under attack!! We're going to war!! Oh my God we're all gonna die!! blah blah blah"

I figured, fuck it, if I'm gonna die I might as well be really stoned when it happens, so I got off the highway in Camden to hit up this weed spot that had huge 20 sacks of some really good mids - pillows, we used to call them. Actually, I wasn't worried about dying at all, it was just a good excuse to get high, ease my hangover, and I knew the cops weren't gonna be out with some shit like that going on. Got down to 4th & Mt.Vernon where the weed spot was at, they had their shop set up right outside one of those little Chinese take-out joints that are so common in the hood - you know, the ones where the Asian immigrant workers are barricaded behind a ten inch layer of bulletproof plexiglass and you have to slide your money through a little slot in it, and the only English words they know are "Phirry brunt, dutchmaster, chicken wing, chore boy, moo goo gai pan, etc." - it was a nice sunny day out so I rolled a blunt right there to smoke with Manny, the Puerto Rican kid who worked the morning shift on the set, while we pondered the unfolding events and their possible repercussions: would we be going to war? were other cities getting attacked? Would they reinstate some emergency draft and ship us off to fight? Manny informed me that he would not, in fact, be fighting any wars for the US government. After all, he was a businessman, he said, and he had a business to run. I nodded my head in sympathy to his grievance. How could I argue with that?

After that I called my foreman up and he told me that they had already evacuated Center City so there was no need to come in. Our local volunteered to go up there and help with the cleanup, but they said they were only looking for guys that could burn metal, so that ruled us out. All the Ironworkers wound up going up there to help out.

It was the only time, in my life at least, where there was a rare palpable feeling of unity among all Americans. For a couple months afterwards, everywhere you went people were nice and polite and respectful of one another. It didn't last long, but it was there. Then it went back to being a country of fat, selfish, greedy fucking idiots.

sitting at work when i heard about the first impact on the radio. managed to catch the BBC livestream and watched the whole thing in 320x240

in the evening i was supposed to go with some friends to a Linkin Park concert but no one could tell us if it will still happen or not. so we went but when we arrived they were already carrying the equipment outside.

we went to a pub on the Reeperbahn in Hamburg were usually its completely crowded and tough to get in - we were the only guests. Never seen the whole redlight area in Hamburg so empty, not even the hookers were around.

I was holding my daughter who was 1 years old with tears in my eyes as i watched it unfold on tv. It felt like the world was going to end. I was seriously terrified inside.

A few days before a good friend committed suicide.

His funeral was that same morning on 9/11

R.I.P

I worked at Super Shuttle. I didn't do adult yet.

My GF woke me up and told me a plane hit a building in New York. I sat there trying to process it. A few minutes later they said more planes where hijacked and this could be a nationwide thing. I cursed that business would suck now.

Saw the second plane hit and got into my van. They told me to drive to LAX asap. I live 70 miles away. Fuck me! I got there and it was pandemonium. National guard (or something from California) was already there telling everyone to leave. Loaded my van up with people that lived only a few minutes out so I could come back and do more, and more and more... By days end I did better than I did last Xmas season.

The next day was supposed to be slow since airports were not allowed to let planes leave. But many people were stranded and now were asking for rides to places like Phoenix or San Francisco. One van loaded a guy heading to Saint Louis paying $2500!

I loaded some people going to San Francisco and more going to places on the way. Santa Barbara, San Jose, Fremont. Called my partner and told him to get a lot of sleep because he wasn't getting the van back until tomorrow and he'd most likely be doing a long trip.

The next day he got people going to Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.

So instead of making less money, I made way more.

After about 2 weeks and everybody got to where they wanted to go, or needed to go, it was dead for about a year. That was my clue to find out why it seemed certain people posted to places like AL4A daily and they always had the same codes on their links... what was that about?

So 9/11 was a major event towards me getting into affiliate advertising.

Pretoria, South Africa

Slept through that whole day ...

I was sitting in my 8th grade chemistry class

At City College in NYC. Could see the enormous funnel of smoke. I don't think the second building had fallen when they let us out.

Told a friend, wouldn't it be something if planes from Europe had done that?

I walked from 137th street to Canal street where the blockade was and turned back.

It was actually pretty annyoing because there was nothing on TV but that- and I didn't have cable