On a typical warm weekend night, Times Square teems with visitors: theater fans taking a post-show stroll down Broadway; tourists staying in high-rise hotels; suburban teenagers who gather to gawk at the jumbo-sized neon signs that fill the square with light.
But when the police noticed white smoke billowing from a dark-green Nissan Pathfinder on 45th Street near Seventh Avenue, and then discovered the makings of a crude car bomb inside, the normal hubbub was replaced by a different sort of spectacle.
Twelve blocks, from West 43rd Street to West 48th Street between Sixth Avenue and Eighth Avenue, were cordoned off with metal barricades. The streets and pedestrian malls were filled with ambulances, fire trucks and cars and vans full of police officers. Teams of officers wearing helmets and carrying automatic rifles stood on corners. The bomb squad showed up with a remote-controlled robot and officers wearing blast-proof suits.
Onlookers assembled, leaning against the barricade, posing for pictures and asking one another what was going on. The neon lights still flickered, competing with the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles. Tourists still showed up for a glimpse of the square. But for a few hours in the dead of night, with traffic diverted and throngs dispersed, the center of Times Square was quiet. Well, almost quiet.
Bruno St. Clara, a 25-year-old carpenter from Brazil, wandered through the crowd near the police substation on West 43rd Street. He said he had walked north from his hotel on West 34th Street.
“We saw on television that there was a bomb,” he said. “I just wanted to check it out.”
Outside the sealed-off zone, plenty of other travelers were second-guessing their decision to book a room in Times Square. Many people staying there spent the better part of the night waiting to hear when they would be permitted to return to their rooms.
Then there were those who willingly lingered, captivated by the drama playing out in front of them. Christina Paiva, from Carle Place, on Long Island, spent her 17th birthday glued to the barricades with a group of friends. Originally, they said, they had planned to visit M& M World at West 48th Street and Broadway, but they found themselves instead directed south by police officers as emergency vehicles arrived, lights flashing and sirens blaring.
“It’s very upsetting,” Ms. Paiva said.
But why had the group chosen to stay?
“It’s scary,” Sabrina Papez, 17, clarified. “But it’s also intriguing.”
As the hour grew later, the crowd thinned. An ABC news ticker near 44th Street read: “NYC’s Times Square evacuated in bomb scare.” The Dow Jones ticker reported on the Kentucky Derby. Around 2 a.m. a group of friends from Walled Lake, Mich., arrived, eager to see Times Square.
“I expected it to be overwhelmingly crowded,” said Erica Mitchell, 23.
Her friend, Chelsea Gaunt, agreed.
“I never knew a city could be this quiet,” she said.
Copyright. New York Times Co. 2010. All Rights Reserved
