“Everything went black”

Wed, 12 Sep 2001 17:28:00 +0000

It's Tuesday, Sept. 11, 10:29 a.m. The second building just collapsed. In the sky to the south is a billowing cloud of whitish-gray. I'm on my way to its source. Ten blocks north of the World Trade Center, on Center Street, I meet the stream of people heading north. It's like a war scene. Sirens are going everywhere. People are wearing paper masks. People are weeping. Many people are covered in soot and ash. I stop a tall, dazed man in what was a business suit. He identifies himself as Bo Liljegren, a vice president at Handelsbanken Finans in Sweden. Here's what he tells me:

I was on Chase Plaza. I heard a bang. It started to rain paper from the sky. I saw the [second] plane hit the building, but I thought it was quite safe. I stayed to watch. Suddenly the building was collapsing. Everybody rushed away in panic. I hid behind a power block and everything went black. The air was thick with ash. It was like night. I thought I was going to die. It took half an hour before you could start breathing again. It was horrible. I'm going to try to get back up to midtown and get a flight back to Sweden today, as soon as I can.
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Gossip’s intrepid balloonists

Wed, 05 Sep 2001 19:00:00 +0000

The glee in watching people who live by the sword is the sense that they're about to die by it. For gossip columnists, that means some grand humiliation. As we chat, I can't help hoping that comeuppance will choose today to visit itself on Australians Horacio Silva and Ben Widdicombe, whose weekly gossip column, "Chic Happens," appears in Hint Fashion Magazine. Certainly, the two are being far from discreet:

"Liz Smith wouldn't recognize good writing if it was dressed like Erin Brockovich!" snips Widdicombe, 30.

"Cindy Adams! I can actually hear Cindy dictating her copy over the phone," snorts Silva, 35. "She's got that old school tone: 'The governor's wife brought her dog and it was playing with my dogs.'"

Liz Smith and Cindy Adams have gossip columns in the New York Post. Smith may be the country's highest-paid print journalist. They are both long-established figures in the trade. The "Chic Happens" column had its third birthday last month. Still, bitchy wit and a regular supply of toilet-wall gossip have given Silva and Widdicombe some notoriety in New York's fashion media.

Salon.com > Roman Milisic

“Everything went black”

Gossip’s intrepid balloonists