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'New York pace' returns to normal By BILL VARBLE David Salsa got the hint things were getting back to something like normal in New York City when he ran into some people from Corvallis. They were among the nearly 1,000 Oregonians running around the Big Apple the other day, responding to Mayor Rudy Giuliani's appeal urging people to come spend their money. "It was great," says Salsa, a graduate of South Medford High School and Portland State University. "Unbelievable. They were going shopping at FAO Schwarz." He says he detected the city's pulse picking up a week or two ago. "A lot of stuff has slowed down," he says. "All of a sudden, I had to hurry and get that New York pace back. When you're crossing the street, you don't saunter, you walk." He even went to an off-Broadway play the other night, figuring it was a chance to support New York night life and have fun at the same time. The 22-year-old Salsa moved to New York City just a couple of weeks before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to attend graduate school in acting at New School University. His apartment in lower Manhattan is just blocks from the World Trade Center. "It was an adjustment for him to move back into the dorm," says his mother, Ida, of Medford. "He had nightmares at first. I think he's doing better now." David was to have attended his first acting class the morning of Sept. 11. Instead he was awakened by the first Boeing 767 crashing into One World Trade Center. He thought it was the end when his building was covered in dust and debris, completely shutting out the daylight. He eventually made his way out of Manhattan the evening of the 11th and wound up spending a week with friends on Staten Island. Many Staten Islanders work in Manhattan, many as police or firefighters. There were bomb threats that first week. "People were expecting to see the same horror again," Salsa says. Classes in the graduate school started again a week after the attacks. People seemed to show each other more courtesy. His building was cleaned, all the refrigerators emptied of food that spoiled when the power went off. In classes that first week, professors put things on hold and were open to talking about the tragedy. One friend Salsa hadn't seen in a week hugged him. "I thought you were dead," he said. Salsa's subway stop is on Fulton Street just a couple of blocks from ground zero, his apartment only two blocks farther. He hears things all night. "Rumbles of moving stuff and knocking stuff down," he says. The air quality changes from day to day. There's a horrible smell. There's been a little rain. Salsa's windows have been cleaned, but the statue across the street still has dust on it. Salsa gathered some of the dust off the air conditioner outside his window and mailed it with a Sept. 12 New York Times to his parents in Medford. "I felt like it was my duty," he says. "It was concrete and powder, but it could have been a chair or something that was once something, a part of a beautiful building, or life, turned to dust...." Among the photos of Salsa's first month in New York are pictures of the World Trade Center on fire. It's harder to find your way around town now, he says. "Instead of street signs, I used the Empire State Building as my uptown landmark and the World Trade Center as the downtown mark," he says. "They were easy to spot." Reach reporter Bill Varble at 776-4478 or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.