I'll use this to headline my thoughts on the Henny Penny-ism of the last few days.
Point 1: No matter what I grumble about, I love the idea of no trucks allowed on the Holland Tunnel. For a motorcycle commuter, it's safer, the air is cleaner, and the traffic is lighter. Sometimes it's a pain in the ass to get stuck behind a truck being pulled over for inspection, but this time around everyone seems to know to avoid the Holland.
Point 2: As soon as the NYSE was able to open, there's been crazy security there. You can't get within a block of it with a car. For a while, the people who work there had to go through long cow corrals of security and they weren't allowed to order delivery food, they had to go outside and meet the delivery guy. My point in all of this is that at least from the downtown perspective, all of this terror hype is pretty useless, not because the threat warning is useless (it is) but because everyone down here is always on high alert (and if Citicorp isn't always on high alert they're idiots). In fact, the Wall Street area is on what might be called "post-terror" footing. By that I mean they have huge planters at the end of the street now instead of just parking pick-up trucks at the end of the street. And the temporary metal gates have been replaced by more attractive ones.
I won't go into the other security measures I've seen there, but basically, they acknowledged that people have to use those streets too, that's why they need protecting in the first place, so they're integrating the security more naturally.
Point 3: That said, the security at Wall Street doesn't appear too terribly much different than it always does. But for some reason a few blocks away, there are like 5 cops standing around doing nothing on my corner. The AmEx is down the street, so I guess it makes sense in a general sense to have security here, but everyone has acknowledged that there's nothing abotu today or yesterday or sunday that is any more prone to attack, so what's up?
In fact, we can probably figure that since the terrorists now must know that we know about these targets, that attack is essentially foiled and they're on to plan B.
Point 4: I wouldn't care at all except for the fact that Homeland Security is being treated by Congress as a pork buffet and here we are in the city where the real focus of attack is and we're looking at another Subway fare increase and we have to spend our money on a bogus terror alert.
I'll stop there before I digress.
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