Holly's Wall Street Report

Although I am lucky enough to work in a beautiful history building (real Tiffany glass in the windows behind my desk!)located at the intersection of Broadway and the now-infamous Wall Street, I don't really wander over to Wall Street very often. But I do love walking on it and looking around when occasion permits, so I was pleased when my after-work plans yesterday led me there, especially in light of all the attention this seemingly ordinary street has been eliciting lately.

As I so often do while off on my various adventures, I wrote a blog entry in my head while experiencing it. I decided I would start with a description for my non-NYC readers; "Like most of the Financial District, Wall Street is a very narrow street surrounded by very beautiful, very tall buildings. It is a singular feeling to be so closely surrounded by such great buildings (using "great" to mean both "large" and "wonderful")." I planned to let you know that the section of Wall Street where the famous buildings are is closed off to traffic. Then I was going to talk about how things pretty much seemed just the same (but that could be because it was 7:30 and the stock exchanges all close at like 5 and the Financial District becomes a ghost town by about 6:00). I figured I would end the blog with some sort of wit-ism about how Wall STREET was doing fine.

Then, I noticed that the important buildings (which are always barricaded) were double barricaded. Next, I saw this left-behind protest sign which made me mad because this whole mess is NOT FREE MARKET. It was caused by government regulation impeding the free market from protecting and balancing itself.

On the next block I saw definite signs that protesters had been there earlier. Apparently the anti-capitalists are a messy group because there was paper everywhere. In hindsight, a picture would have been appropriate. But my attention was quickly diverted as I realized that further up ahead there was, in fact, a HUGE HOLE (almost a block long) running down the middle of Wall Street. Some construction project. Not doubt a coincidence. But still I thought it was... what is the opposite of ironic?

So I guess my conclusion must be--Wall Street is, in fact, broken. (but I still think it's the government's fault. both literally and figuratively)

I was thinking of going back today to see what people were up to on Wall Street during the day so I could report on that. But I couldn't stomach the idea of walking around on Wall Street during the day taking pictures and looking like a tourist. My pride just wouldn't let me. Plus, it's sort of raining today so the protesters probably aren't out anyway.