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Unicycle articles (but wait there's more...)
TIGHTROPE WALK BETWEEN TWIN TOWERS IS RECALLED 912 words 7 August 2005 The New York Times Late Edition - Final 31 English Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved. Few things draw double takes in Washington Square Park, and yesterday that Greenwich Village venue bustled with its usual weekend array of street musicians and performers, speed-chess players and marijuana sellers. Suddenly, out of the typical cast of characters -- the elderly Rastafarian with long gray dreadlocks and clad in a loincloth, the guy crafting boxes out of burnt matchsticks, the flutist playing hip-hop -- there came a truly odd sight. A man dressed all in black swooped down on the scene, riding a unicycle and blowing a shrill whistle. By COREY KILGANNON The man looked as if he had pedaled out of a silent movie as he plopped his worn leather satchel -- holding juggling balls and pins, gag items and a coil of thick rope -- between a thick tree and a lamppost, near the park's center. It was Philippe Petit, the legendary tightrope walker who on this date 31 years ago managed to rig a wire from one tower to the other of the World Trade Center and walk repeatedly across it, as tens of thousands of pedestrians gasped a quarter-mile below. Yesterday, Mr. Petit, now 55, showed up in his regular spot in the park to perform a memorial re-creation of his 1974 feat, one of several he has given since 9/11. He plans to perform it again today at 2 p.m. at the same spot in the park. He drew with white chalk on the pavement, and several dozen curious parkgoers gathered around for an hour's worth of sublime street juggling and humorous pantomime. Then Mr. Petit rigged his rope between the tree and the lamppost and hopped up on it. The line was only four feet high, but as he slid a slippered foot across it, gaining his old form from 1974, he raised a few pulses and lumped a few throats. ''I had tears in my eyes when he was walking that rope,'' said Pam Tagliafaro, 46, who grew up in downtown Manhattan as the towers were being built, and also watched Mr. Petit walk between the towers in 1974. ''It was a miracle to see this tiny dot in the sky,'' she said. ''And to see him come back here and do it again -- well, it was hard to watch, but it was also healing. He couldn't walk the towers again if he wanted to because they're gone, but somehow it seems just as special today because he's doing it for the 3,000 people who died at ground zero.'' After his wordless performance, Mr. Petit, signing autographs, echoed that sentiment. ''This was a celebration of the towers, but also a memorial on behalf of the victims,'' said Mr. Petit, who lives in the Catskills. He explained that he first began performing in New York in 1974 and had preferred this spot in Washington Square because of its view of the towers. ''I could always see them from here,'' he said, pointing downtown. ''It's painful to perform here now with them gone, but I still consider them my towers. If they built them again, I would walk between them again.'' ''He helped make the twin towers famous,'' said one onlooker, Susan Goren, who said that she had watched Mr. Petit perform in the park for 30 years. ''The image of him crossing them became the lasting icon of the World Trade Center,'' said Ms. Goren, who has been opposing a city plan to renovate the park's central fountain space and erect a fence. She pulled out an album of snapshots of Mr. Petit crossing the towers interspersed with photos of the towers burning. ''He got New Yorkers to love the towers,'' Ms. Goren said. ''And now that they're gone, he keeps the symbol in our minds of what they once were.'' Mr. Petit drew relatively few onlookers and continually urged his audience to cheer to lure more people. Before his walk on the rope, he deftly juggled balls and worked the crowd with gags that recalled Chaplin, Keaton and Marceau. When a mother pushed her baby up in a stroller, Mr. Petit hopped onto his unicycle and whizzed around the tight circle while pushing the carriage. The baby remained calm; the crowd roared. As a dog sitting near the circle drooped its tail over the chalk line, Mr. Petit grabbed a pair of scissors from his bag and dashed toward the dog, making its owner shriek. When someone handed him a copy of ''The Man Who Walked Between the Towers,'' a 2003 children's book, Mr. Petit opened it to an illustration of himself walking in the space between the broad towers. The book begins, ''Once there were two towers side by side.'' Mr. Petit pulled a man out of the crowd: the author and illustrator of the book, Mordicai Gerstein. Mr. Gerstein said afterward that the great challenge of the book was delicately setting Mr. Petit's wondrous 1974 achievement against the horror that occurred there 27 years later. ''In the book, it's always the elephant in the room,'' Mr. Gerstein said. ''As it was here today.'' Photos: Philippe Petit, in Washington Square Park yesterday, reprised his famous tightrope walk between the towers of the World Trade Center. (Photo by Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times); On Aug. 7, 1974, repeated trips back and forth thrilled thousands. (Photo by Associated Press) -- JJuggle - Meet the new boss... Raphael Lasar Matawan, NJ *Circus*, n - Where horses, ponies, and elephants are permitted to see men, women, and children act the fool. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ JJuggle's Profile: http://www.unicyclist.com/profile/24 View this thread: http://www.unicyclist.com/thread/22148 |
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