Member-only story
A Visit to Alex Pretti’s Memorial
A Snapshot of Community in the Face of Atrocity
When I went to the Alex Pretti memorial the other day, I knew what I would find there, but I was overwhelmed nonetheless.
Every business on that block had signs in its windows offering a warm place to sit, bathrooms, beverages and snacks. Not just the restaurants. The record store. The vintage shop.
Black Forest had a spread laid out as you walked in the door with coffee, tea, water, hand warmers, foot warmers and painkillers. The memorial itself had coffee urns and pastries and candles and matches for you to light. Somali women kept emerging from the office building with hotel pans of hot sambusas, weaving through the crowd to offer sustenance.
I circled the memorial to see all of the offerings and wishes and flowers piled there endlessly. On the street side, it was packed, and I couldn’t see past the people. A tall young man stepped aside and gestured to let me in to see.
As I circled back to the curb, the snow had been tamped down and packed to hard ice sloping up to the sidewalk about a foot high. I stared at it, looking for a spot to…
