Thread by @opinion

On 9/11 in Times Square, the giant billboards still flash, but there are no Elmos or Sponge Bobs, no Spidermen or Batmen, no Lady Liberty on stilts, no slow-moving crowds to dodge, no souvenir peddlers.

It would be wonderful if it weren’t so awful trib.al/zTfegR1

At the corner of Broadway and 42nd Street, a sign marks the beginning of the Lincoln Highway. @FSBarry once spent an hour asking passersby where the entrance was located:

“Never heard of it.”
“You mean the Lincoln Tunnel?”
“Lincoln Center?”
trib.al/zTfegR1

The Lincoln Highway was dedicated in 1913 as the first road to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, from Manhattan to San Francisco.

Calling it a highway was stretch — the roads were mostly dirt — but the suits had a slogan: See America First trib.al/zTfegR1

Today, airplanes and interstates render much of America invisible to travelers.

The Lincoln Highway includes a lot of “flyover country” that some might never visit (Kansas and Appalachia, for starters) trib.al/zTfegR1

On 9/11 in Times Square, Frank started a journey with his wife Laurel to see America by traveling the entirety of the Lincoln Highway.

They bought an RV — a 25-foot Winnebago –– to see a cross-section of America by using Lincoln as a lens trib.al/zTfegR1

At 12th Avenue on the Hudson River, they boarded a ferry, as the original Lincoln Highway travelers did — the Lincoln Tunnel didn’t open until 1937.

Across the river, they can see the main drag through Jersey City, one of America’s most diverse cities trib.al/zTfegR1

Jersey City is home to a statue called “Mystic Lincoln,” it portrays the president sitting on a bench, gazing downward.

It served as a backdrop for Frank’s first convo with Mayor @StevenFulop, who quit his job at Goldman after 9/11 to join the Marines trib.al/zTfegR1

Fulop had two masters degrees, but he didn’t enter the military as an officer, and he was glad for it:

“I was exposed to a lot of people that I would never have interacted with... there were some people in my boot camp that never met a Jewish guy before" trib.al/zTfegR1

Last year, two residents in Jersey City targeted a kosher grocery store, killing four people.

Nationally, violent hate crimes hit a new high last year, and Fulop worries that the undercurrents are being normalized in ways that will be hard to reverse trib.al/zTfegR1

Later in the day, Frank met with @sadafjaffer, the mayor of Montgomery Township, NJ, the first female Muslim to serve as mayor of a U.S. city.

She had just come from a 9/11 ceremony at the local firehouse trib.al/zTfegR1

Jaffer says that when she first ran for office, “my opponents also made flyers or campaign advertisements that said that I was dangerous.”

The same undercurrent that Fulop spoke of seems as likely to run through affluent neighborhoods as poor ones trib.al/zTfegR1

Jaffer said it has gotten much worse in recent years, and she attributes it to misinformation and “the Islamophobia industry. A whole bunch of people who basically their main goal is to demonize Islam and to scare the American public” trib.al/zTfegR1

Jaffer says we can have ethics without religion, but what of religious organizations that play a crucial role in supporting their communities?

By this time, the sun has long set over the solar-energy field across the street from Rockingham trib.al/zTfegR1

On the first night, Frank and Laurel try every RVer’s back-up plan: The Walmart parking lot.

But Walmart is closed. They find their way to a Lowe’s and get ready for bed, only to realize the fridge has turned off and they don't know how to get it back on trib.al/zTfegR1

To receive regular updates about Frank’s journey, follow him on Instagram: instagram.com/looking4lincol…

And watch his latest interview with @quicktake’s @madisonmills22 ⬇️ pscp.tv/w/1jMJgXvBbqAxL

➡️ Correction: Kansas is not located on the Lincoln Highway trib.al/zTfegR1