new york times – saleintothe90s

438. Initial Coverage of the World Trade Center Bombing, 2/26/1993

I was nine when this happened, and I’m pretty sure I was home sick from school that day. I just remembered recently that it was on a Friday.

The main thing nine year old me took away from that day was being scared by seeing all the people exiting the building with soot around their noses during this dreary day with snowflakes flying around everywhere among the smoke.

In present day, another thing that sends shivers down me is seeing the people breaking the windows, waiting for help.

(I remember this shot so well [source])

Stupid nine year old me also thought that bombings were a common occurrence. I mean, we did have the Unibomber running around back then and PanAm flight 103 bombing had just happened a few years earlier.

Years ago, I found the news footage from that day, from CBS 2 in NYC, the only local news channel that had non-cable reception that day because their antenna wasn’t on top of the World Trade Center Tower One. 1. A baby Brian Williams is there. ABC7 from NYC also has a playlist on their YouTube Channel from their coverage.

9 things I learned from reading and watching the initial coverage:

1. At first, it was speculated that the bombing had something to do with ongoing civil war turmoil in Yugoslavia. 2

2. There was a class of Kindergarteners from Brooklyn on the observation deck at the time of the bombing. Another group of kids were stuck in an elevator for around 5 hours. 3 The kids didn’t get back home until around 7pm that evening.

(source)

3. People had to go down pitch dark, smokey stairwells, and commented that there were no alarms, no announcements, and no instructions. 4 A lady who was being interviewed by ABC7 said “we just kept following everybody else down the stairs, and everybody was going, ‘faster, faster!’ … it just kept getting darker and smokier the further you went down.” Another said the place was a deathtrap, and that in five minutes there was already smoke on the 107th floor. 3. The World Trade Center Director, Charles Maikish said that the emergency communication systems were destroyed in the bombing.

4. A couple of hours later, there was a bomb threat at the Empire State Building. It obviously was a false alarm. I guess people weren’t taking it seriously, because check out all the people crowded around that entrance.

5. People were calling the local news channels for assistance. At around 13:52 of this clip, the news anchors tell a caller named John to not break the windows, and to stay low to the floor. Cell phones were still very out of range for most people, so I’m gonna assume while the power was out, phone lines were still working. Also, CBS2 superimposing the fdny and nypd phone numbers over footage of people having trouble breathing is unsettling.

6. 19 callers claimed responsibility for the blast in the hours following the bombing. (source)

7. 50,000 people were evacuated. Six people died, Port Authority Workers around the blast site, and a man who was in the garage at the time. It’s a miracle more people didn’t die that day from the smoke inhalation.

8. CBS News reporter Scott Pelley had some haunting words the next day:

“there is an uneasy feeling among some Americans that after yesterday, somehow something has changed. Perhaps forever. A loss of our sense of security.”

9. Honorable mention: Carl Selinger: the salad man. Carl had gone to the cafeteria to get lunch and was coming back up to his office via the elevator when the bombing happened. Carl ate half his salad while waiting, but decided to ration the rest of it just in case. It was a good thing he did, because he was trapped in the elevator for five and a half hours:

When Sergeant Timothy Farrell pried open Mr. Selinger’s elevator, he found him in the doorway, holding his salad. To this day, Sergeant Farrell said he remembers him as “the one with the salad.”

“I may have freed 25 or 35 people from the elevators that day, but how I remembered Carl was the fact that he wasn’t really physically upset, or emotional,” Sergeant Farrell, now retired, said at the lecture, which brought the two men together publicly for the first time. “He was calm, he was jocular. And he talked about how he wasn’t sure what happened — and how he had first started to eat the salad for lunch.”5

[…]

For Mr. Selinger, humor has helped. “He was after my salad! That’s the bottom line here,” he said of the moment he was rescued 25 years ago. 5

—

1. Sontag, Deborah. “EXPLOSION AT THE TWIN TOWERS: Disruptions; Manhattan Is Held in the Grip Of Traffic Snarls and Anxiety.” The New York Times, February 27, 1993, sec. New York. https://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/27/nyregion/explosion-twin-towers-disruptions-manhattan-held-grip-traffic-snarls-anxiety.html. // https://web.archive.org/web/20180330012332/https://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/27/nyregion/explosion-twin-towers-disruptions-manhattan-held-grip-traffic-snarls-anxiety.html

2. AP NEWS. “AP Was There: The 1993 Bombing of the World Trade Center.” Accessed September 12, 2021. https://apnews.com/article/north-america-us-news-ap-top-news-khalid-sheikh-mohammed-bombings-f4f1fd2b2d4b4a17b94ca7183fb65ba4.

3. C, Domenick and elieri. “LOOK BACK: Watch Archive News Coverage of 1993 World Trade Center Terror Bombing Attack.” ABC7 New York, February 25, 2020. https://abc7ny.com/3114288/ // https://web.archive.org/web/20201202035154/https://abc7ny.com/world-trade-center-bombing-1993-smoke-inhalation/3114288/

4. McFadden, Robert D. “EXPLOSION AT THE TWIN TOWERS: The Overview; BLAST HITS TRADE CENTER, BOMB SUSPECTED; 5 KILLED, THOUSANDS FLEE SMOKE IN TOWERS.” The New York Times, February 27, 1993, sec. New York. https://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/27/nyregion/explosion-twin-towers-overview-blast-hits-trade-center-bomb-suspected-5-killed.html. // https://web.archive.org/web/20110909150957/https://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/27/nyregion/explosion-twin-towers-overview-blast-hits-trade-center-bomb-suspected-5-killed.html

5. Otterman, Sharon. “Finding Resilience, 25 Years After 1993 World Trade Center Bombing.” The New York Times, February 19, 2018, sec. New York. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/19/nyregion/first-terror-attack-world-trade-center-anniversary.html. // https://web.archive.org/web/20180221041320/https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/19/nyregion/first-terror-attack-world-trade-center-anniversary.html

420. Just Some Burger King Things

Okay, this past weekend, I had the worst craving for an Impossible Whopper. Since I live out in the middle of nowhere, I had to wait until I went to work Monday to have my precious Impossible Whopper (I still can’t really digest meat due to my stomach surgery this past spring) . So I bid my time by looking up some odd Burger King articles.

I’m trying to even imagine how the pizza oven would even fit in the back of a Burger King kitchen. I mean, now Dominos has one that fits in a Chevy Spark, but back then I’m sure they were a lot bigger.

I brought up the Mr. Rodney commercial in one of my big list of favorite commercials posts a while back. What I forgot was to include was the article.

Yes! I remember when I was in elementary school going to Burger King at the food court a few doors down from the commissary at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton. What I didn’t know was that BK being on the base was a fairly new thing back then.

I ran across several articles about McDonalds fuming over BK’s commercials or new products. From what I gathered, the case about the ad in the 80s was dismissed.

I love that Mark contacted the paper to let everyone know that that his landing of the BK hot air balloon was a controlled landing. EVERYTHING WAS NORMAL.

This is bizarre. I guess they had sand in their underwear over BK advertising during Married with Children?

I joked years ago in the Larry & Balki commercial entry that Pepsi stayed at BK for “2.5 seconds”. I was wrong! They stuck with Pepsi from 1983 to 1990.

What was strange with Burger King using Mr. Potato Head as their mascot for their fries back in 1997 was that back in 1990, McDonalds used Mr. Potato for one of their promos!

1994 = screw ‘yo soy patties.

2020 = ok. 👍

aw, he said love.

~the future~

I didn’t know that Burger King’s HQ is in Miami until I was on a Hurricane Andrew research binge a few years back. Here is a photo I found from imgur of the interior destroyed. Burger King stayed at this building until 2002 when they moved near the Orlando airport.

In the wake of the Hurricane, then ceo Barry Gibbons told Nation’s Restaurant News that everything in his sixth floor office, including his desk, computer, files and personal items, had been blown away. Only a few key files were saved by his secretary. “It’s just nothing. Vaporized. I guess what I owned is in the lake.”

[…]

Management promptly placed newspaper and radio ads asking employees to call an 800 number – actually a switchboard at Pillsbury headquarters in Minneapolis – and let the company know where they could be contacted. Those employees were also told that they could receive assistance from the company. A pair of Winnebagos was set up outside the main gate, so that employees could come and tell the company where they were living and what their situation was.

Even so, it took Burger King a week to find everyone, and to learn that luckily none of its people had been killed. 1

Ah, yes there was a short time in the early 1990s where fast food places tried to get into the gourmet cappuccino craze but failed at first. I thought that’s why if you see the McCafe logo over at McDonalds, you see an est. 1993:

But it’s because the first McCafe was in Australia in 1993.

Another short lived fad of the mid to late 1990s, was the cyber cafe. Jeez louise, can you imagine how absolutely filthy those keyboards were if people were eating their Whoppers while surfing the net. I ate an Impossible Whopper in my car the other day, because you know in most towns you still can’t eat in Burger King. My car stunk for three days.

Barbara, litter from Burger King isn’t called McLitter. It’s called Burger Doodles?Yeah, that’s what I’m calling it. My dad would call Burger King “burger doodle” sometimes when I was lil.

Part of Fax Mania, I’m sure.

TWO.CENTS. Kind of reminds me of Chef’s Dad’s “three fiddy” from South Park:

I dunno why.

1. “Hurricane Andrew Blew Away Burger King’s Culture (1995).” Accessed October 3, 2020. https://www.provokemedia.com/latest/article/hurricane-andrew-blew-away-burger-king’s-culture-(1995).

Burger King Dinner Service entry from my retail blog – “the popcorn, just to chill with!”

362. More from the Perrier Recall (February, 1990)

A while back, I did a big entry about the Bottled Water Craze of the early 1990s, and I mentioned briefly that Perrier was pulled off shelves in 1990 because of a Benzene scare. Now we know that Perrier freaked out too much, and it was harmless, but back then, people.freaked.out.

THEIR WEEKENDS ARE RUINED, YOU GUYS.

Even Al Gore was concerned. He seems like the last dude back then to be drinking Perrier.

Perrier came back in late April of 1990, but not without some minor problems in the New York City area.

At first I thought it was humorous, giggling at this yuppies whose Saturday nights at the bar were ruined, but then I realized… I would be freaking out if my Evian was pulled from the shelves.

Then I shut up.

Dowd, Maureen, “No Perrier? A Status Bubble Bursts,” New York Times, February 11, 1990. https://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/11/us/no-perrier-a-status-bubble-bursts.html

O’Neill, Molly, “With a Spurt and a Gurgle, Perrier Is Back on the Shelves,” New York Times, April 28, 1990. https://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/28/nyregion/with-a-spurt-and-a-gurgle-perrier-is-back-on-the-shelves.html

337. 88 Things About 1988, part 4

(Part 3)

26. Sonny Bono becomes mayor of Palm Springs, California.

Sonny Bono, the former musician who teamed up with Cher in the 1970s, became tired of being a second banana, and making appearances on the Love Boat. He opened a restaurant, and had zoning issues with the restaurant’s sign. He also was worried about the economic state of Palm Springs, seeing empty store fronts, and cheap motels moving into town. 1 That’s when his political career began. He later became a Congressman for the Republican party in 1992, until his death in 1998 in a skiing accent.

1. Rosenbaum, Ron, “Solo Bono,” Vanity Fair, February 1988. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/1988/02/sonny-bono-199802

27. Clint Eastwood decides that one mayoral term is enough.

28. The lottery begins in Virginia.

And my mom’s life was never the same again.

(source)

29. The Baltimore Orioles lose the first 21 games of the season

(source)

30. The United States Embassy in the Soviet Union is down down for debuggin’

No, not insects, spy bugs:

Reagan couldn`t be more correct. The history of a highly sensitive U.S. construction project in the heart of the Soviet Union, doomed from the start by inexplicably lax security, should be thoroughly analyzed. Then, unless someone comes up with an as yet undiscovered way to make the bug-ridden embassy secure, it should be demolished and a new one built, whatever the cost.

When it became evident that the building had been turned into a communist spy`s delight, the State Department asked a group of engineers, architects and security experts to assess the situation and decide if some part of the structure could be salvaged.

Their conclusion: Tear the building down and start over.

The enormous increase in the cost of a new embassy is due in part to the kind of precautions that should have been taken in the original construction. The main elements of the building would be fabricated in the U.S. instead of in loosely supervised Soviet surroundings. The material would be shipped under guard to the U.S.S.R. and stored in secure warehouses. Unlike the first building, the replacement would be erected by American workers with special security clearances. 3

The building wouldn’t open until 2000! 4

31. “The Dictator”

Christopher Lloyd was supposed to star in an new sitcom for CBS where he played a dictator that was kicked out of his fictional country and immigrated to the United States (Queens) to run a laundromat? HIs aide was also kicked out of the country and worked at Macy’s.

The show was publicized to air on March 15th. However, the show never aired, and was a victim of the 1988 Writer’s Strike, because only two episodes were written before the strike. 5

Oh yeah, and there’s no copies of the first two episodes anywhere.

32. James Brown was mad that someone used his bathroom so he went on a car chase

Why try to explain? Let’s go directly to the just-the-facts FBI report, recounting what Brown told agents who visited him at the state prison at Columbia, S.C.

“Brown stated that … on a Saturday, date not recalled, he drove his pick up truck to his office” in Augusta, Ga. “When arriving at his office he observed that his bathroom door was open. Thinking that possibly there had been a break-in he went back to his truck in the parking lot, got his shot gun and took it back to his office.

"He then learned that there was a meeting going on somewhere in the office complex and that the attendees of this meeting had been using the bathroom in his office.

"Brown was extremely upset about this and began questioning those in attendance as to the reason for using his facility. During this time Brown had placed his shot gun in the corner of his office in full view. Brown then asked for the return of his keys, received same and then locked the bathroom door.

"He then left his office with the shot gun, placed it in the pick up truck and began driving his truck on I-20 into South Carolina… . He observed that a road block had been set up by two police vehicles in a ‘V’ shape. Brown seeing this drove around the police road block to avoid hitting the police vehicles and continued on. 6

33. The Syringe Tide

Syringes washed up ashore on Beaches in Long Island, New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island. The source was from the Fresh Kills landfill.

34. “Lunch & Learn Driving Class”

…Across town, the violators who paid $29 to attend the Lunch N Learn at Fine Restaurants class were cutting into London broil and baked potatoes and knocking back glasses of chilled tap water at Thiggy’s, the restaurant at the Lincoln Park Golf Course.

The fine-dining traffic school offers a fringe benefit, movies. Shortly after the chocolate mousse, the students sat back to mull an assortment of stomach-churning videos of car wrecks with titles like ’’Red Asphalt II.” 7

1. Rosenbaum, Ron, “Solo Bono,” Vanity Fair, February 1988. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/1988/02/sonny-bono-199802

2. “Lottery ticket sales are brisk,” Smithfield Times, September 21, 1988.

3. “Reagan Correct: Moscow Embassy Must Be Torn Down And Replaced,” SunSentinel , October 31, 1988.

4. Lally, Kathy, “U.S. Finally Opens Moscow Embassy / Building was delayed 15 years after Russians riddled it with bugs,” SFGate.com, July 8, 2000.

5. Irvin, Richard. Forgotten Laughs: An Episode Guide to 150 TV Sitcoms You Probably Never Saw. Duncan, OK: BearManor Media, 2012.

6. Stephens Joe, “FBI File Recounts James Brown’s Side Of ’88 Police Chase,” Washington Post, April 3, 2007. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/02/AR2007040201614.html

7. Bishop, Katherine, “San Francisco Journal; Penalizing Lawbreakers With Laughs and a Meal,” New York Times, July 26, 1988. https://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/26/us/san-francisco-journal-penalizing-lawbreakers-with-laughs-and-a-meal.html