Return to Transcripts main page

American Morning

On Downtown Street Near World Trade Center, One Particular Bike is Being Permanently Parked

Aired December 03, 2001 - 08:57   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: If you live here, and many of you don't, you need to know it takes some very tough methods to keep a bicycle parked securely on the streets of New York City. If you don't, they're gone in a second. People use everything from kryptonite locks to heavy chains with lengths as thick as your thumb.

But on a downtown street near the World Trade Center, one particular bike is being permanently parked. No one has stolen it. No one has claimed it since September 11.

CNN's Jeanne Moss reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEANNE MOOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): You see them all over New York, locked bikes belonging to messengers. But what makes this bicycle different from all the others is that most other owners come back. This bike has been left sitting here since September 11.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: It looked like somebody, somebody who passed away. It looked like their bike.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: It breaks your heart.

MOOS: The bike sits just a block or so away from the empty space that was once the World Trade Center.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I've seen this bike when I pass by here. I don't know who it belongs to.

MOOS: That hasn't stopped folks from leaving flowers. As the weeks go by, the decorations change and the bike gathers dust.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: You see?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: What?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: The dust.

MOOS: No rain has washed most of it away. Someone posted a sign entitled "The Bicycle," saying that the owner was a messenger who was killed while making a delivery at the World Trade Center. But some passersby figure it's probably one of those urban myths. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: It's in too good a shape. That seems to be a little bit too convenient a story.

MOOS: And almost no one, from cops...

(on camera): You don't know anything at all about it?

UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER: No.

MOOS (voice-over): To fellow bike messengers seem to have any facts.

UNIDENTIFIED BIKE MESSENGER: I don't know anything about that.

UNIDENTIFIED BIKE MESSENGER: No.

UNIDENTIFIED BIKE MESSENGER: That bike, no.

UNIDENTIFIED BIKE MESSENGER: No, I never, I haven't heard anything about it.

JAMES: Yes, I know about that bike. The guy who owned that bike, he got caught up in that building.

MOOS: James, the only name he cared to share, says he's been a bike messenger for 16 years.

(on camera): And you recognize his bike?

JAMES: Of course. This is an old beat up bike. Everybody knows this bike down here.

MOOS (voice-over): James described the bike's owner as a deli food deliveryman in his mid-'40s.

(on camera): So you knew the guy to talk to him, then? I mean like you said...

JAMES: Yes, I see him, you know, poppy, you know like that, you know what I mean? I don't know his name or nothing like that. You know, I see him, I wave. He waved back, you know.

MOOS: A Mexican guy, though?

JAMES: A Mexican guy, yes. Nice guy.

MOOS (voice-over): In a city where thefts leaves owners always worrying their bikes will disappear, this time it's the owner who has vanished.

Jeanne Moos, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAHN: And we expect it to remain there for a long, long time.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com