New York Photoblogger Daryl Lang decided to take a walk and see what else is within a two-block radius of the former site of the World Trade Center.
You’ll find, among other things, a strip club, an Off-Track Betting parlor, a bar, fast food restaurants, and t-shirt vendors.
Lang comments:
What’s my point? A month ago, I wrote about my support for a group of Muslim New Yorkers—whom I consider my neighbors—and their right to put a religious building on a piece of private property in Lower Manhattan. Since then, the debate over the Park51 community center, inaccurately nicknamed the “Ground Zero Mosque,” has jumped from talk radio to mainstream conversation, and turned nasty in the process. Sarah Palin wrote that, “it would be an intolerable and tragic mistake to allow such a project sponsored by such an individual to go forward on such hallowed ground.”
Look at the photos. This neighborhood is not hallowed. The people who live and work here are not obsessed with 9/11. The blocks around Ground Zero are like every other hard-working neighborhood in New York, where Muslims are just another thread of the city fabric.
Perhaps before people start commenting on this issue, they should spend some time in that neighborhood.
