Wow! Can you believe that? It’s like a swarm of giant bees is buzzing around New York’s legendary skyline.
To the right, the Statue of Liberty; behind it Staten Island and Brooklyn; on the left, Manhattan, with the full vehemence of its monuments; and in the middle, the illustrious Hudson River.
The spectator is enveloped in pleasure as he pieces together his own panorama, focusing on the details, scanning in a postcard of his perception and filing it away in a folder of happy memories.
New York is a place that defies cynicism, my knowledgeable colleague Stephen Bayley wrote recently in these pages. Hearing this helps illuminate finely many things. Things like the Sex and the City phenomenon. We think of it as a nice home movie without taking a moment to stop and compare it to Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Overcoming 9/11 has turned into pragmatic everyday business, even though at a security level unheard of before. New Yorkers have become used to being frisked wherever they go, without a scrap of bad feeling.
So it’s not surprising that 16 independent authorities from New York and New Jersey, from Homeland Security and the Liberty State Park administrators to the US Coast Guard, from the Newark Fire Department to the Marine Unit of the New York Police Department came to the joint decision that the Red Bull Air Race should not only get the green light, but should receive a hearty welcome.
What they really wanted to say was this: anything is possible in this town, as always, and of course we want to celebrate again and fly the flag.
And yes, there’s no problem with the flight path for the low-level approach passing close to the Statue of Liberty; what a fantastic image for spectators, filmmakers and photographers, how could we refuse?
For the full story pick up the August Red Bulletin Magazine.
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