GROUND ZERO '96: THE VACATION

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Literally a few feet away from where I was sitting, right in front of my boots near the entrance, a brawl broke out. Shouting, pushing, bodies slamming around on the marble floor. I had no clue that the man at the center of that fight was Tupac Shakur. Author: Sweet Presence. Ground Zero '96: The Vacation. 3 weeks, 3 cities, 3 historical events experienced from a front row seat. It was late July 1996, and and we were on vacation. We checked into the Comfort Inn out in Marietta, about 15 miles north of the Atlanta Olympic Games. The hotel had opened its doors just 2 days earlier. In a city packed to the brim with millions of visitors, no one had ever slept in our room before. Everything was brand new, immaculate, and unused. We put our bags down, picked up the room phone to make a few calls to family back home, and turned on the television. Reports are coming in from Centennial Olympic Park where an explosion has taken place. Security forces are securing the perimeter. The news seemed to be on every single channel. Before I could even ask what was happening, my sister's voice came through the phone. Thank God you are okay. We had no way of knowing if you were okay. I asked her what she was talking about. A bomb went off at Olympic Park yesterday. Several people were hurt. I began to tell my friend and we sat and watched the news for a few minutes, but we decided to drive down into the city to see the nighttime performers and check out the scene. We arrived to a quiet scene and walked around Centennial Olympic Park. After walking around for a bit, I needed to sit down for a minute, so I took a seat on a green park bench while my friend explored a little further away. As I sat there, a woman on crutches with stitches clearly visible on her leg, was talking to the person standing right next to her. I was sitting right there when the bomb went off. I looked down at the bench beneath me. I was sitting in the exact spot where a survivor had been injured by a bomb just 24 hours earlier. We stayed in Georgia through the week, watching the park transform from a crime scene back into the heart of the Games. On one of our final nights, Ray Charles took the stage at Centennial Olympic Park. Hearing his voice echo across the lawn, singing Georgia on My Mind, felt like the entire city taking a collective exhale. On August 3rd, we packed up our bags from that brand-new Marietta hotel room, checked out, and pointed the car north toward Indiana. Act 2: The Gridlock and the Blackout. On Saturday, August 3rd, we drove north from Atlanta back into Indiana. We thought if we could just get onto the open highway, we'd finally leave the heavy atmosphere of Atlanta behind. We were wrong. As we crossed into Indianapolis on I-65, traffic hit a solid wall. Over 300,000 people were pouring out of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway after the Brickyard 400. Hundreds of thousands of race fans were dumped onto Interstate 65 at the 465 loop all at the exact same time. What should have been a routine drive turned into a grueling, 7-hour gridlock. Bumper-to-bumper taillights as far as the eye could see. We made it home, unpacked, and just a few days later, boarded a flight out west to Las Vegas. Just like in Marietta, we checked into a brand new resort, New York-New York. It had barely opened, and once again, no one had ever slept in our room before. On Saturday, August 10th, at around 3:45 PM, we were finishing up lunch at Spago inside Caesars Palace. We started heading toward the exit. I looked over at the elevators. They were closer than the escalators, but slammed, packed with people waiting in the ambient casino glow. I turned to my friends and said, let's just take the escalators. We took our first step toward the stairs, and the entire city lost its mind. In a single second, the casino floor went pitch black. No lights. No slot chimes. No air conditioning. If we had stepped into that elevator 30 seconds earlier, we would have been trapped in a steel box in total darkness. Instead, we pulled out onto the Strip. That's when the surreal turned into utter madness— every single traffic light on the Strip was dead. Gridlock set in instantly. When we reached New York-New York, the drop-off was backed up 5 lanes deep into the street. Valets were standing in the heat throwing their hands up, refusing to take any more cars. People just gave up, leaving their keys in the ignition and walking away in the suffocating sun. Inside our brand-new hotel, emergency backup generators were humming— a crisp, 68-degree oasis in a dark city. From our pristine room window, endless red taillights choked the Strip for miles. 7.5 million people across 14 states plunged into darkness because a power line touched a tree in Oregon. Act 3: The 109-Second Fight. Less than a month after the blackout, we were back in Vegas. It was September 7th. Mike Tyson was fighting Bruce Seldon at the MGM Grand. Outside, the desert heat was brutal. We pushed through the streetside entrance doors of the MGM, stepping into the cold lobby to escape the heat and figure out if we were going to buy scalped tickets. Scalpers were outside asking $2,500 a ticket for a fight everyone knew might not last 2 rounds. We found a spot right near the street entrance, big, plush circular sofa, and sat down in the air conditioning to weigh our options and decide if it was worth $2,500 a ticket. We decided against the tickets, a smart move, considering Seldon went down in just 109 seconds. Within minutes, the arena doors opened and the largest casino floor in the state exploded. Thousands of fight fans poured out into the lobby. Every square inch of the floor was packed shoulder to shoulder with patrons and stargazing celebrities. I was still sitting right there on that circular sofa near the street entrance when it happened— literally a few feet away from where I was sitting, right in front of my boots near the entrance, a brawl broke out. Shouting, pushing, bodies slamming around on the marble floor. From where I sat, I had no idea who was involved or what was going on. In a packed Vegas casino after a fight, scuffles happen every 20 minutes. You just watch for a second, make sure it's not coming your way, and let security handle it. I had no clue that the man at the center of that fight, only feet from where I sat on that sofa, was Tupac Shakur. We left the MGM shortly after and hit the sidewalk, walking north up the Strip toward the Riviera. Almost immediately, the sirens started. First one cruiser, then another, roaring past us into the night. By the 4th or 5th engine screaming by, traffic was completely backed up. I looked at the line of stopped cars and said, Glad we're walking. By the time we got further up the strip, the sirens weren't stopping. 10. 15. 20 police cars blaring past with their lights flashing. Then came the rumors from people walking back toward us. Someone just got shot up on Flamingo! Drive-by shooting! A fraction of a mile ahead, red and blue lights illuminated the entire intersection. Standing near the perimeter on Flamingo Road, you could see it: a shot-up black sedan sitting dead still under the streetlights, surrounded by dozens of officers. Within hours, the news broke across the world. Tupac Shakur and Suge Knight had been hit in a drive-by. Epilogue: Looking Back. When we finally made it back home for good later that fall, people ask how the vacation went. How do you even begin to explain a summer like that? In 40 days, We were the very first guests to sleep in brand-new hotel rooms in Marietta and Las Vegas. We sat on the exact bench of a terrorist attack in Atlanta, got caught in a 7-hour Brickyard 400 standstill in Indy, stepped off an elevator seconds before a 14-state blackout, sat feet away from Tupac Shakur's final fight on an MGM sofa, and watched 20 police cruisers surround his shot-up car on Flamingo Road. People always talk about history like it's something you read about in books or watch on the evening news. But in the summer of 1996, history wasn't on the screen. It was right outside the windshield.