Outside the stock exchange, around the corner from the trade center having a coffee. There were very small pieces of paper floating down through the air; some thought it might be confetti from a parade down Broadway. Looked closely and saw that the pieces were burnt.
At each point in time it still seemed innocuous enough-ok it's a local fire, no big deal. Then a while later I noticed it was unusually quiet-there were none of the usual streams of people coming over from the subways inside the trade center.
Then I noticed a group of people standing a few steps up, looking around the corner, so i went over and could see the side of the trade center burning, a few flames. Even then it was no biggie-a trader said that it was a very small plane, so it seemed like an unfortunate but manageable situation.
Then there was a large bang that reverberated through the canyons of wall street; no one down there saw what happened, but knew it was bad, like maybe that fire had caused something in the tower to shift, like it was going to break, so i ran under protection of a very large, old solid building to wait and see if anything fell down. No way of knowing it had been another plane-most of those directly around the trade center didn't have the info those watching TV did. That sound was enough to send some people running down the street, cars were braking to avoid people, right out of a movie.
When it was obvious that nothing more was going to happen, i left the cover of the building and started walking away, to an area about 10 blocks away where i could see the trade center; some people were running, others didn't know anything was wrong and were standing outside having coffee, usual morning routine.
From 10 blocks away you could see the damage more clearly, and the smoke was pitch black, which was'n't so obvious on TV. Obviously the buildings were going to be a write-off, completely useless no matter what happened, even if they could put the fires out.
Lots of people watching from there but i thought that if the towers happened to fall sideways it could cause a domino effect with the buildings nearby so i walked home another 10 blocks to get out of the immediate area.
When i watched on TV from my apartment it looked to me like part of the upper tower was bent at a slight angle; when it fell i immediately got out of my apartment, in case any kind of shock wave could effect buildings around my area. By then, there were thousands streaming through my neighborhood walking home over the bridges; i lent some people my phone.
The military closed off the large grocery store near me for a while, used it as one of two staging areas for ambulences and supplies from different directions that converged on the trade center area. The smell of burnt rubber lingered in my neighborhood for about 3 months off an on, every day at first then later every 3-4 days. The smell would also drift farther uptown to union square at 14th street sometimes depending on the wind.
Because I worked down there I was able to get to within a block of the debris by the next Monday; it was only National Guard and press about a block away from the debris which was about 5 stories high and looked apocalyptic; the view from the 50th floor of our offices looking down on the area was unbelievable, it really looked like a war had taken place.
