Tourists treating 9/11 Memorial like a playground

[mookiemookie]

NY Post link, so take it with a grain of salt, but I find this behavior shameful. I remember when I visited the Arizona memorial and was a little offended when some of the Japanese tourists didn't seem to show any sort of respect. People are just clods.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/it_play_ground_zero_now_qAzM19XpnqwuoAbdwOmC9J

At the National September 11th Memorial, tourists balance coffee cups and soda bottles on the parapets bearing the names of the dead.

Parents hoist their children to sit on the bronze plaques, while other visitors splash water from the two waterfalls onto their faces to cool themselves on a hot summer day.

On the plaza, tourists break out lunch foods and lie on their backs.

[Takeda Shingen]

while other visitors splash water from the two waterfalls onto their faces to cool themselves on a hot summer day.

Heh, joke's on them. Plaza fountain water is notoriously filthy.

EDIT: While the whole cups and spitting coffee thing is innapropriate, I like the idea of picnicking and having a more casual atmosphere. The only way that the types of people that flew these planes into the buildings win is if we alter our lifestyle to suit them. We should show respect for the dead by making the record of their names part of the daily life of New York City. That's how we win.

[Dowly]

EDIT: While the whole cups and spitting coffee thing is innapropriate, I like the idea of picnicking and having a more casual atmosphere. The only way that the types of people that flew these planes into the buildings win is if we alter our lifestyle to suit them. We should show respect for the dead by making the record of their names part of the daily life of New York City. That's how we win.

Well said. :up:

[Madox58]

Well said. :up:
Agree.
I travel all over and see the disrespect many show of land marks and such.
I view it as a way that the common person lets off the pressure of thier everyday life.
Many don't even have a full grasp of how other feel due to the 'It's all about me' syndrome sweeping the World.
:nope:

[u crank]

Design and management of any memorial site would have a lot to do with how people act when they are there. Putting the bronze plaques where they are, first photo in link, is a poor design if you don't want people to lean on them or put stuff on them. It's very hard to dictate to people how to behave in any situation. Some people just don't know any better. Respect is all that is required. Continual mourning and sorrow is a victory for the enemy. I also understand that the memorial has deeper meaning for some people. If I were a victim or a family member, I would want people to be happy, to go on and live life with out any acknowledgement of defeat.

[Madox58]

The big problem is lack of respect for others.
Being in a big tourist area for a project just now?
I see that everyday.
I have my pick-up truck here now and everyday some ass throws trash in the back of it!!!
:stare:

I only want to catch one Richard doing that!!
Then it's off to jail after I stomp his arse!
:haha:

[Skybird]

The Holocaust memorial in Berlin, the one with the many monoliths, gets the same treatement: young people use it as a parcours-track, or pose in funny poses, or play hide and seek.

What's the matter? It's just a cold and dead and lifeless monument of giant proportions.

Those carrying a precious memory in their heart cannot get hurt or irritated by that behaviour, since their heart is not get walked on, nor is their heart a meadow people lay on. Life goes on. So let people lay on that meadow, or use the water from that fountain to cool down on a hot summer day.

Those not caring for the meaning, will not get taught anything by visiting a monument anyhow. School trips to monuments sites I have always considered as a waste of school lessons. I know from my school time that nobody, simply nobody in my classes ever cared for the purpose. We were just happy to escape ordinary classroom lessons. And that was all. Educational value of the trip: zero. Youth claims dominance over the piety called for in the face of death. And I like that. There is too much pathos being cared for anyway.

In other words monuments are as much needed as plenty of signs on a straight and empty road saying "turning at crossroads forbidden."

[Cybermat47]

Reminds me of the time I was at the canberra war memorial and a bunch of Indian tourists making fun poses and smiling on a statue of a highly depressed Australian soldier.:wah:
Just shameful

[RickC Sniper]

Design and management of any memorial site would have a lot to do with how people act when they are there.


I agree.

[Catfish]

Certainly, we have to have places for remembrance and against forgetting.
But isn't it better to have children play in those lifeless monuments, than to walk like on a cemetery - are not playing children and their future the best answers to terrorists ?
If we treat any place on Earth like a memorial wherever humans died in wars, assinations or other 'unpleasanties', we would not find an unencumbered place to settle and live in.

Thanks and greetings,
Catfish