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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)


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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.
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